1. DURATION OF JESUS MINISTRY.

ONE of the first points on which one wishes to be clear, if one would obtain a general view of the stories of Jesus’ life, is this—How long did Jesus’ public ministry last? As regards this, Jn. gives us information which is quite clear. The expulsion of the dealers and money-changers from the fore-court of the Temple, which was only preceded by the presence of Jesus at the marriage feast at Cana in Galilee, took place when Jesus had gone up (ii. 13) to Jerusalem to keep the Passover feast, our Easter Festival. Shortly before a second Passover festival, in Galilee by the Lake of Gennesareth he fed the five thousand (vi. 4). At a third Passover feast (xi. 55; xii. 1; xiii. 1) Jesus met his death. Between these there is mention of three other feasts. Between the first and second Passover, a “feast of the Jews,” which is not more closely identified (v. 1); between the second and third Passover, the Feast of Tabernacles in October (vii. 2), and the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple in December (x. 22). The references being so definite, it is quite unlikely that a Passover feast has been passed over. We may therefore calculate that the public ministry of Jesus lasted, according to Jn., somewhat over two years (not, as is commonly said, three years).

The Synoptics, on the other hand, do not allow us to fix its duration. They know of no festival except that of the Passover on which Jesus died. The natural thing to do of course would be to supplement them on this point from Jn. But they tell us just as little of any one of the journeys which Jesus is supposed to have made at so many of these festivals. So that if we wished to bring them into agreement with Jn., the effort to do so would give rise to a complaint all the more serious, that they are silent about such important matters. If we are bent on discovering, by means of a calculation which is quite uncertain, how long the public ministry of Jesus is supposed to have lasted, we shall hardly find that it lasted more than one year; in fact, a few months would perhaps suffice to cover all that the Gospels relate.

2. SCENE OF JESUS’ MINISTRY.

We have already had to touch upon another main point in which the other Gospels differ from Jn. It affects the scene of Jesus’ ministry. According to the Synoptics, Jesus did not come to Jerusalem or to Judaea at all—the most southern of the three parts of the Jewish land lying between the east coast of the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan, which flows from the north to the south into the Dead Sea—until a few days before his death. Previously he stayed uninterruptedly in Galilee, the northernmost of these three parts. The shores of the Lake of Gennesareth are here the chief scene of his ministry. On one occasion he journeyed outside of the land far to the north-west into the regions of Tyre and Sidon and back to the east shore of the Sea of Galilee (Mk. vii. 24, 31); afterwards he went once to the other side of the northern boundary of Galilee into the neighbourhood of Caesarea Philippi (Mk. viii. 27). His journey to Jerusalem led him eastward of Jordan through Peraea (Mk. x. 1); Samaria, which lay west of this, midway between Galilee and Judaea, which would have been his nearest way, was avoided because an old feud had made the Samaritans unfriendly in their attitude towards the Jews, especially when these were making pilgrimages to Jerusalem (Lk. ix. 52 f., Jn. iv. 9).

Nevertheless Lk., and he alone, does represent this journey as having been made through Samaria; in fact his account of it extends over nine whole chapters (ix. 51-xviii. 34). But he leads us to realise fully that he is not clear as to the facts of his story. Not very far from the end of it, for instance, he repeats (xvii. 11) that Jesus was on the way to Jerusalem, and adds that in the course of it he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee, whereas Galilee must have been left behind, if his purpose was to reach Jerusalem by way of Samaria. In xiii. 31 Jesus is warned against the snares of Herod Antipas, whose jurisdiction he had already avoided by leaving Galilee for Samaria. Further, on this journey Jesus is supposed on several occasions to have met Pharisees (xv. 2; xvii. 20), and is even said to have been invited to sit at meat with two of them (xi. 37; xiv. 1). But it is certain that no Pharisee could stay in Samaria, where he would come into daily contact with a people which did not observe the strict injunctions of the Jewish Law, and so would, of course, be continually defiled in such a way that no amount of washings and other observances would have availed to make him clean. Lk.’s story of Jesus journey through Samaria has therefore no claim to trustworthiness; it must be left entirely on one side.

In Jn. then the most important thing is this, that Jesus real and abiding dwelling-place during his ministry is Judaea and especially Jerusalem. To Galilee he came only on rare occasions and only for a short time: in ii. 1-12 to Cana at the marriage-feast and to Capernaum, where however he remained “not many days”; in iv. 43-v. 1 to Cana again, as regards which visit only the cure of the son of the royal official from Capernaum is signalised as a (special) event; finally in vi. 1 Jesus crosses the Lake of Galilee without its being said how he came there from Judaea; he feeds the five thousand, on the following night walks across the Lake, on the ensuing day teaches the people; and soon after the Feast of Tabernacles is again near at hand (vii. 2), for which he goes to Jerusalem without returning to Galilee. In the case of the last journey but one to Galilee we learn also where, according to Jn., Jesus original home really was, “Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honour in his own country; when then he came to Galilee, the Galileans received him kindly” (iv. 44 f.). What is here meant by Jesus country? Judaea is intended, just as certainly as in the Synoptics his father’s town Nazareth in Galilee is; for it was in Nazareth, as every one knows from Mk. (vi. 4), Mt., and Lk., that he uttered this saying (the Greek word patrís means both father’s land and father’s town). In i. 45 f.; vii. 41 f., 52, it is true, Jn., like the Synoptics, presupposes that Galilee, especially Nazareth, is Jesus native place, but in spite of this, iv. 44 f. implies the contrary. Moreover, vii. 42 suggests that Jn. may have believed that at least the birth of Jesus took place in Bethlehem, and so in Judaea.

3. THE CLASSES OP PEOPLE AMONGST WHOM JESUS MOVED.

With whom then had Jesus to deal when he came forward to teach in public? In the Synoptics with the most different classes of people. Here we find crowds of people following him into the wilderness to listen to him for days together. The sick come and ask for healing, sometimes abashed like the woman with an issue of blood, who, with out being seen, hoped to be able to touch the hem of his garment (Mk. v. 25-34), sometimes, like blind Bartimaeus at Jericho, crying aloud (Mk. x. 46-48). A rich man desires to learn from the Master what he must do in order to attain everlasting life (Mk. x. 17); a scribe wishes to know which is the most important commandment in the Law of Moses (Mk. xii. 28); another would like to follow him, but does not reflect that Jesus has no place where he can lay his head (Mt. viii. 19 f.); others again desire to follow him, but would first bury their fathers (Mt. viii. 21 f.) or take solemn farewell of their friends (Lk. ix. 61 f.); yet another has a legacy dispute with his brother, and Jesus is to settle it (Lk. xii. 13 f.); the chief tax-gatherer Zacchaeus climbs up a mulberry-tree in order to see Jesus as he passes by (Lk. xix. 1-10). Another tax-gatherer, who may have been called Levi (so Mk. ii. 14 – Lk. v. 27) or Matthew (so Mt. ix. 9), at the beck of Jesus leaves his business to follow him, and at the meal which he prepares afterwards we find Jesus in the midst of the tax-gatherers and their whole company, which was regarded as sinful, but which he so much cultivated that it came to be said, he is “a glutton and a wine-bibber, an associate of publicans and sinners” (Mt. xi. 19). It was at Levi’s meal that the Pharisees and scribes, with long fringes to their garments (Mt. xxiii. 5) in token of a singular piety, were present to find fault with Jesus, just as they opposed him everywhere else, raising objection in the name of the Law of Moses to his disciples plucking ears of corn on the Sabbath or to his doing work on the Sabbath by healing a sick man (Mk. ii. 23-iii. 6), or to his declaring that the sins of the paralytic man were forgiven (Mk. ii. 1-12). And he on his part is never tired of pronouncing against that hypocrisy and affectation of holiness of theirs through which they allow themselves to be surprised at prayer in the street, that they may keep their piety well in evidence, and at the same time consume the houses of widows and declare it to be a work well pleasing to God to give to the Temple something which is needed for the support of one’s own poor parents (Mk. vii. 11-13; Mt. vi. 5 and chap. xxiii.). In return they try to set snares for him and by captious questions to entice from him an utterance on the strength of which proceedings may be taken against him. And the Sadducees, the aristocratic priestly party, which gave itself up to the joys of life, but held firmly to its position of authority and was relentless in matters of the law, also associated themselves with these efforts (Mk. xii. 18-27).

Where is all this varied picture in Jn.? Only a few of its features confront us there. In Jn. also the Pharisees vigilantly enforce the command that the Sabbath shall not be profaned by any work (ix. 14-16). But what Jesus finds fault with in them, apart from this, is not their factitious holiness, but only their unwillingness to believe in him. In Jn. not only do the Scribes not appear, but—and this is far more important—the publicans and sinners, the poor and oppressed, are missing also. As the particular persons with whom Jesus had to do, apart from his disciples and the sick persons whom he healed, mention can be made only of his mother (at the marriage feast of Cana, ii. 1-11, and at the cross, xix. 25-27), Nicodemus (iii. 1-21; vii. 50-52; xix. 39-42), the woman of Samaria (iv. 7-30), and Martha and Mary (at the raising of their brother Lazarus, xi. 1-44, and at the anointing of Jesus, xii. 1-8).

For the rest, Jesus is confronted only by a single class of men, “the Jews.” Over thirty times this expression recurs in the first eleven chapters. Of course in the Synoptics also they are all Jews with whom Jesus holds intercourse; but in them a distinction is actually made between Jews and Jews, which is not made here. Every thing remains indefinite. To the sick man who was healed at the Pool of Bethesda, “the Jews” say, “it is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for thee to carry thy bed” (v. 10). After he has learned who healed him, he tells “the Jews,” it was Jesus (v. 15). Was he not himself a Jew then? And was not Jesus also a Jew? The Gospel of Jn. is very liable to make us forget this. Jesus journeys to Jerusalem not for this and that feast, which since he was a child of his people was a festival for him also, but to “the feast of the Jews”; with the exception of the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple (x. 22) all the feasts mentioned in Jn. and referred to above (p. 9 f.) are described in this way. Jesus says to the Pharisees, and another time to “the Jews,” “in your law it is written” (viii. 17; x. 34); for Jesus himself, then, this Law is not valid. We even read in vii. 11-13 that at Jerusalem “none spake openly about him for fear of the Jews.” Here by the Jews cannot be meant the whole population, but only the authorities whose attitude was particularly hostile to Jesus. The strange expression indicates, however, that the same hostile feeling is imagined to prevail among the whole people.

4. COURSE OF JESUS’ MINISTRY.

In accordance with this, as far as the course of Jesus’ ministry is concerned it might now be expected to have a very speedy and a violent termination. In particular, it was the expulsion of the dealers from the fore-court of the Temple that, according to the account of the Synoptics, sealed Jesus fate. And, as a matter of fact, no officials could allow their sacred rights to be interfered with in this way without letting all authority slip out of their hands. But in Jn. the expulsion takes place at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry, and it happens with out bringing upon him any serious consequences. This is all the more remarkable since in this Gospel no difficulties seem to be felt at all when Jesus is represented as about to be taken prisoner without any clear legal grounds for the action. The High-priests and Pharisees only need to give their agents command to effect the capture (vii. 32). It is not effected, it is true. But why not? Their agents allow themselves to be withheld from obeying their instructions by the power of Jesus’ words, and the authorities quietly abandon their object (vii. 45-49). We are told repeatedly that “they” (or “the Jews”) sought to take him or to kill him (v. 18; vii. 1; viii. 37, 40; x. 31), but the result is always: “none laid hand upon him” (vii. 30), “he escaped from their hands” (x. 39), or when they wished to stone him, “he hid himself and escaped from the Temple place” (viii. 59). And the reason given is that “his hour was not yet come” (vii. 30; viii. 20).

Now certainly it must not be overlooked that in the Synoptics also (Mk. iii. 6) the Pharisees with the party of Herod took counsel together how they might destroy Jesus after his first cure of a sick man on a Sabbath. On the whole, however, events run their course here in a much more intelligible way. Jesus comes forward in Galilee and finds favour—even an enthusiastic welcome—among the people for a whole period. The intervention of the Pharisees is powerless to check this. When Jesus leaves Jewish territory on the north, he does so expressly in order to escape the pressure now becoming too great (Mk. vii. 24). Only in the end does there come a time when he finds himself called upon to go up to Jerusalem, and there, by means of a solemn entry into the city, to force a decision of the question whether people would see in him the Saviour (Mk, xi. 1-11). The decision follows within few days, and is hastened chiefly by the expulsion of the dealers from the fore-court of the Temple.

In the Fourth Gospel, on the other hand, although the circumstances urgently require an immediate settlement of the question, it is deferred again and again; and, finally the decision is caused by an event of which the Synoptics know nothing at all—by the raising of Lazarus. The greatest of all miracles leads the High Council, the highest authority among the Jewish people, to meet together and definitely contemplate Jesus’ removal (xii. 47-53, 57). Thus the two accounts do not agree even to what really provided the occasion for the overthrow Jesus.

5. JESUS’ WORKS OF WONDER.

As to the fact that Jesus worked miracles, it is true, they are all agreed. And it is only on the surface that the number, according to Jn.’s account, has to be thought of as somewhat limited. He, as a matter of fact, continually presupposes that it was large (ii. 23; iv. 45; vi. 2; vii. 31; xi. 47; xii. 37; xx. 30), and in xx. 31 expressly says that he has only included a selection of them in his book. And yet it is significant that among these that class of miracles is not found which not only, according to the Synoptics, was the most common, but also (according to the general agreement of modern historians and theologians of every school) least deserves to be doubted—we mean the cure of so-called possessed persons or demoniacs, that is to say, of the mentally sick, a cure which is effected by physicians fairly often even in our own times.

Next, it must certainly appear strange that the miracles reported in Jn. are often more marvellous in their character than those in the corresponding narratives of the Synoptics. Amongst the stories of cures in the Synoptics we do not hear of a man being healed by Jesus who had been ill for thirty-eight years; nor amongst the references to blind men, of sight being given to one who was born blind. The daughter of Jairus, according to Mk. v. 22-43, was raised very soon after her death; the young man at Nain, according to Lk. vii. 11-17, on the way to burial, which in the hot climate of Palestine took place on the very day of death, or, according to the story of Ananias and Sapphira in the Acts of the Apostles (v. 5 f., 10), immediately after death (cp. also Tobit viii. 10-16). To understand what a difference is implied when we are told that Lazarus was not resuscitated until the fourth day after his death, we must bear in mind the Jewish idea that the soul hovered about a dead body for three days after death and was ready to return to it. On the fourth day it finds the appearance of the dead person so completely altered that it forsakes it once and for all.

It would also be a great mistake to suppose that the description of the walking on the Lake of Galilee is more easy to accept in Jn.’s account (vi. 16-21) than in that of the Synoptics (Mk. vi. 45-52), because it is supposed to admit of a perfectly natural explanation. Thus stress is laid on the fact that the Greek words, Jesus walked “upon the sea,” might also mean “by the sea,” and it is assumed that the disciples with their boat, without noticing it, kept quite near the shore or had come near it again; Jesus passed close by the water’s edge, and it was only the high waves that made it appear as if he walked upon the water. This conception is supposed to find further support in the concluding words (Jn. vi. 21), “they wished then to take him into the ship, and immediately the ship struck the land.” On this view there is only one thing omitted, and that is the chief point we mean the four words which follow, “to which they steered.” By this, as we are expressly told in vi. 11 is meant the opposite shore of the sea. The Evangelist, therefore, really emphasises the fact that Jesus walked across the whole sea and did not need to be taken into the boat, as in the Synoptics.

Yet another view is suggested by the changing of the water into wine at the marriage-feast at Cana (Jn. ii. 1-11). This miracle is one which Jesus performed not on a man but on an inanimate object, and hardly any one can say that it was prompted by heartfelt compassion for suffering humanity. The Evangelist also assigns to it a quite different meaning: “this was the first sign which Jesus did and whereby he announced his majesty.” Not every work of wonder is in itself a “sign” of this kind. Any one of them of course may be such a “sign,” if its purpose is to accredit the divine power of the worker; and many works of wonder must necessarily be regarded as “signs” in this sense, because no other purpose can be recognised in them.

Now the Synoptics also report certain works of wonder of this kind, for example the withering of the fig-tree after Jesus had cursed it (Mk. xi. 12-14, 20 f.), and we must certainly assume that other miracles of Jesus as well, works of wonder done from compassion, seemed to them to be “signs” quite as much as anything else. Nevertheless, the distinction still holds good that compassion as the ruling idea of the wonder-works of Jesus is in these as much in the foreground as it is in the background in Jn. The latter mentions not merely, as we have just noted, that the turning of the water into wine at Cana was the first miracle, but also says expressly that the healing of the son of the royal official of Capernaum was “the second sign which Jesus did in Galilee” (iv. 54); in fact he uses the word “sign” continually for Jesus’ works of wonder, and in this Gospel Jesus emphasises the idea (v. 36; x. 25) that these “works,” by which he means his works of wonder, are witnesses that he has been sent by God, and that though one refuses to believe his words, one must believe his “works” (x. 38; xiv. 11).

Now the view thus taken by Jn. is directly opposed to an utterance of Jesus preserved to us in the Synoptics. When the Pharisees wish to see a “sign” from him, he answers “there shall no sign be given unto this generation.” So Mk. viii. 11-13. In Mt. (xii. 39; xvi. 4) and Lk. (xi. 29) he adds “except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” It almost seems as if this addition were in full contradiction with Mk.’s account. But appearances are deceptive. That is to say, by the “sign of Jonah” is meant something which is really no sign at all—in fact the contrary of a sign. This unusual mode of expression is very effective. An illustration will make this clear at once. Suppose that a conqueror suddenly invades a country, that the inhabitants send ambassadors to him and ask for credentials to justify his raid, and that he answers, “no credentials shall be given to you but the credentials of my sword.” And the idea in Jesus’ words about the sign of Jonah is really similar, for he says in continuation, “the people of Nineveh shall rise up in judgment with this generation (with which I have to deal), and shall condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and behold a greater than Jonah is here “in my person (Mt. xii. 41). Here we are actually told in what the sign of Jonah consists: it is his preaching. And what Jesus has to offer—though in a more perfect form—is of course also preaching. He desires merely to preach, not to do “signs.” Nor is this a principle which he sets before himself one day and ignores the next. The generation of the Pharisees was not unworthy one day and worthy the next to see a “sign” from him. Here then we have evidence of priceless value to show that Jesus declined on principle to do, not all works of wonder, but all such as might be supposed to serve the purpose of accrediting his exalted rank. And he must really have uttered these words, for none of all his recorders who believed that Jesus really did works of wonder with this intention would have invented them.

In order to emphasise fully the importance of such passages, we describe them as foundation-pillars of a really scientific Life of Jesus. That is to say, every historian in whatever field he may work, in a story which shows that the author worshipped his hero, follows the principle of regarding as true anything that runs counter to this worship, because it cannot be due to invention. Since we possess several Gospels, we are in a position to note, in addition, how one or more of them will sometimes remodel, sometimes remove altogether, passages of this nature because they were too offensive to one who worshipped Jesus. In their original form, therefore, such passages show us most certainly how Jesus really lived and thought, that he did so in a way which we—though we fully recognise in him something divine—must describe as truly human. Secondly, if it were not for such passages we could not be sure that we may, to some extent at least, rely upon the Gospels in which they are found, that is to say upon the first three. If they were entirely wanting in them it would be difficult to reply to the claim that the Gospels nowhere present to us anything but the figure of a saint delineated on a background of gold, and that we cannot know how Jesus really lived and worked, nor perhaps whether he even lived at all. The foundation-pillars on which, in addition to that mentioned above, we may lean in our effort to gain a correct idea of the wonder works of Jesus, will be discussed on p. 41, and in Chap. III., §§ 18 and 19; the rest which are important for other sides of Jesus character, on pp. 24 f., 26 f., 27 f., 29 and 43.

Naturally all that we find to be trustworthy in the Synoptics is by no means limited to these nine “foundation-pillars.” It is one of the chief duties of a historian to show that the success which a great character has had in history can be understood from his words and works. But in the case of Jesus the success has been so great that even an inquirer who is quite sober in his attitude towards him must search out and accept as true everything that was calculated to establish his greatness and to make the worship which was offered to him by his contemporaries intelligible, provided that it is not in conflict with the picture of Jesus presented by the foundation- pillars, and does not for other reasons arouse in us doubts which are well founded.

Coming back to Jesus’ words about the “sign of Jonah,” after what has already been said about it, it may be gathered how lacking in intelligence the man must have been who inserted, between the saying about the sign of Jonah and that about the people of Nineveh, the sentence “for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” Moreover, this insertion is found only in Mt. xii. 40, not in Mt. xvi., nor in Lk. and Mk. What then is meant? The day will come when the Pharisees shall see the miracle of Jesus resurrection. And then we are told further in Mt. that “the people of Nineveh . . . repented at the preaching of Jonah.” Did Jonah preach to them about his coming forth from the belly of the fish? And if he had done so, could it have made much impression upon them? A miracle one wishes to see with one’s own eyes, not merely to hear about. But, besides this, we are told quite correctly, in agreement with the Old Testament book which deals with Jonah, what it was that he preached to the people of Nineveh: it was repentance. Thus the idea introduced, that Jesus told the Pharisees they would one day see the miracle of his resurrection, is not appropriate here.

Why do we spend so much time on this point which is not found at all in the Fourth Gospel? The reason is that in this too (ii. 18-22) Jesus is asked to show a “sign” (in proof that he has the right to drive the dealers from the fore-court of the Temple), and that he does not decline to do so as in the Synoptics, but points to his future resurrection, just as he does in the inappropriate insertion in Mt.; this event will prove his right to have driven the sellers—two years previously—from the Temple court.

As regards the miracle at Cana we have still to note the rôle played in it by Jesus mother. Although down to this time Jesus has never worked a miracle (Jn. ii. 11), his mother foresees that he will do one, and says to the servants, even after she has been rebuked by Jesus, “whatsoever he shall command you, that do.” How entirely different is the presentation of Mary in Mk.! Here (iii. 21 ) Jesus’ friends go out to seize him because they think him mentally distraught. Who these friends are we are very soon told in Mk. (iii. 31-35); his mother and his brethren come and send some one to summon him from the house; and only their intention to withdraw him from his active work and banish him to his parents house will explain his gruff answer, “Who is my mother and my brethren? Whosoever doeth the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.” We may take it for granted that when Mk. tells us of this intention, and of the idea that Jesus was mentally distraught, he was relying upon unimpeachable information. This is clear when we look into Mt. and Lk. They do not say a word about these two things—and why, unless it was because they dare not believe anything of the kind?—and give only Jesus’ gruff answer, without of course reflecting what an unfavourable light is thrown upon Jesus, if it was not provoked by conduct on the part of his mother and his brethren which was quite intolerable.

6. THE GENERAL PICTURE OF JESUS.

The conception which we have formed of Jesus as a worker of wonders will affect to an important extent the picture of him which is formed as a whole. Here again it will not be forgotten that the Synoptics agree with Jn. in sketching it with a grandeur which raises Jesus to a marked extent above the standard of what is human. Yet they report that he also, like others, was baptized by John. In the Fourth Gospel we look in vain for this information. Here we find only the later report of the Baptist, that lie saw the Holy Spirit coming down upon Jesus from heaven like a dove; and even this is supposed to have happened, not for the sake of Jesus, but only of the Baptist the purpose being that by this sign which God had already announced to him, he might be able to recognise in the person who stood before him the Son of God whom he did not already know (i. 32-34).

In Jn. also the fact recorded by the Synoptics (Mt. iv. 1-11), that Jesus was tempted by the devil, is entirely omitted. And to this Evangelist the report in Mk. (x. 17 f.) and Lk., that Jesus, when a rich man said to him, “Good master, what must I do to inherit eternal life?” answered, “Why callest thou me good? None is good but God alone” would have been equally unacceptable. And yet without doubt this answer came from Jesus lips. How little any of those worshippers who noted down the records in the Gospels could have invented it is shown by Mt. In Mt. (xix. 16 f.) the rich man says, “Master, what good thing must I do in order to have eternal life?” And Jesus answers, “Why askest thou me concerning what is good? One is the good.” How in this passage does Jesus come to add the last four words? Should he not, since he was questioned about the good, have continued, “one thing is the good”? And this would have been the only appropriate reply, not only in view of what precedes, but also on account of what follows, for Jesus says later, “but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.” Thus it is in the keeping of the commandments, Jesus thinks, that that good thing consists about which he was asked. How does Mt. get the words, “one is the good”? Simply by having before him, when he wrote, the language of Mk. Here we have a practical example of the way in which Mt. deliberately tried so to change this language at the beginning as to make it inoffensive, while at the end, in spite of his purpose, he left unchanged a few words of it which reveal to us what has happened and how it arose. But by removing in this way the words of Jesus to the effect that he did not deserve to be called good, Mt. has only anticipated the Fourth Gospel in which Jesus exclaims triumphantly (viii. 46), “Which of you convicteth me of sin? “

In the Synoptics (Mk. xiv. 32-39) we are told that in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed insistently that the cup of death might pass from him. In Jn. we seek for this information in vain. The words about the cup, familiar to us from the Synoptics, are used by Jesus in Jn. also, but in the contrary sense, “the cup which the Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?” (xviii. 11). We find in a much earlier passage (xii. 27) the only thing that can be compared with the deep emotion of Jesus in Gethsemane. Several days before his death Jesus says here, “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say? “But no more unsuitable continuation could be imagined than the following words when they are mistranslated, “Father, deliver me from this hour.” How can the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel think of asking the Father in heaven to deliver him from death? He actually gives up his life of his own accord (x. 17 f.). The sentence can therefore only be meant as a question: “What ought I to say? Ought I to say, ‘Father, deliver me from this hour?’” This alone makes the following words also appropriate, “but for this cause came I unto this hour”; therefore I say, “Father, glorify thy name,” by letting me go to my death.Marks of interrogation and other marks of inter-punctuation are not found in our ancient copies of the Bible. We must therefore supply them as best suits the sense.

Mk. (xv. 34) and Mt. at any rate have the saying of Jesus from the cross, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” In Jn., as well as in Lk., we fail to find it. And yet we may be quite certain that it was no more invented than the saying about the sign of Jonah. An indication of weakness in the Crucified Lord might be found in the saying in Jn. xix. 28, “I thirst,” which, in turn, is not found in the Synoptics. But the author has been careful at the outset to exclude this interpretation. He says expressly that Jesus spoke the word in order that a prophecy of the Old Testament (Ps. xxii. 16) might be fulfilled; we are not therefore meant to suppose that Jesus was really thirsty.

Furthermore, we read frequently in the Synoptics that Jesus prayed to his heavenly Father, and that he sought solitude for this purpose (e.g., Mk. i. 35). How Jn. thinks of Jesus as praying is clear when he is represented as standing before the open sepulchre of Lazarus (xi. 41 f.) and saying, “Father, I thank thee that thou heardest me. And I know that thou hearest me always; but because of the multitude which standeth around I said it, that they may believe that thou didst send me.” From this it appears that Jesus did not need to pray for his own sake, but only for that of the people; and this he even explains to God in a prayer. Here that power of his to do wonders, with which we started, is first revealed in its fullest light.

To this may now be added the continual examples of his omniscience. Nathanael, who has only just come to him, Jesus has already seen under the fig-tree before Philip called him to Jesus (i. 48). He did not trust himself to those who believed on him at the first Passover feast in Jerusalem, because he knew them all (ii. 24 f.). He was able to tell the woman of Samaria, that she had had five husbands, and that he whom she now had was not her husband, and she was obliged to admit on the strength of this that Jesus was a prophet (iv. 16-19). As regards Lazarus he received a message merely to the effect that he was sick. But Jesus knew that in the meantime he had died (xi. 3 f. 11-14; see p. 32). He knew “from the beginning” that Judas Iscariot would betray him (vi. 64; xiii. 18), In the Synoptics, on the other hand, we find him expressly declaring that (Mk. xiii. 32) “of that day,” that is to say, the day on which he would come down from heaven, in order to set up the Kingdom of God upon earth, “or of that hour knoweth no one, not even the angels in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father”—another of the sayings which, we may be sure, none of his worshippers has invented. Lk. omits it altogether; Mt. (according to what is probably the original text) omits at least the all-important words “neither the Son.”

We may add further the continual examples of that inviolability of his, which we have already referred to (above, p. 17): they wished to seize him, but he suffered no harm. It will have become clear in the meantime that the expression which occurs here, “he hid himself” (viii. 59; also xii. 36), certainly cannot mean that Jesus concealed himself, but only—as his dignity would require—that he made himself invisible in a miraculous way, because “his hour had not yet come.”

When, however, his hour came, he gave himself up of his own accord. Once more we read that the soldiers could do him no harm; at his words. “It is I” whom ye seek, they go back and fall to the ground (500, if not 1000, Roman soldiers). Judas, since it was dark, according to the Synoptics (Mk. xiv 44 f.) requires to point him out first by kissing his hand; in Jn. he does not need to do so, he stands idly by (xviii. 3-6). Jesus of his own accord, by dipping a morsel in the sop and giving it to Judas at the Last Supper, made the devil enter into him, and himself bade him hasten his evil deed (xiii. 26 f.) and of this again the Synoptics know nothing.

7. GENUINE HUMAN CHARACTERISTICS IN JESUS?

But, this being so, does the description of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel embody no genuinely human characteristics? It is significant that even those who still place this Gospel on a higher level than the other three would rather the picture of Jesus were not so like a God as it is in the description we have just given, following faithfully the real idea of the author But of all that they can point to, the only thing which is at all worthy of consideration is found in the words (xi. 35), “Jesus wept”—the occasion being when he came near to the grave of Lazarus. And the idea that we have here an instance of real human emotion on the part of Jesus seems, further, to be confirmed expressly by the following words: “The Jews therefore said, ‘Behold how he loved him.’” But this of itself is necessarily startling. We shall very soon (p. 44 f.) have to explain that what the Jews say in reply to a declaration by Jesus is in the Fourth Gospel regularly based upon a misunderstanding. But, further, the author has taken care to make it clear to every one who is at pains to understand him that the words of the Jews are shown by the context of the passage itself to be a misunderstanding. Before this it has been said (xi. 33): “When Jesus therefore saw Mary weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, he groaned in the spirit and was troubled.” After the words of the Jews, “Behold, how he loved him,” we are told further, “But some of them said, ‘Could not this man, which opened the eyes of him that was blind, have caused that this man also should not die?’” Jesus, again groaning in his spirit, now goes to the grave. Why did he groan in this way? Now this second time we are clearly told, it was because the Jews who are here speaking did not think that his power to raise Lazarus was to be regarded as something which he possessed quite as a matter of course. But why should he have groaned the first time? Surely because of something of the same nature, that is to say, simply because Mary and the Jews wept instead of confidently expecting that the dead man would be raised by Jesus. And when we are told, in the interval, that he wept, it should not really be so difficult to see that his tears were not on account of the loss of his friend and the mourning of Lazarus’ kinsfolk—he knew well enough that at the next moment both would be obliterated by the raising of Lazarus—but simply because they did not believe in his power to work miracles.

Or if this cannot really be seen here, can it not be recognised even at the beginning of the narrative? If we were to read it aloud simply as far as the words in xi. 5 f., “Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister, and Lazarus. When therefore he heard that he was sick,” certainly every listener would expect us to proceed, “then he went to him immediately.” Instead of this we actually find the words, “he abode at that time two days in the place where he was.” Why? Unless we are willing to believe that he feared the snares of the Jews, against which his disciples warn him in xi. 8 two days later—he himself refusing to take warning—we can only say that this delay was to all appearances due to an indifference or inhumanity which is superior to all genuinely human feeling. But it would be quite unfair to make his conduct a subject of moral criticism. The author of the Gospel has taken care to show that we may not, as a matter of fact, expect to find any genuinely human feeling in the Jesus of his story. After two days have passed, Jesus says to his disciples openly (xi. 14 f.): “Lazarus is dead; and I am glad for your sakes that I was not there, to the intent ye may believe.” In what? This we have been told already, in xi. 4, where Jesus receives news of the illness of Lazarus: “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby.”

The words at the beginning of this sentence mean, not that this sickness will not cause the death of Lazarus, but that it will not lead to his remaining dead, for, as the concluding words show, Jesus knew beforehand that he would raise Lazarus, and that the miracle would serve for his own glorification. And he could only effect this and exceed all other miracles if he allowed the fourth day to come before he arrived at the sepulchre, since only then could any return to life be considered out of the question (see p. 19). Here then we have the real reason why he delayed his journey for two days.

In this case we can prove something more. Since the journey to Bethany takes at most two days, and Jesus did not arrive there until the fourth day after Lazarus’ death, Lazarus was already dead by the time the messengers reached Jesus, and the Fourth Gospel presupposes that Jesus already knew this, by means of course of that omni science with which it supposes him to be endowed. The sorrow of the sisters, their longing for a word of comfort, their anxious waiting for one who might have arrived long ago—all this is nothing to him; he is only concerned about the miracle and his own glorification. Here we can see whether the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel has any human characteristics.

8. DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS IN THE COURSE OF HIS WORK.

In the character of Jesus as described by the Synoptics we are allowed to see further that he developed both in thought and action. It would of course be a very great mistake to suppose that they themselves were conscious of any such development or believed in it. But they at any rate make such statements as enable us, when we carefully examine them, to discover this truth. It is at a relatively late date that Jesus in these Gospels is recognised by his disciples to be the ardently hoped-for deliverer of his people, the God-sent inaugurator of the kingdom of God, the Saviour, to use a popular term, or, as the Jewish name “Messiah” and the Greek name “Christus” mean, the “Anointed” of God. They do not report it, that is to say until the public ministry of Jesus had continued for a fairly long time, not until after he had found occasion to withdraw for the second time beyond the northern boundary of Galilee (Mk. viii. 27-30). The confession which Peter now made in Caesarea Philippi, in the name of the other disciples as well, was, according to the Synoptics, one of the most important turning-points. According to Jn., Peter made the corresponding pronouncement (vi. 66-69), not on foreign territory, but at Capernaum (Jn. knowing nothing of the journey farther north); but—and this is the chief point—it is not represented as a new discovery and announcement and as made for the first time. In truth, it cannot be such, for in this Gospel John the Baptist already knows, when he sees Jesus approaching him for the first time, that he is the Lamb of God which taketh away the sins of the world, and that he has existed before him (i. 29 f.) And Andrew, after he has been a day with Jesus, and even before Jesus’ public appearance, is able to say to his brother Peter, “we have found the Messiah” (i. 38-41).

Next, in the Synoptics we find Jesus saying at one time that he has not come to destroy the Law of Moses, but only to fill it with its true import, and so to deepen it (Mt. v. 17) in a manner which is more precisely exemplified in Mt. v. 21 f. 27 f.; and at another time making such statements as, “the Sabbath was made for man, and not man for the Sabbath” (Mk. ii. 27), or “whatsoever from without goeth into the man, it cannot defile him, but only evil thoughts which proceed out of the heart” (Mk. vii. 18-23). Such declarations as these brush aside the whole Law, if we think of the literal meaning of its particular precepts. There is hardly any other way of reconciling the two classes of utterance but to suppose that Jesus expressed himself in the one way at an earlier period, and in the other at a later date.

Or when we read that Jesus went into foreign territory that he might remain unrecognised, and that at first he roughly repulsed the Phoenician woman who cried after him, beseeching him to heal her sick daughter, but after wards paid attention to her (Mk. vii. 24; Mt. xv. 21-28), certainly the natural explanation is that at first he seriously meant what he said to her: that it would be wrong to take the bread—that is to say, the power to heal, with which he was endowed—from the children (of the chosen people) and to give it to the dogs, that is to say, to the Gentiles, to whom she also belonged. It was only the affecting and very appropriate retort of the anxious mother, “even the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs,” that could convert him, if this version is correct, and so prepare him to alter all his ideas about the extension of his lifework to the Gentiles.

Jn. does not give us the slightest clue to any such changes; Jesus in this Gospel suffers no alteration; he is the same from beginning to end.

9. FORM OF JESUS DISCOURSES.

The same contrast is seen again in a particularly clear way in Jesus’ discourses. Here indeed the difference, as compared with the Synoptics, is perhaps most clearly marked. It is apparent even in the form. In the first three Gospels we have short, pithy utterances: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”; “ye have heard that it was said to those of old . . . but I say unto you . . .”; “they that are whole need not a physician, but they that are sick”; “what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and suffer loss of his own life” (Mt. v. 8, 21 f.; Mk. ii. 17; viii. 36). We might go on quoting utterances of this kind almost without end. Even where the discourses are longer, as in the Sermon on the Mount, or on the occasion when he sent forth the disciples, or in his address to the Pharisees (Mt. v.-vii., x., xxiii.), we can easily see that they are really compilations of such pithy utterances as these, each of which has a meaning and force of its own. In Jn. no more than a few of these utterances reappear. Everywhere else in this Gospel we find long spun-out discourses about certain thoughts, which, moreover, are repeated on the most varied occasions. In order to gain some idea of their style, read for instance Jn. iii. 11-21; v. 19-47; viii. 12-59; or vi. 26-58.

Jesus parables are special gems in his discourses. We never cease to be charmed by their vividness, the freshness of their colouring, and their appropriate application to the religious and moral problems of life, and we feel that they really must have been the best means of bringing eternal truths home to simple people in whom dwells half unconsciously so deep a desire for them. The Fourth Gospel does not contain a single parable. The only passage that approaches the parabolic form is that in which Jesus compares himself to a vine and his disciples to the branches (xv. 1-8); but this is only a figurative discourse, not a story in which some action is represented as going on before our eyes, such as that of the sower scattering seed or the shepherd going in search of his lost sheep. Elsewhere we have in Jn., besides this, only the instances in which Jesus calls himself the good shepherd and the door of the sheepfold (x. 11-16; x. 1-10). The first is as beautiful as the second is peculiar. Who can think of Jesus as the door? The thought is employed here for the purpose of distinguishing two classes of teacher: the shepherds who come to their sheep by entering the door, and robbers who climb in by another way. But how Jesus can here represent the door cannot be made clear, and much less when he is immediately afterwards compared (x. 11-16), not to the door, but to the good shepherd the good shepherd, by whom we have just been led to think (x. 2-5) some one else was intended.

10. SUBJECT OF JESUS’ DISCOURSES.

And with what do the discourses of Jesus deal? In the Synoptics almost exclusively with the question, What must one do to gain admittance into the Kingdom of God? And the answer to the question is well-nigh exhausted when it is summed up in the words, “Be pure in heart, love God and your neighbour, do God’s will” (Mt. v. 8; xxii. 37-39; vii. 21). According to the circumstances, and the persons to whom it was given, it took on different occasions the most varied forms; but the point was always that what is required is moral conduct based on the fear of God. This is so, even where Jesus speaks of his own person and says that one must follow him, one must listen to him (for instance, in Mt. x. 37-40). He does not say this for his own sake, but on account of those whom he wishes, by speaking thus, to lead into the right path, which of course no one knew so well as he. Words which go beyond this and require people to recognise his exalted nature, such as, “every one who shall confess me before men, him will I also confess before my Father which is in heaven” (Mt. x. 32 f.) play a quite subordinate part. Jesus speaks about himself very seldom.

He does so all the more frequently in the Fourth Gospel. Here his person and its divine nature is almost the only subject of his discourses. Jesus’ words to the sick man at Bethesda after his cure, “Sin no more, lest a worse thing befall thee” (v. 14) are indeed spoken for the sufferer’s sake; but the whole discourse which follows down to the end of the chapter serves to elaborate the thought, that Jesus has been sent by God and that God through his miracles, as well as through the prophecies found in the Old Testament, bears witness to Jesus as His son. It is true that we find again in this chapter something which is said on account of Jesus’ hearers, “He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life” (v. 24); but this word of Jesus to which they are to listen, according to the immediately preceding verse amounts to this, that all ought to honour the Son as they honour the Father in heaven. The man born blind is healed, but no word is said to him that might be helpful for the nurture of his soul—his only gain is this, that he learns step by step who it was that healed him; and this again, to say the least, subserves the purpose of Jesus glorification of himself. At the very beginning of the cure (ix. 5), Jesus calls himself the Light of the World. This thought, to which he has already given expression in viii. 12, is amplified throughout chapter viii., and here the discourse frequently harks back to what we have mentioned from chapter v., the idea that God bears witness to Jesus as His son. In chapter vi. (26-58), it is true that it is in the interest of Jesus’ hearers when we are told that they are to receive the true bread of life, but the important point on which the whole discourse turns is this, that Jesus himself is this bread of life.

And what are known as the Farewell-discourses of Jesus (chaps. xiii.-xvii.) are not at bottom different in character. They deal with the idea that, to help the followers of Jesus after his death, the Holy Spirit will come upon them, and guide them to the whole truth (xiv. 26; xvi. 13); but at least of equal importance is the other point, that it is not only God (so xiv, 16 f.), but also Jesus himself, who will send this Holy Spirit (xv. 26; xvi. 7), and even that he himself, regarded from another point of view, is this Holy Spirit (xiv. 18, identical with xiv. 17; also xiv. 28). Moreover, these chapters are full of sayings which expressly serve the purpose of Jesus own glorification: “he that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (xiv. 9, exactly as in xii. 45); “all things whatsoever the Father hath are mine” (xvi. 15); “I came out from the Father, and am come into the world” (xvi. 28). It may be nothing more than external corroboration of this, but it is significant all the same, that in the discourses of Jesus in Jn. the word “my” occurs much more than twice as often as in Mt., and the word “I” more than six times as often.

There is only one narrative in the Fourth Gospel in which the utterances of Jesus do not serve the purpose of his own glorification, but are spoken entirely for the sake of the persons with whom he is dealing; this is the story of the woman who was taken in adultery and brought to Jesus (vii. 53-viii. 11). “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her”; and after her accusers have slunk away one after another, “Neither do I condemn thee; go thy way, from henceforth sin no more.” These utterances read, in fact, as if Mk., Mt., or Lk. lay open before us. But, apart from this, there is hardly a scholar who does not agree that this narrative was not found originally in the Gospel of Jn. It is missing in copies which were made as late as in the fourth century or still later, and many particular words are found in it for which elsewhere Jn. regularly uses quite different terms.

11. DEMANDS MADE BY JESUS IN His DISCOURSES.

What demands does Jesus make of his hearers in those discourses which were really penned by the Fourth Evangelist? These can be expressed in a few words. “Believe in my person and its divine character.” The man who was born blind, after he has been healed, gradually arrives at the conviction that he who has healed him must be a God fearing man, one who does God’s will; he must be “from God,” otherwise God would never have given him power to make a blind man see (ix. 31-33). But this alone is not sufficient. Jesus asks him afterwards: “Dost thou believe in the Son of Man?” And when he replies, “And who is he, Lord, that I may believe in him?” Jesus says, “He that speaketh with thee is he.” And not until now is that point reached which was bound to be reached. The man exclaims, “Lord, I believe it,” and offers worship to Jesus (ix. 38). On the other hand, the only reason for the enmity existing between Jesus and his many opponents is that they have no faith in him. They reproach him for ascribing to himself a rank which he does not possess, that is to say, for making himself equal to God by calling Him his Father in the sense that he came from Him as a man comes from his human father (v. 18); and he, on his side, reproaches them for having an evil will and refusing to recognise his divine origin (v. 40; viii. 45 f.).

In the Synoptics also Jesus requires faith. He says to Jairus on their way to his daughter, whose death has just been announced to him, “Fear not, only believe” (Mk. v. 36). But the faith referred to here and nearly everywhere else in these Gospels relates only to Jesus power of doing a saving act which will result in some one being restored to health. We have an example of this when it is said so often at the conclusion of a story of healing: “Thy faith hath saved thee” (Mk, v. 34, &c.). This is something essentially different from the belief in Jn., that Jesus has come down from heaven to earth. In the Synoptics we might translate the word more appropriately “trust” instead of “faith,” whereas in the Fourth Gospel it is clear that this would be quite unsuitable. Moreover, according to the accounts in the Synoptics, Jesus hardly ever needs to ask for this trust in the way that he is continually obliged to in Jn.; it is offered to him spontaneously.

We have in fact unimpeachable evidence to show that when it was not cherished spontaneously, he never thought of asking people for it. When he came forward publicly in his native town, Nazareth, people scorned him because they knew whose son and brother he was, and he had to experience the truth that a prophet has no honour in his own country. Now we are further told in Mk. (vi. 5 f.): “And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk and healed them. And he marvelled because of their unbelief.” He could not! Here again we have a report like that about the sign of Jonah (see p. 21 f.). We may be quite sure that it would not have found a place in our Gospels, if it had not been made by one who had himself observed the fact, and been handed on without alteration. How unacceptable it must have been to those later chroniclers who were all, Mk. not excepted, convinced of the power of Jesus to work miracles, is shown by Mt., in which it reads thus (xiii. 58): “And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.”

In the Synoptics, in yet another sense Jesus asks for faith, even if the word “faith” does not occur. According to our way of expressing it, it is faith that he asks for when he says, for instance, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Mk. i. 17), or “Ye have heard that it was said to them of old . . . but I say to you . . .” (Mt. v. 21 f.). But again the faith here meant is not, as in Jn., faith in the fact of Jesus descent from heaven, but simply confidence in his knowledge of the right way that leads to salvation.

Quite different from the Synoptics then is the method of Jn. when he makes the person of Jesus and its divine origin the central feature in Jesus’ discourses. The language agrees fairly well with theirs when the Fourth Gospel also represents Jesus as requiring people to hear his words and to keep them (viii. 31, 51; cp. Mt. vii. 24; xxiv. 35); but what he asks of people in these words of his is not, as in the Synoptics, moral conduct, but acceptance as true of his assurance that he has come from heaven. This acceptance is even described as “the work “required by God (vi. 29). It is not a question of the kingdom of God and the way to reach it, but of Jesus person and the acknowledgment of his exalted nature. On one point certainly all the Gospels agree—in saying that love is the highest commandment (Mk. xii. 30 f.; Jn. xiii. 34 f.). The difference, however, is this, that, according to Jn., if love is not accompanied by this faith in the heavenly origin of Jesus, it can be of no value and can never be the path by which entrance is made into the kingdom of God. That is made quite clear by the saying of Jesus in Jn. (iii. 18): “He that believeth on him (the son of God) is not judged; he that believeth not hath been judged already, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God.”

In Jn. therefore Jesus knows of nothing more important than his own person; do people believe in its divine origin or not?—the answer to this question decides whether men are to be saved or lost for time and eternity. In the Synoptics he knows of something higher. He says in Mt. xii. 31 f.: “All sins and blasphemy will be forgiven to men, but blasphemy against the Spirit will not be for given. And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come.” Thus he regards his own person as subordinate to the Holy Spirit, or in other words to the sacred cause which he represents. And he must really have said this; for no one would have invented it. Indeed Mk., who in this passage (iii. 28 f.) by no means preserves the original language, has obviously changed it with a definite purpose. He has retained the phrase “Son of man,” but no longer uses it in such a way as to mean that the person of Jesus suffers the blasphemy; he applies it, in the plural, to the persons who utter it: “All their sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and their blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme; but whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness.”

12. MISUNDERSTANDINGS AS REGARDS JESUS’ DISCOURSES.

The large measure of uniformity in the discourses of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel means that these in themselves very soon reach their end. Nevertheless, some misunderstanding, on the part of his hearers, gives Jesus remarkably frequent occasion to prolong them. Sometimes indeed it is not surprising that his hearers do not understand him for example, when he tells them that he is the bread come down from heaven (vi. 41 f.), that he will give them his flesh to eat (vi. 52), that Abraham has already seen him (viii. 56 f.), etc.

In other passages, however, we are obliged to ask, on the contrary, whether the intelligence of his hearers could really have been so feeble. Nicodemus—to give a single instance—is said to have been a teacher in Israel (iii. 10), and yet he does not understand Jesus when he says, “whosoever is not born from above, cannot see the kingdom of God.” He asks in astonishment, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” (iii. 3 f.).

But perhaps we have not been fair to him. We have rendered the words of Jesus according to their real sense: from above, that is to say from God, must he be born, by God must he be destined and endowed, who is to have admittance into the kingdom of God. But the words admit of another translation: “If any one is not born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God.” This is evidently the meaning which Nicodemus attaches to the words when he puts his counter-question, and this, at least externally, is not so senseless. Such ambiguity in Jesus language is no accident; it occurs again on very many occasions. When, as we have just mentioned, Jesus promises to give bread or meat to his hearers, on first thoughts and until we have realised that there is a deeper meaning in the words, we cannot help thinking that he really means ordinary food. It is the same with the water, which, as he sits by a well, Jesus promises to give the woman of Samaria, and of which he says that, after tasting it, she will never thirst again (iv. 13-15); and other instances occur frequently (e.g., iv. 31-34; vii. 33-36; viii. 31-33; xi. 11-14; xii. 32-34). We see that it is a peculiarity of these discourses, that in them Jesus chooses an expression with more meanings than one, and thus intentionally provokes misunderstanding, in order that he may afterwards explain the matter more precisely.

But at the same time another purpose is served. How can Philip, who has spent two years with Jesus, desire him to show him the heavenly Father (xiv. 8 f .)? This seems inconceivable even if he did not understand the words spoken by Jesus immediately before: “If ye had known me, ye would have known my father also; from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.” But we ourselves are perhaps surprised at the further statement which Jesus makes in reply to Philip’s request, “Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” We ourselves might still have thought perhaps that the recognition of the Father, as Philip may be supposed to have reached it from his acquaintance with Jesus, consisted in gaining a true idea of God’s attributes, of His power, His wisdom, His goodness. Instead of this, however, Jesus thinks that we ought not to conceive of God here as a Being who has an existence independent of and separate from other beings, but ought to see Him presented to our objective vision in the person of Jesus himself. This in fact goes beyond all that we are accustomed to think we know about God. And so Philip’s misunderstanding—as well as many others in Jn.—serves the further purpose of revealing in a particularly clear manner, on the one hand the lack of intelligence on the part of Jesus’ hearers and even of his disciples, and on the other the infinite depth and unsuspected novelty of Jesus interpretations.

1. EARLIER ATTEMPTS TO RECONCILE THEM COMPLETELY.

This question was quite urgent in the days when people felt obliged to cherish the belief that every letter in Holy Scripture was dictated by the Holy Spirit. In those days it had to be answered in the affirmative at any cost. And, as a matter of fact, the cost was not light—it did not involve merely effort and ingenuity, but meant giving up what seems obvious when the Bible is understood in a natural and unsophisticated way. And yet the attempt to establish complete harmony between the four Gospels (or, as was thought, simply the art of exhibiting this harmony), the nature of which suggested the name “Harmonics,” was for many centuries one of the chief pursuits of theological science.

2. MODERN ATTEMPTS TO RECONCILE THEM APPROXIMATELY.

Present-day defenders of the trustworthiness of all the four Gospels are far more modest in the claims which they make. They quietly assume that one and the same event is meant, even where the accounts differ from one another rather widely; only they would rather not concede too much, and so they try as far as possible to represent the differences as being only slight. Naturally it is right for us always to test whether these are really as great as they seem at first sight to be. Where, however, this attempt is vain unless we seriously misinterpret the language, it is not only unfair, but is also nothing better than illogical. For if we are obliged to admit, and actually do admit, that there are many contradictions in the Bible, there is no point in insisting in the case of a limited number of these, that they are not really contradictions. If we admit—since Jesus was taken captive only on one occasion—that according to the Synoptics Judas betrayed him by a kiss, and according to Jn. did not betray him in this way (xviii. 4-6), what is the use, when we turn to the expulsion of the dealers from the fore-court of the Temple, of denying that either the Synoptists or Jn. must have made a mistake, and of preferring to suppose that there were two such acts, one at the beginning of his ministry (Jn. ii. 13-22), the other at the end of it (Mk. xi. 15-18)? If this were so, why did Jesus omit to drive the dealers and money-changers from the temple court on his other visits to Jerusalem as well? Are we to suppose that they were not stationed there on these occasions? And why on the first occasion did he escape scot free, whereas on the second he suffered death in consequence?

3. USE OF THE SYNOPTICS BY JN.

We may set aside such palpably impossible attempts to deny that there are contradictions between the Synoptics and Jn., and give attention to such as are really worth discussing. But before we do this, it should be said that it is almost universally agreed that the author of the Fourth Gospel had the other three before him when he wrote.

To prove this we are not of course at liberty to cite at our pleasure all kinds of things in which Jn. agrees with them, for these he might himself have noted as an eye witness. We must specify passages which he would not certainly have written, if he had not derived them from the Synoptics. Thus, for example, it is very remarkable that Jesus ascends the mountain before the Feeding of the Five Thousand (Jn. vi. 3) and ascends the mountain after it (vi. 15), though we have not been told in the meantime that he came down, or been given any clue that would lead us to conjecture that he did so. The matter admits of a simple explanation: when the author was about to relate the beginning of the Feeding, he had before him the beginning of the second Feeding in Mt. (xv. 29), “and he went up into the mountain and sat there.” He tells us almost word for word: “And Jesus went up into the mountain, and there he sat with his disciples.” At the second place, however, when he was about to pass from the Feeding to Jesus’ walking on the sea (vi. 15) he remembered that Mk. and Mt., in their first story of the Feeding, said that between the two acts Jesus ascended the mountain (his language agrees very closely with Mt. xiv. 23), and so he added this and overlooked the fact that he had said nothing about Jesus coming down. For another example see xx. 2 (chap. iii., 26). In i. 15, in the words, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He that cometh after me is become before me,’” the Baptist actually recalls something he has said about Jesus at an earlier date, but which is not found in the Fourth Gospel but only in the Synoptics Mt. iii. 11), though there the language and meaning are different.

4. Is JN.’S PURPOSE SIMPLY TO SUPPLEMENT AND CORRECT?

But why does Jn. differ so often from the Synoptics, if he was acquainted with their books? The most important attempt to explain this consists in saying that his purpose throughout his book is to supplement the story of his predecessors and, where in small matters this was inexact, to correct it. This theory therefore presupposes further that he was himself present at the events described, and was entitled to think that wherever he made additions and corrections he was justified in doing so. Whether this is confirmed is a question we shall soon have to investigate more closely. We leave it for the present and simply ask, Can this double purpose, which is ascribed to him, be discovered at all in his book? As regards this intention to make corrections, it is certainly not easy to recognise it, for the author nowhere says: the matter was not thus, but thus. If then he made corrections, he must have made them quite quietly out of respect for his predecessors.

We prefer, therefore, in the first instance, to consider the question: Does he wish merely to give facts which are supplementary? In the case of the narratives which are peculiar to him, this would be conceivable, as well as in the case of the expulsion of the dealers from the fore-court of the Temple, if such an event really took place at the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. But in Jn. we find again a number of stories given by the Synoptics, in which the idea cannot possibly be that the events happened a second time, and not merely on one occasion as the Synoptics state. We need only mention the Feeding of the Five Thousand, the walking on the sea and the entrance into Jerusalem (vi. 1-15, 16-21; xii. 12-16). It might really be thought in the case of the second of these stories that the idea of correcting was the ruling purpose; Jn., in opposition to the story of the Synoptics which says that Jesus was taken into the boat in the middle of the sea, wishes, as an eye witness, to insist that this was not so, since Jesus crossed the lake from one shore to the other. But it is really hard to discover what correction he means to make in his description of the entry into Jerusalem, or, in particular, in that of the Feeding of the Five Thousand; and this is sufficient to show that the whole idea that Jn.’s purpose is always either to supplement or correct is untenable. If, on the other hand, certain concessions are made, and it is claimed that he only meant to do this now arid then, the whole explanation of the passages in which he differs from the Synoptics would have no value; for in the case of a considerable number of sections in his book the question why he introduced them would still be left unexplained.

5. JN.’S PURPOSE NOT MERELY TO SUPPLEMENT AND CORRECT.

But let us see rather more exactly how in detail people think of the author as carrying out his purpose of supplementing and correcting the Synoptics. Here special importance may be attached to his statement that some time after Jesus’ public appearance John the Baptist was still baptizing and that Jesus was doing so too, and to the addition, “for John was not yet imprisoned” (iii. 22-24). In the Synoptics (Mk. i. 14), Jesus does not come forward publicly until after the imprisonment of the Baptist. Consequently the remark in Jn. which contradicts this might easily be due in this instance to his purpose of making a correction. If this were so, Jn. is aware, as the Synoptics are not, that Jesus started a public mission while the Baptist was still at work. And here we should have the explanation of the fact that he adds so much which these omit: all this really happened before the arrest of the Baptist, with which in the Synoptics the story of Jesus work begins.

All? Strictly speaking, as a matter of fact, everything that Jn. reports; for he never mentions a point at which the Baptist was imprisoned. But this view of the matter would be quite impossible; for in the expression “not yet taken” Jn. betrays the fact that he knew very well of the arrest of the Baptist, and thinks of it as happening during the public ministry of Jesus. But when? Before v. 35 (“he was the lamp”) and certainly before the Feeding of the Five Thousand and Jesus’ walking on the sea (Jn. vi. 1-21), of which the Synoptics do not speak until long after the imprisonment of the Baptist—unless we were to adopt the quite untenable assumption (see p. 48) that Jn. in these two stories is thinking of two events quite different from those the Synoptics have in mind. But we find afterwards in Jn. (chap. vii.-xi.) Jesus appearing in Jerusalem at the Feast of Tabernacles, the cure of the man born blind, Jesus appearing at the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple, and the raising of Lazarus—all things about which the Synoptics say nothing, and which, nevertheless, are so extremely important, that their silence about them is quite inexplicable. In all these cases it does not help us at all to be told that Jn. merely wished to supply facts as to what happened before the imprisonment of the Baptist.

At the best, therefore, the assumption could be used for the events which Jn. narrates in chapters ii.-v. But before we adopt it, we shall do well once more to examine closely the passage on which it is based. “Jesus baptized,” we are told in Jn. iii. 22 (26; iv. 1). And in iv. 2 we read “and yet Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples.” What would a writer, who was anxious to report nothing false, have done when he noticed afterwards that this had happened? We may be sure that he would afterwards have deleted the error in the earlier passage, instead of allowing it to stand and appending the confession that he had made a mistake. Here we can see the peculiar character of the Fourth Evangelist. He is not an author who is anxious to report nothing false; where it suits his purpose, he reports it.

And here in fact it suits his purpose very well. It is only the statement, that Jesus baptized, and did so while John was still at work, that enables him to represent the interesting situation in which the number of the followers of the Baptist is becoming smaller and smaller, and that of the followers of Jesus growing larger and larger. And this is one of Jn.’s chief aims. “He must increase, but I must decrease” (iii. 30): with these words the Baptist himself is made to write the legend to this little picture, which is really sketched very gracefully. In order to do so, the author adds a touch which, in reality, as he himself knows, does not at all harmonise with the truth.

Only one? Of course the picture includes that other feature we have mentioned; John the Baptist is still at large. Must we see in this a correct addition, a correction made by an eye-witness when the same “eye-witness” in another verse not far off has told us with equal precision something which on his own admission is not true? Must we base upon this our idea of the purpose of correction which he followed throughout his book? A different idea of his purpose has resulted, with an incomparably greater amount of probability, from this very example; he wishes to be not a reporter who is to be taken at his word, but a painter; a painter of vivid scenes designed to make clear and impressive a higher truth—in the present instance the truth that John was only the forerunner of Jesus, and had to take an entirely subordinate place, in fact does so of his own free will. And if we now ask again, how long the Evangelist imagines the Baptist to be still at large while Jesus is at work, the only answer can be: merely for this particular scene, and not for those that follow. Once his retirement before Jesus has been described, the Baptist is so unimportant to Jn. that he does not think his arrest worth reporting. Indeed, even in the case of preceding events (the marriage at Cana, the expulsion of the dealers from the fore-court of the Temple, the conversation with Nicodemus), he seems to have hardly thought that they occurred while the Baptist was still at large.

But the theory that Jn. wishes to supplement the Synoptics by giving the earliest events in the public life of Jesus is overthrown by what we are told as regards the discourses of Jesus, when it is presupposed that these also served the purpose of supplementing the Synoptics. If Jesus be supposed to have spoken in both ways—as he is represented as doing in the Synoptics and as Jn. makes him do—it cannot be imagined that the style met with in Jn. was the earlier. We are told on the contrary that Jn. preserves the manner of speech in which Jesus addressed his disciples in his last days, after he had finished his ministry amongst the people, which latter is reflected in his discourses in the Synoptics. This statement might seem worth considering if the discourses of Jesus preserved to us in Jn. were solely farewell ad dresses to his disciples during his last days, like those in chapters xiii.-xvii. But, as a matter of fact, Jn. represents Jesus as speaking from the very beginning in the same style as in these farewell discourses. To sum up, in the events which he describes, Jn. is supposed to take us back to the earliest days, and in the discourses which Jesus delivered at these, the earliest events in his public career, this same author Jn. is supposed to preserve the tone in which Jesus spoke during the last weeks of his life. Both assumptions are necessary if we are to insist that Jn. wishes to supplement and correct the Synoptics. And yet one of the two assumptions annuls the other.

6. ARE SEVERAL JOURNEYS OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM PRESUPPOSED IN MT. xxiii. 37?

But an attempt is made in another way to show that Jn. could not really be in conflict with his predecessors. Those who make it find in the Synoptics themselves passages here and there which confirm, as they think, the story of Jn. In particular, several journeys of Jesus to Jerusalem, connected with a public appearance there, are, they say, presupposed when Jesus says in Mt. (xxiii. 37): “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not.” The inference really appears to be unavoidable. The only remarkable thing is that the Synoptists themselves have not drawn it. If they themselves really suggest that Jesus came forward so often in Jerusalem, why do they not only tell us nothing about this, but represent things as if when he made this utterance he had come to Jerusalem for the first time to counsel and admonish. Thus those who refer to this utterance as a corroboration of the story of Jn. are producing a greater puzzle as regards the Synoptists, who likewise claim that their story has a right to be regarded as correct. So that before we attach such great importance to the utterance in question, we prefer to examine it again more closely.

When we do this, it is clear in the very first instance that it does not read as people think it does, and in the way in which we have rendered it above, intentionally following the general practice, in order to show what mistakes one is liable to make when one follows a popular custom. In reality—and in Lk. (xiii. 34) exactly as in Mt.—it reads: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that kills the prophets and stones them that are sent unto her, how often would I have gathered thy children,” &c. Jerusalem is therefore apostrophised only in the second half of the sentence; in the first something is said about the city without the city itself being addressed. No one who has a thought clearly in his mind, and intends to write it down in an equally simple sentence, would express himself in this way.

On the other hand, the remarkable form of the sentence would be quite intelligible if our Evangelists, Mt. and Lk., or rather the earlier writer from whom they both draw,The truth of the theory that they had the work of an earlier writer before them has been fully demonstrated. Cp. Wernle, Die Quellen des Lelens Jesu, pp. 70-7-4 (in the Religionsgeschichtlichen Volksbücher; Engl. trans, pp. 131-139). used a book in which the sentence about Jerusalem appeared without any apostrophe; and if they or he proceeded to introduce the apostrophe without noticing that, having made this alteration, the sentence should have been made to read differently at the beginning. And this is not a mere conjecture; we have, in addition, a clue which indicates the kind of book it may have been. In Mt., that is to say, the utterance immediately follows another (xxiii. 34-36) to this effect: “Therefore, behold, I send unto you prophets, and wise men, and scribes; some of them shall ye kill and crucify, and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and persecute from city to city,” &c. Lk. gives this utterance in xi. 49-51, keeping the continuation about Jerusalem—quoted above—for chap. xiii. of his book. But this earlier utterance in Lk. not only dispenses with the apostrophe, as the beginning of the continuation about Jerusalem does—“I will send unto them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall kill and persecute,” &c.—but—and this is the chief point it is preceded by the introductory words: u There fore also said the wisdom of God.”

The Wisdom of God is represented in several books of the Old Testament as a person who takes up the word (Prov. viii. f., Ecclus. xxiv.), or is found as the title of a book (Wisdom of Solomon; Wisdom of Jesus, son of Sirach). The saying under consideration is not found in any of these books. But it is clear that it cannot have been framed for the first time by Jesus. In what precedes Jesus is addressing the Pharisees. He could not, therefore, as he does in Lk., suddenly continue, “therefore also said the wisdom of God,” unless what now follows is a saying which was already well known. But this is clear from the version in Mt. as well, though here the introductory formula is wanting. Jesus cannot have said of himself, as Mt. makes him say, “I send to you prophets and wise men and Scribes,” for he never did this, and at least would never have sent Scribes, whose attitude towards him was so unfriendly. Lk. knew very well what he was doing, when he substituted “Prophets and Apostles”; for Jesus could really send Apostles and (New Testament) Prophets. In this description of the persons sent, Mt. therefore has, we may be sure, preserved the more original version, but in the introductory formula it is Lk. who has done so. In Mt. the only remaining clue to the fact that his predecessor had before him a book in which this introductory formula stood is the word “therefore.”

But what kind of book was it? If the Scribes were mentioned amongst those men who were sent by God to the people, it was the work of a pious Jew who reproached his people for being stiff-necked, and was anxious to induce them to repent. Whether it had the title “Wisdom”—perhaps with some addition—or whether Wisdom was simply represented as speaking in it, we do not know. From this book, according to the story of the predecessor of our Mt. and Lk., Jesus quoted a passage in support of his own words in which he warned the Pharisees that they would be punished. In this way it is still used in Lk. Mt., on the other hand, has wrongly understood it and introduced it in such a way that Jesus uses the words as his own, and Lk. also, as regards the utterance about Jerusalem, shares the misunderstanding. Thus it was the Wisdom of God which said that it had often wished to gather together Jerusalem’s children, as a hen gathers her chickens. This it had actually done by sending prophets and wise men and Scribes. It is not Jesus who says he has done this. Thus the whole confirmation of Jn.’s story of many visits of Jesus to Jerusalem rests solely on the fact that an utterance put into the mouth of the Wisdom of God by a Jewish author has been wrongly regarded as a saying of Jesus. And now we understand also why the Synoptics, in spite of this “saying of Jesus” in which he says how often he has concerned himself about Jerusalem, had no information about these labours.

7. IS JESUS’ RELATIONSHIP TO GOD IN MT. xi. 27 THE SAME AS IN JN.?

It would be still more important if we could find a second passage in the Synoptics fitted to confirm the story of Jn. We mean such confirmation as would relate not merely to one particular point, such as the journeys of Jesus to Jerusalem, but to the whole character of Jesus’ discourses. We have in mind Mt. xi. 27: “All things have been delivered unto me of my Father, and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither (doth any know) the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.” These words seem certainly to be spoken quite in the spirit of the Fourth Gospel, which in x. 14 f., for instance, says (“I am the good shepherd; and I know mine own, and mine own know me), even as the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father.” In Jn. this mutual knowledge must be understood in the sense that Jesus had from eternity existed with God in heaven before he came down to earth.

Now it is certainly remarkable that in the Synoptics only this one saying can be found which gives expression to this thought, and might be compared to the discourses of Jesus in Jn. If, as is claimed, it really implies confirmation of these, again all that we get is a new puzzle as regards the Synoptics: why in these does Jesus not speak in this way more often, instead of talking everywhere else in such an entirely different way? This consideration obliges us to re-examine the utterance more closely.

This also originally read quite differently. All ecclesiastical and heretical writers of the second century, who give us any information about this passage, entirely or in part support the following version: “All things have been delivered unto me of my Father, and no one hath known the Father, save the Son, neither the Son save the Father, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him.”

Even the Church Father, Irenaeus, about A.D. 185, who warmly upbraids a Christian sect for making use of this version, follows it several times in his writings; it must therefore have really been found in his own Bible. As compared with it, the version which we now have in the Bible cannot under any circumstances claim the preference. It is true that our oldest copies of the Bible contain it, but they are about two centuries later than the authorities we have mentioned. And no plausible reason can be given why the version current in the second century should be due to a deliberate change on the part of a Christian sect; on the other hand, since the one form must have arisen through an alteration of the other, it is very conceivable that it is the text in our present Bible which has resulted from a change, because, we may suppose, the writer was anxious to make the language resemble more closely Jesus style of preaching in Jn.

Is the difference so great then? At first sight it might seem slight. But that is a very wrong impression. While we read, “No one knoweth the Son . . . the Father,” a mutual knowledge from eternity may be meant, and, as we said just now, this is one of the ideas of the Fourth Gospel. When, however, we read, “no one hath known,” a definite point of time is fixed at which the knowledge first began; and when Jesus goes on to say of himself, “no one has known the Father but the Son,” it is clear that the knowledge of the Father cannot have commenced before some definite date in his earthly life, since the Synoptics are not aware that Jesus existed in heaven before he lived on earth. Nevertheless, if the words in the first place were, “no one hath known the Son save the Father,” it would still be possible that at any rate the knowledge on the part of God was present from eternity, and this would be in agreement with the style of thought in the Fourth Gospel. But a second important peculiarity in the oldest version is found in this very fact that the first place is assigned to the clause, “No one hath known the Father save the Son,” and that the other clause follows, “No one hath known the Son, save the Father.” And since the knowledge spoken of first was not gained earlier than during the earthly life of Jesus, we cannot suppose that the knowledge referred to in the second clause belongs to an earlier date.

The meaning is really quite simple: Jesus alone has acquired the knowledge that God is not a Lord who is jealous for his own honour, and cannot be approached by men, but is a loving Father. This of itself means that he can feel himself to be a son of God. It is a feeling of his own, however, which no one so far has realised—none of his hearers, but God alone. This second part of the thought is very well expressed in Lk. (x. 22) by the clause: “no one knows (more correctly, has known) who the son is,” that is to say, that I am he. Finally, with this agrees very well the conclusion in Mt. and Lk., “and to whom the son will reveal it.” In the usual version of the saying, the immediately preceding words are: “no one knows the Father, but the son.” What the latter will reveal is thus the deeper nature of God, and, understood in the spirit of the Fourth Gospel, the meaning might be that Jesus acquired the knowledge during his pre-existence in heaven. But, according to the correct version, the immediately preceding words are, “no one has known the son, but the Father,” and here the following words mean, “and he to whom I myself am willing to reveal that I am that son; you have all failed as yet to recognise this, I myself must tell you of it.”

Strictly speaking, when the knowledge that God is the Father dawns upon any man, he can feel that he himself is His son; this knowledge Jesus wished to bring to all, and said, “blessed are the peace-makers, for they shall be called the sons of God,” “love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you, that ye may be sons of your Father which is in heaven” (Mt. v. 9, 44 f.). He used the expression “sons of God,” and so the same expression as he applied to himself. Instead of this, Jn. continually uses of men—and he is the first to do so—the phrase “children of God,” reserving the expression “Son of God” for Jesus alone, and Luther, without any justification, has used it also in Mt. and in other places where the original has “sons.”Paul interchanges “sons” and “children” without any distinction. Luther renders only the Singular by “son” (Heb. xii. 5-7; Rev. xxi. 7), the Plural by “sons” only in the phrase “sons and daughters” (2 Cor. vi. 18). In Gal. iv. 7 he arbitrarily changes the Singular into the Plural in order to be able to use the term “children.” The Authorised English Version has, like Luther, son for the Singular, but also in Gal. iv. 7. For the Plural it has in half the cases sons (Rom. viii. 14, 19; Gal. iv. 6; Heb. ii. 10, xii. 7 f.; besides 2 Cor. vi. 18), but in the other half, like Luther, children (Mt. v. 9, 45; Lk. vi. 35, xx. 36; Rom. ix. 26; Gal. iii. 26; Heb. xii. 5). The Revised Version everywhere translates correctly son or sons. It is quite clear that, in view of what we have said, Jesus cannot have called himself Son of God in a sense that only applies to himself, on the ground, for instance, that he proceeded from God in a manner different from that in which human beings come into existence at their birth; he can only have done so in a sense in which all men can become what he was, that is to say, sons of God who are equally ready to obey absolutely the Father in heaven, but at the same time rely upon His love, just as a human son relies upon the love of his human father. If we of to-day wish to express the sense in which Jesus called himself Son of God in a way that cannot be misunderstood, we must do the reverse of what Jn. has done—use the other expression and say that Jesus felt himself to be a child of God.

Turning again to Mt. xi. 27, we must remember that at this time Jesus alone possessed the knowledge that God is a loving Father. This made him singular and raised him above other men. Thus the thought of being God’s son made him feel in addition that he was sent by God to reveal this knowledge to his brethren. This is the meaning of the initial words of the saying: “all things have been delivered to me of my Father.” It does not imply any super human power, as in the saying (which, it is almost generally agreed, was not spoken by Jesus), “all power is given to me in heaven and upon earth” (Mt. xxviii. 18). Here the word “power” does occur in the passage, but not in the text under consideration. What is delivered to Jesus, in our passage, we must gather simply from the context; on the evidence of the saying itself, it is the knowledge that we can regard God as our Father. In agreement with this is the fact that according to xi. 25 it must be something which was hidden from the wise and revealed to the simple, and according to xi. 28-30 something which was quite different from the yoke of the Jewish Law under which the weary and heavy-laden groaned, while Jesus yoke was easy and his burden light, and was able to refresh the soul because it consisted simply in doing the will of God gladly and in relying upon His love.

Are all these thoughts similar to those found in the Fourth Gospel? Far from it. On the contrary, no utterance harmonises with the spirit of Jesus’ discourses in the Synoptics so well as the one we have been considering if we hold fast to its original language. In fact, it is precisely this that enables us for the first time to under stand fully how Jesus came to be what he was according to the Synoptics; at first he was quite simply a man who in the course of his mental development realised that he had a Father in heaven; next he became one who felt himself called by this Father of his to be a leader, sent to the people, because he found that he stood quite alone in having this knowledge, and yet could not be silent about it; and from this it was easy to take a further step and to feel obliged to regard himself as that highest messenger sent by God, whom his people and his age thought of as the one who had been long promised, as the Messiah.

8. INACCURATE RECOLLECTION ON THE PART OF THE APOSTLE JOHN?

What remains, if we still wish to maintain that the Fourth Gospel is in agreement with the first three? If we disregard various other expedients, which are far less likely to be satisfactory than those we have already discussed, there is only one left. We are told by the Church Fathers that at the end of the first century the Apostle John was still living. This being so, it is eagerly assumed that he did not write his gospel until shortly before his death. And whereas his great age obscured his recollection of many matters in the life of Jesus, he remembered other things quite correctly. This explains, it is said, how it is that his book, apart from much that is incorrect, contains much that serves to correct the story of the Synoptics.

In itself this assumption has nothing impossible about it; if indeed it could be accepted that the Gospel was composed by the apostle and in his old age, this theory might be deemed fairly probable. Since, however, we must first examine the two presuppositions on which it is based, let us at the outset put the simple question, What would the result be? At least not this—that Jn., as compared with the Synoptics, must always be regarded as everywhere right. This particular idea therefore is abandoned as being untenable. To what extent is he right then? To suit the real desire of those who put forward this theory, he is right on as many points as possible. For the main purpose of these people is to support the idea that we have in Jn. the work of an eye-witness of the life of Jesus. But when we examine the matter more closely, his trustworthiness is abandoned on one point after another, because, however much we may wish to believe in it, it cannot be maintained.

In particular, as regards the discourses of Jesus, it is more and more generally conceded that it was the aged John who first conceived them in the style in which they appear in the Fourth Gospel. His conception of Jesus changed in the course of his long life, and as these new ideas took shape his recollection of the discourses of Jesus altered as well. If this were assumed to a moderate extent, it might seem conceivable; but people would never have jumped at so doubtful an expedient, unless the difference between Jn.’s style of discourse and the other style, which may really be accepted as original, were very marked indeed.

Thus the result of emphasising the great age of John is really the opposite of what was intended. The desire was simply to defend the trustworthiness of the Fourth Gospel as against the Synoptics, and yet the would-be defenders are obliged in a clear, if rather veiled, manner to admit that on most points he is untrustworthy.

We have now come to the end of the attempts to reconcile the accounts of the life of Jesus in the Synoptics and in Jn. In conclusion, we can only say that we sincerely pity any one who engages in this labour. If on many particular points his efforts seem to be really satisfactory to him, he can never rejoice at his success; for he has no sooner shown that it is not absolutely impossible to reconcile some new little circumstance in Jn. with the Synoptics than a whole series of others come to light which defy every attempt at reconciliation.

1. REASONS FOR FAVOURING JN.

Beyond question there are people who think such a picture of Jesus as the Fourth Gospel gives not merely beautiful in the sense in which even a fairy-tale may be felt to be beautiful, but also more trustworthy than that of the Synoptics. They are not concerned to find Jesus humanly intelligible in his whole character; on the contrary, the less human it is, the truer does it seem to them to be. It is not merely that they want one who can do the greatest miracles, but they really think it a most likely thing that, when the time was fulfilled, God would have caused exactly such a Saviour to appear. They are not disturbed when they find that Jesus’ enemies, in spite of all their efforts, never succeeded in overpowering him, and think it quite natural that the attempts did not succeed because God tied their hands. It does not surprise them that Jesus spoke to the people about his coming from heaven in a way that they could not under stand at all; were his teaching intelligible, it seems to them it would not have been so sublime as it must certainly have been. Taking examples from history, we will only add that Clement of Alexandria as early as about A.D. 200 called the Gospel of John the pneumatic Gospel, that Luther called it the true, unique, tender Gospel of Gospels, and that Schleiermacher (ob. 1834) ranked it high above the Synoptics.

We have no idea of arguing with people who feel in this way. We do not wish to destroy their idea; we respect it. One thing, however, they cannot expect us to attribute to them—we mean, the historical sense. Every one who has had much to do with history knows that, to understand events and characters, it is of the first importance to look for such explanations as suggest themselves to us from experience of other human happenings. There will always be points which we cannot clear up in this way. But every student of history knows that he would be defeating his own purpose if he were to set aside those obvious explanations which hold good again and again in all human experience and were to try to put in place of them indefinite and unusual explanations, such as a miracle, a direct intervention on the part of God. In other branches of history, even those people whom we have described above carefully avoid this; it is only in the field of “sacred” history that they prefer the dark to the clear, the inconceivable to the conceivable, the miraculous to the natural.

2. PREFERENCE FOR THE SYNOPTICS ON THE WHOLE.

When we address our question, Do the Synoptics or Jn. deserve the preference? to those who do not care to make such a distinction between “sacred” and ordinary human history, who, though they are quite prepared to find in the history of Jesus and especially in his inmost character much that is unfathomable, would like even here to see as much that is clear and humanly intelligible as it is possible to see, we are almost inclined to conjecture that the decision has already been made. Much as we have tried, in enumerating the distinctions between the two stories of the life of Jesus, to make the facts alone speak, we could not help it if these made the scale turn in favour of the Synoptics: and the review of the attempts which have been made to reconcile the two accounts could hardly fail to strengthen this impression.

Our task is now therefore merely to sum up the matter as briefly as possible, and then to give a rather more detailed treatment of some further points in which the trustworthiness of Jn. really needs to be more thoroughly investigated or in which it is still necessary to explain how it is that Jn. has come to make statements differing so widely from the truth. When we do this it will be time to say plainly what we think of these statements, whereas so far we have refrained from doing so, and have faithfully followed our purpose of giving in the first instance only the facts (p. 4).

3. INFLUENCE OF JESUS WITH HIS HEARERS.

Which is more likely—that Jesus came into contact with all sorts and conditions of men amongst his people and achieved successes of every kind, or that he had to deal almost entirely and without distinction with the “Jews” in a body? Which is more likely that he often had an enthusiastic reception, or that the Jews, in a compact body, refused to believe in him? It is said in Jn. often enough that “many” believed in him on this or that occasion (ii. 23; vii. 31; viii. 30; x. 42, &c.). This, however, should not deceive us as to the fact, that as a general result the Jews do not believe. When a certain number believe, this always (apart from x. 42) gives rise to a division among Jesus’ hearers, and if that had not happened, Jesus would never have been led to speak such words as “if a man keep my word, he shall never see death” (viii. 51) and the like, which Jn. is determined to record. But the belief has no permanent result, for when Jesus delivers his farewell discourses (chaps. xiii.-xvii.), only the little band of his intimate disciples is represented as being still true to him; all those who have believed only for a time are referred to in the saying: “But Jesus did not trust himself unto them, for that he knew all men” (ii. 24); in other words, he knew that in the end these—all of them—would join in the cry, “Crucify him, crucify him” (xix. 6, 15).

4. COURSE OF JESUS’ PUBLIC WORK.

But if from the first Jesus really met with so much hostility, how are we to understand why he was so long allowed such freedom? Is it conceivable that, after driving the dealers from the fore-court of the Temple, and supposing that it took place at the beginning of his visits to Jerusalem, he could have continued to work for two years unmolested? In Galilee, it would be easier to think this; it is not so easy to imagine that he could have done so under the eyes of the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem, where, according to Jn., he stayed with few exceptions. The excuse that “his hour was not yet come” (vii. 30; viii. 20), is one which, having regard to all we know from the rest of human history, should be characterised as quite unsatisfactory.

5. JESUS’ STYLE OF SPEAKING.

But if Jesus really met with a friendly reception and had a following, especially amongst the humble and oppressed members of his race—and no one would like to give up the idea that he had—which is the more likely, that this success was due to the style of addresses the Synoptics describe him as giving to the people or to that which Jn. describes? In the Synoptics he really lifts from the people the heavy yoke of the Old Testament law with its thousand impossible precepts, and substitutes the light yoke of a free, childlike obedience to the simple command to love God and one’s neighbour; in Jn., instead of this, we find nothing but an incessant command, supported by bare assurances and awe-inspiring miracles, to believe in him and his coming from heaven. It was really difficult for a soul in anguish to derive any comfort from it. There is certainly nothing more touching to such a soul known to any one—not even to the worshippers of the Jesus of the Fourth Gospel—than the parable of the Prodigal Son (Lk. xv. 11-32), whom the father, in spite of his great fault, goes forth to meet and embrace when he comes back penitent to his old home. This parable, with those of the Good Samaritan (Lk. x. 25-37), of the cruel and wicked servant (Mt. xviii. 23-35), of the Pharisee and the Publican (Lk. xviii. 9-14), and all the others, so helpful and dear to us as precious and living examples of a simple piety which at once touches the heart, we seek for in vain in the “true, unique, tender Gospel of Gospels”—and not because they are already found in the Synoptics and must not be repeated, but because they do not illustrate the only matter about which the Jesus of Jn. is permitted to speak, his divine majesty.

6. MISUNDERSTANDINGS AS REGARDS JESUS’ DISCOURSES.

We have reached a point at which we may also say that it is not the hearers of Jesus who are to be accused of having seriously misunderstood his discourses, and that it was not Jesus who intentionally provoked the misunderstandings. The author himself inserts in Jesus’ discourses, when they have, as a matter of fact, already reached their end, some expression having more meanings than one, in order that he may proceed to tell us how, when the hearers of Jesus understood him in an external, material sense, he explained his deeper, spiritual meaning, and in so doing brought to light on the one hand a want of intelligence on the part of the people, and even of the disciples, and on the other the unsuspected profundity of his own disclosures. These misunderstandings are not therefore the reminiscences of an eye-witness, but a device employed by the author.

7. REPETITIONS IN JESUS’ DISCOURSES.

When we consider further how limited a number of ideas are continually repeated in these discourses in a way which is felt to be quite monotonous and tedious even by very many of those who regard the Fourth Gospel with a kind of awe, we wonder the more how Jesus could have gone on talking in this way for two years without being left with no one at all to listen to him.

But we have still to add something which has not so far been mentioned: in Jn. Jesus continues a discourse even when in the meantime a series of events have happened, and when of course the audience has changed. He says, for example, at the Feast of the Dedication of the Temple (x. 26; cp. 22), “But ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep,” and then proceeds to enlarge upon the idea of the sheep, just as he has done on an earlier and quite different occasion (x. 3, 10 f., 14). On another occasion, at the Feast of Tabernacles (vii. 23; cp. 2) he says, “are ye wroth with me, because I made a man every whit whole on the Sabbath? “Now the only act of the kind which has been mentioned so far is the healing of the sick man at Bethesda (v. 1-16) which took place at an earlier, but not definitely distinguished, “feast of the Jews.” Since this, according to Jn., Jesus fed the Five Thousand at the Passover Feast in Galilee (vi. 4), and the interval between this and the Feast of Tabernacles would amount to another six months.

8. LEAVES IN JN. WRONGLY ARRANGED

That, in spite of this, he should speak as if the healing at Bethesda had only just happened is so striking as to have given rise to the theory that the page which contained this continuation of the discourse got shifted in Jn.’s manuscript or in one of the oldest copies of it, from its proper place in the book, and was reinserted in a wrong place farther back. This is not in itself impossible; indeed, the existence of this kind of mistake in several ancient books has been made so probable that there can no longer be any question about it. Of course, if it occurred here, both the first words and the last in the wrongly inserted leaf must have caused some disturbance in the context of the book, and in the place where the leaf originally stood a lacuna in the narrative, as we have it, would be noticeable. But there is nothing of this in the passage under consideration; and, apart from this, there are very many other passages, in which, because the order of events is unlikely, or because the order in the Gospel of Jn. does not agree with that of the Synoptics, one would like to suppose that a leaf has been misplaced in some such manner. We wish any one who proposes by such expedients to bring the Fourth Gospel into good order and into agreement with the Synoptics a long life, but his labour is one which will never suffice for his task.

9. CARELESS DESCRIPTION IN JN.

The matter is much simpler. As we found in the case of the misunderstandings, it is not Jesus but the Evangelist who enlarges upon the ideas and spins out the discourses. He imagines Jesus as having always the same hearers, because he has no real recollection of actual cases in which Jesus confronted the people. It is his fault, and not the fault of Jesus, that no account is taken of the intervals which must have elapsed between two of Jesus utterances which could not have been so close together in actual life as they are on paper.

This explains further how it is that the discourses of Jesus and the remarks of the Evangelist himself are often so much alike that the one might be taken for the other—they are even amalgamated with the discourses of the Baptist. In the midst of one of these a number of utterances begins in iii. 31, of a kind that only Jesus himself makes elsewhere in the Fourth Gospel, and yet it is not said that Jesus is the speaker. The expositors are therefore quite at a loss to know whether to ascribe them to the Baptist or to regard them as remarks of the Evangelist himself. Even the well-known saying, “And this is life eternal, that they should know thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ,” is in Jn. (xvii. 3) an utterance made by Jesus himself, though, were it his, he would surely have said, “and know me whom thou hast sent,” especially as he is using the words in a prayer addressed to God.

In these cases there is certainly a considerable amount of carelessness on the part of the Evangelist. But the most friendly critic cannot deny that there is evidence of it in other places as well. At the beginning of the story of the raising of Lazarus, Jn. mentions (xi. 1 f.) Lazarus sisters Martha and Mary, and adds: “And it was that Mary which anointed the Lord with ointment, and wiped his feet with her hair.” We ask in vain where Jn. has already narrated this. There would perhaps be some excuse—though it would still be strange—if he thought he might refer to Mary in this way because the description of the anointing was known to his readers from the older Gospels (cp. i. 15, p. 52). In that case his purpose would be to add, as a new point, that the woman who is mentioned in the Synoptics but is not named was no other than this same Mary. But we do not find in any of the Synoptics what seems to be recalled here. According to Mk. (xiv. 3) and Mt. (xxvi. 7), a woman in Bethany, near Jerusalem, pours the contents of a flask of precious nard, having according to Mk. broken it for the purpose, on Jesus head. According to Lk. (vii. 37 f.), when Jesus was invited in Galilee to sup at the house of a Pharisee, a sinful woman of the town moistened his feet with her tears, dried them with her hair, kissed them, and anointed them with ointment. Which of these accounts does Jn. wish to recall to us? Neither meets the case. On the other hand, the puzzle is solved at once when we reach the 12th chapter of his own Gospel. Here in v. 3 we are told for the first time something which is already referred to in chap. xi. as a past event (see further, below pp. 81-83). Here Jn. tells us distinctly that what is narrated in the 12th chapter happened later than what he has reported in the 11th chapter. If a modern writer were to tell us something like this, we should think ourselves badly treated, and would not easily forgive him.

10. COLOURLESS DESCRIPTIONS IN JN.

Further, in how colourless a way many of the scenes in Jn. are sketched! Certain Greeks come (xii. 20) to Jerusalem for the Passover Feast and wish to see Jesus. They apply to Philip; he tells Andrew, and both inform Jesus. Up to this point every word suggests that we are dealing with an eye-witness, so precise is every statement. And then? “But Jesus answered them” (i.e. the two disciples), “the hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified,” &c. He makes a reference to his impending death, to which he cheerfully reconciles himself. Whether the Greeks were admitted to see him, what they said, what Jesus said to them—about all this we hear nothing. Similarly, the conversation with Nicodemus, to take another example (iii. 1-21), has no conclusion. It is again clear that the author is not concerned about the persons who come into touch with Jesus, but entirely about Jesus himself.

11. THE PICTURE OF JOHN THE BAPTIST.

Even John the Baptist has suffered the same fate. In the Synoptics he conies before us a character which of itself would have a claim to interest us greatly, even if it had never been brought into close touch with Jesus. The purpose of his baptism and preaching of repentance, and their benefit to the people, would have been achieved in any case. It is not merely his pathetic death (Mk. vi. 17-29) that makes him sure of winning the sympathy of readers of the Synoptics, but also his uncertainty as to whether he is to regard Jesus as the Messiah (Mt. xi. 2 f.). It shows how truly Jesus speaks when he says that he is greater than any Old Testament figure, and yet least amongst the New Testament believers (Mt. xi. 11). He could call men to repentance, but he had not himself been commissioned to preach the glad tidings. We are told only in Mt. (iii. 14 f.) that he refused to baptize Jesus, and this is clearly a later touch, for according to the most original account which we can still gather easily from Mk., he did not learn Jesus higher nature even at the baptism itself. Jesus alone in Mk. (i. 10) sees the heavens open and the Holy Spirit coming down upon him like a dove. And this is undoubtedly the correct version, since no one would have invented it, if as Lk. reports (iii. 21 f.), and as regards the heavens Mt. also (iii. 16), the opening of the heavens and the coming down of the spirit were visible to every one. It is true that Mk. also (like Mt. and Lk.), as regards the voice from heaven, only says that it sounded, which seems to imply that it could be heard by every one. But only Mt. says “this is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased;” Mk. (and Lk.), on the contrary, “thou art,” &c.; and from this we may certainly assume that according to the older account which was used by Mk., the voice could be heard by Jesus alone, just as he alone saw the heavens open.

In the Fourth Gospel, however, the Baptist knows from the beginning not only of Jesus higher nature, as in Mt., and that he was destined to be the Redeemer of the whole world (i. 27, 29), but also that he pre-existed with God in heaven (i. 15, 30). But for this very reason the work of the Baptist is strictly limited: he bears witness to Jesus (i. 6-8, 15, 23). His baptism is never of any importance to those who receive it. John uses it only as a means of testifying to Jesus (i. 26, 31). His preaching of repentance is not even mentioned. It would thus be quite impossible for him to ask later whether Jesus is the Messiah, as in Mt. xi. 2 f., unless we were to explain such a question by ascribing to him doubts—which would be quite sinful—of all that had been revealed to him at an earlier date by God Himself, According to the original account of the Synoptics, on the other hand, he had as yet no actual knowledge which would enable him to answer the question. In short, in place of a character which was full of power, if limited in its spiritual outlook, and of a person whose tragic death made him an object of veneration, the Fourth Gospel gives us nothing better than a lay-figure endowed with supernatural knowledge, but always the same, and devoid of living features—a figure which was only meant to serve the purpose of revealing Jesus majesty.

12. INJUDICIOUS RELIANCE ON THE SYNOPTICS.

How is it that the circumstances of many events are so obscurely sketched in the Fourth Gospel? We can some times explain this quite definitely. It is because the author starts in a careless way from an account in the Synoptics. Thus we had an instance (p. 51) already in vi. 3, 15, where Jesus twice ascends the mountain, without in the meantime having come down. This again explains a fact we noted as far back as p. 12, that in vi. 1, Jesus betakes himself to the other shore of the Lake of Galilee, whereas in the whole of the fifth chapter we have found him in Jerusalem. Without any further explanation, the Synoptics (Mk. vi. 32), and they alone, can represent him as crossing the Lake, because in the Synoptics he is always in Galilee; Jn. has carelessly followed them, without reflecting that he should have told us first how Jesus came from Jerusalem to Galilee—a matter which he reports quite appropriately in other places (iv. 3, 43).

But the most important example of his following the Synoptics and at the same time carelessly tacking his story on to theirs, is found in Jn.’s account (xii. 1-8) of the anointing of Jesus. Several striking features in it we have already noticed (p. 77 f .); we must now explain how these originated. Jn. found an anointing of Jesus reported twice in the Synoptics j in Mk. (xiv. 3-9) and Mt. (xxvi. 6-13), one in Bethany near Jerusalem shortly before his death, in Lk. (vii. 36-50) one in Galilee, a long time before it. And yet in both cases the master of the house is called Simon. Moreover, in Mk. and Mt. he is (had been) a leper; in Lk. he is a Pharisee. But the fact that the names were alike seems to have been sufficient to lead Jn. to believe that in both cases the same event was intended. The woman therefore who anointed Jesus in this case must have been the same sinful woman who did so in Lk. (Mk. and Mt. tell us nothing beyond the fact that a woman anointed Jesus). But Jn. is prepared to say that it was that pious Mary who, according to the beautiful story in Lk. (x. 38-42), sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to him, while her sister Martha busied herself more than was necessary with the household affairs. How did he obtain this knowledge? Not from Lk. , for in this Gospel the two sisters live in an unnamed village at which Jesus stops on his way through Samaria. We know already from xi. 1 f. that Jn. believed they lived in Bethany near Jerusalem and that Lazarus was their brother. Comparing the account of Lk., which Jn. drags in here, it suits the circumstances when at the meal Martha undertakes the serving and Mary anoints Jesus; this quite harmonizes with the fact that in Lk.’s Gospel she listens to him so attentively.

Must we indeed believe that all this was really observed by an eye-witness John? Or have events which, according to the Synoptics, happened at three different places with quite different persons and in a quite different way been simply worked up into one in the style of the writer of Jn.? That may be best decided by a consideration of the last fact which he reports: Mary anointed Jesus’ feet and dried them with her hair. She could hardly have done anything more awkward. The ointment was too precious to be used for her hair. On this point Judas, who afterwards betrayed his Lord, was right; the ointment should have been sold and the proceeds (about 240 shillings) given to the poor (xii. 5). No; no such anointing was observed by any eye-witness; it owes its origin simply to a wrong use of the two accounts in Lk. There the sinful woman moistens Jesus’ feet with her tears and then dries them with her hair; she anoints them afterwards, not before. But the tears of a sinful woman do not suit the case of Mary. Jn. therefore omits them. And, having done this, the anointing has to come first; otherwise there would be nothing to wipe away. We see then that there is really no reason to think the Synoptics wrong. We see also that Mary is not the woman who anointed Jesus’ feet; the name of the woman will always be unknown to us. The same is true of the dwelling-place of Mary and Martha. That this was Bethany is a fact which existed only in the imagination of the Fourth Evangelist.

13. ASTOUNDING NATURE OF THE MIRACLES IN JN.

The raising of Lazarus, which is supposed to have taken place in Bethany, suggests that at this point it may be well to say all that remains to be said about the astounding nature of the miracles in the Fourth Gospel. What we shall say applies equally to the turning of water into wine at Cana, to the healing at the Pool of Bethesda of the man who had been lame for thirty-eight years, to the cure of the man born blind, &c. But it may suffice to explain what we mean, by dealing with the raising of Lazarus, which did not take place until the fourth day after death, when the body would already have become putrid. Martha actually refers to this fact (xi. 39), with the idea of suggesting that Jesus need not trouble to have the stone, which closed the rock-hewn selpulchre, rolled away. There is nothing which so clearly reveals the astounding nature of this miracle as the way in which it is regarded by scholars who assure us with the greatest earnestness that they do believe in miracles. They will tell us not only that the utterance of Martha is based upon a pure conjecture, but also that her conjecture was wrong. Certainly they can never have been inside a mortuary; nor do they reflect that in the warm climate of Palestine decomposition began much sooner than it does with us (cp. p. 19). Again they will tell us that, when a man dies, hearing is the last of all his senses to fail; and for this reason we are expressly told (xi. 43) that Jesus cried with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come forth.” Indeed, they are able to tell us more. They will tell us that the bands in which, according to xi. 44, Lazarus’ feet and hands were wrapped, were not fastened round his feet tightly. That Jesus could raise a man on the fourth day after his death they believe, and they expect every one who does not wish to be called an unbeliever to believe it too; but that he could give the man power to walk with firmly fastened feet—no, this they do not believe. Can we wonder then that other people refuse to accept as credible not only this narrative, but with it the whole book which produces it, and lays such emphasis on it, as principal evidence for the divine power of Jesus?

14. ARE MIRACLES POSSIBLE?

We ourselves do not at once assume this attitude, We remember not only that an incredible story may have found its way even into a book which is otherwise credible; we feel bound also to examine more closely the actual manner in which it is demonstrated that this miracle-story as well as the others in the Fourth Gospel and in the Bible generally do not deserve to be believed. In the last resort most people, we may be sure, rely in this matter on the idea that miracles are quite impossible. But the idea is not so firmly established as is commonly supposed. At the outset, it is certainly remarkable that it does not have the slightest influence on one who believes in miracles. Now we might say that the person who believes in miracles is unable to think correctly. But even his opponent will feel that his own case is not very strong when a miracle-story is brought to his notice which is attested by people who are worth considering, and when he has nothing better to say against it than, “Ah yes, but there are no such things as miracles,” without being able to show, in this particular occurrence, how what seems miraculous in it can have arisen in a natural way. This reflection may lead us to what—regarding the matter from a strictly scientific standpoint—lies at the root of this question.

If we are to be able to say that a matter has been proved, it is necessary that it should have been proved by facts. In the case of a miracle-story, for example, we consider it to have been really proved that nothing miraculous happened, only when we have found the same phenomenon reappearing a second time and are certain that here no other than quite natural causes have operated. We call this kind of proof, proof from experience. The other kind is known as proof from reasoning. Whoever uses the latter in support of the contention that there are no miracles will say either, that the laws of Nature are unalterable, and a miracle would be no miracle unless one or more of the laws of nature were suspended; or he will say, it would be a contradiction of His character, rightly understood, if God were to suspend the laws of Nature the operation of which He has made so inviolable.

15. MUST WE BELIEVE IN MIRACLES?

But we have only reached this result quite provisionally. It will take us a step further if I may be allowed to recall a personal experience. When I had occasion some years ago to express the above ideas to my class at the University, as they left the class-room they shook their heads and said, “He believes in miracles.” I had certainly given them credit for more intelligence. To hold that it is not right to deny unconditionally that miracles are possible, and to believe that miracles do really happen, are two entirely different things. All that has been said so far only amounts to saying that in forming my opinion about miracles I must not be guided by general ideas, but by experience. But from experience I know for certain that I have never yet seen a miracle. I know also that pretty well all the miracles which are supposed to have happened in the present age have turned out, upon more careful inquiry, to be perfectly natural occurrences. I know too that the certainty with which the natural scientist and the technical worker reckon has never yet failed them. As regards the miracles of the past, I know that we can find no reason for supposing that miracles could have happened then more easily than to-day. In particular, I know that to say that God was obliged to use miracles for the purpose of proving Jesus to be the Saviour of the world is a bare assertion and cannot be proved. The Bible tells us that Paul, as well as Jesus, and very many ordinary persons in the Christian communities, and in fact—a still more important point—even the disciples of the Pharisees and other contemporaries of Jesus, possessed the power of working miracles (Rom. xv. 19; 2 Cor. xii. 12; 1 Cor. xii. 9 f., 28; Mt. xii. 27, vii. 22 f.; Mk. ix. 38-40); and yet none of these was ever regarded as the Saviour. Had Jesus worked ever so many miracles, without being at the same time a physician of souls, I know that he would not have been worshipped as the Saviour, and that we of to-day should not be called by his name.

And what is the use of the knowledge we possess of so many other religions if we refuse to use it in order to find out the origin of our own? Works of wonder are ascribed to every founder of a great religion of whose life we possess records, and they are often much more astounding than those attributed to Jesus; and—what is most remarkable here—in the case of each one of them utterances have at the same time been preserved in which he absolutely declines, as Jesus did (see above, p. 21 f.), to work miracles, and refers to them as matters of quite minor importance.

In the case of Buddha the utterance is preserved: “I do not teach my disciples, Do miracles by means of your supernatural power . . .; I say to them, Live by concealing your good works and making your sins to be seen.” Confucius, the founder of the Chinese religion, or rather of their political and moral science, is reported to have said: “Investigate what is obscure, do what is wonderful, that later generations may say of it, I do not like these things.” In the case of Zarathustra, the founder of the Persian religion as committed to writing in the Zend-Avesta, we read: “God said to me, If the king asks for a sign, do thou say, Only read the Zend-Avesta, and you will need no miracles.” In the Koran we find God saying to Muhammed: “Thy destiny is to preach and not to do miracles.” Muhammed appeals to God’s great miracles, the rising and setting of the sun, the rain, the growth of the plants, and the birth of souls; these are the true wonders to those who know what faith is.Further information on this subject will be found in Seydel, Das Evangelium von Jesu in semen Verhältnissen zu Buddha-Sage und Buddha-Lehre, 1882, pp. 239-251. Very much that is told us about these founders of religion is untrustworthy. But these utterances deserve to be believed without question; for who could have invented them?

To these we may add in conclusion the saying of Kant, the founder of the newer philosophy: “Wise governments have at all times conceded, in fact have legally incorporated the notion in the public doctrines of religion, that in olden times miracles happened, but they have not allowed new miracles to happen. As regards new wonder-workers, they must have feared the effects they might have on the public peace and the established order.” It is not difficult in the case of so clear a thinker to read between the lines: if, he would say, in olden times there had already been a wise government, it would not have allowed miracles to happen even in those days.

From which presupposition then ought we to start, if we wish to decide the question whether miracle-stories deserve belief? Strictly speaking, from none. But that is not possible. We always bring to the consideration of a subject some kind of presupposition. After what has been said, this must not be to the effect that miracles are not possible. But it would be still worse to assume, that miracles may easily happen. One who starts with this presupposition will certainly regard many occurrences as miracles in which everything has been brought about by causes which are quite natural. If then we cannot avoid starting with a presupposition, it can only of course be one that has already stood its trial in other cases, not one which has never yet been tested. In the present case therefore it can only be this, that any miracle-story we propose to examine will, presumably, admit of exactly the same natural explanation as others which we have so far been able closely to investigate. It is therefore not only permissible, but is our bounden duty, to try with all the means at our disposal to explain such matters by natural causes. While we do this, we must be ready to find a miracle if necessary, but only when there are insurmountable obstacles to our regarding a matter otherwise.

Until such obstacles arise, we are entitled to accept the two statements, (1) that the laws of Nature are unchangeable and (2) that God himself does not desire to suspend them by a miracle. Only we must be clear on this point—that they are not matters which have been proved quite sufficiently, but in spite of all that can be advanced in their favour, are never anything more than a belief.

If we know a miracle-story only from written accounts—which is the case with those of the Bible—the first question we must ask is, Do these accounts show themselves to be reliable in every detail? For instance, it is not a matter of no importance, whether Jesus healed one blind man before he entered the city of Jericho (so Lk. xviii. 35-43) or healed him after he left it (so Mk. x. 46-52), or whether he healed two blind men (so Mt. xx. 29-34) at the same place. Why should I take it for granted that the Evangelists or their authorities duly informed them selves that it was really a case of blindness, when they are not agreed as to where and in the case of how many per sons the thing was done? Nor is it any more a matter of indifference whether on the evening after Jesus had healed Peter’s wife’s mother, people brought all the sick to him and he healed many of them (so Mk. i. 32-34), or whether they brought many and he healed all (so Mt. viii. 16), or whether they brought all and he healed them all (so Lk. iv. 40). Nor again is it a matter of no importance whether he taught the multitude before the Feeding of the Five Thousand (so Mk. vi. 34), or whether he healed their sick (so Mt. xiv. 14). We might continue thus for a long time if we wished /to throw light on this aspect of the miracle-stories found in the Synoptics. But the points we have mentioned are only intended to serve as examples of the kind of thing we are obliged to take note of in the stories of the Fourth Gospel.

16. SILENCE OP THE SYNOPTICS AS TO THE MIRACLES IN JN.

As compared with the stories in the Synoptics, the only one in Jn. that can be said to contain an actual contradiction is that of Jesus’ walking on the sea, since Jesus crossed not merely a part but the whole of the sea, and is not supposed to have been taken into the boat (see above, p. 19 f.). In the other miracle stories in this Gospel (apart from that of the Feeding), contradictions are impossible, because the Synoptics do not include the stories. But this silence on their part is the very thing that cannot fail to make us feel the most serious doubts. These miracles which are known only to the Fourth Gospel are actually the most stupendous recorded: the turning of the water into wine at Cana, the healing of the man who was thirty-eight years a paralytic at the Pool of Bethesda, the cure of the man born blind, and the raising of Lazarus. (It is difficult to say whether by the cure of the son of a royal official at Capernaum, iv. 46-54, the same event is intended as the cure of the son or servant of the centurion at Capernaum in Mt. viii. 5-13 and Lk. vii., 1-10; see p. 99 f.)

Why these particular miracles should have been passed over by the Synoptics, if they really happened, it is absolutely impossible to imagine. What real arguments have those scholars who hold them to be true to offer, in order to explain the fact that there is not a word about them in the Synoptics? Once more it will be sufficient to fix our attention on the Raising of Lazarus.

17. THE MIRACLES IN JN. SYMBOLIC.

But why does Jn. introduce such incredible matters? Is it purely from a delight in the wonderful? Is it from the idea that Jesus could only in this way have shown himself to be the Saviour? Certainly he held this idea, and even attached importance to it (see p. 20 f.). But we should be doing him a great wrong, if we were disposed to think this his sole motive for telling us that such miracles were worked by Jesus. The fact that he describes so few in detail is itself an argument against this. But he also makes us realise clearly that each of these miracles has a deeper sense, a symbolic meaning; that is to say, that it is meant to express a religious idea in a picture as it were. In the case of the .Raising of Lazarus, he himself has supplied in the clearest manner the legend to the picture. Martha expresses to Jesus clearly, if shyly, her hope that he will raise her brother: “Lord, if thou hadst been here, my brother had not died. And even now I know that whatsoever thou shalt ask of God, God will give thee” (xi. 21 f.). Jesus answered, “Thy brother shall rise again.” Martha rejoins, “I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.” And thereupon Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die.” Here therefore we have the well-known and beautiful idea in the Fourth Gospel of that eternal life, in a deeply spiritual sense, which, through faith in Jesus, begins even during this earthly existence, and not merely after death, and which cannot be interrupted by the death of the body (cp. further especially v. 24).

18. THE FEEDING A FACT FOR JN. IN SPITE OF ALL?

Thus in all the miracle-stories of the Fourth Gospel, a deeper thought can be recognised which they present vividly to us as in a picture. Now, as regards the problem suggested above (p. 97), when we were dealing with the Raising of Lazarus, whether in spite of all that has been said, the author held them to be actual occurrences, for the present this at least is clear, that the interest in the question whether a miracle really happened becomes secondary at once, if the miracle is used to represent nothing more than an idea. And so we discover in these stories some discord in the thought of the Fourth Evangelist. Side by side with the absolute value that he attaches to Jesus’ works of wonder being recognised as real occurrences (p. 21), we note a certain indifference to the matter. Nor is it necessary to base this conclusion entirely upon our present examination; he has given even more definite expression to this indifference in other places. When many in Jerusalem believed on Jesus on account of his works of wonder, he did not trust himself unto them (ii. 23 f.), and Thomas, who would not believe on Jesus resurrection until lie had touched his wounds, was told, “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed” (xx. 27-29). If we felt ourselves absolutely bound to go farther and to conjecture that Jn. first conceived his pictures in his own brain, just as a modern painter does, it would hardly be thinkable that afterwards he could have believed what he had depicted to be real events. What then is the truth?

Something more certain from which to start in this matter is found in the Synoptics. According to Mk. (viii. 14-21) the disciples, when they journeyed across the Lake of Galilee, had forgotten to take bread. Jesus then says to them: “Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” (or according to Mt. xvi. 6, “and the leaven of the Sadducees”). They imagine that he wishes to warn them against procuring loaves from the Pharisees and the others. Jesus notes this and says, “Do ye not perceive nor understand? . . . and do ye not remember? When I brake the five loaves among the five thousand, how many baskets (full of broken pieces) took ye up? . . . And when the seven among the four thousand, how many baskets took ye up?” (so according to Mt.). “Do ye not yet understand?” Mt. fittingly completes Jesus utterance thus: “that I spake not to you concerning bread? But beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Then understood they how that he bade them not beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”

Shortly before, Mk. and Mt. have recounted the Feeding of the Five Thousand and that of the Four Thousand as actual occurrences. When Jesus now reminds the disciples of these, they must have been confirmed in their first thought, that by the leaven of which they were to beware he meant real loaves, and must have believed that, to make up for the omission, he would procure them loaves in as wonderful a way as he had done in the case of the two Feedings. Now, it would in itself be very surprising that Jesus should have offered to repair a piece of forgetfulness on the part of the disciples by exercising his miraculous power. In such a case, we certainly could not speak of a higher divine purpose for which he used this miraculous power, and say that he was actuated by love and compassion. But such reflections are not really necessary. The result of Jesus calling to mind the two Feedings is this: the disciples see that he does not wish to speak of loaves; and this is simply impossible. Have the Evangelists, then, told us something that is meaningless? That would be equally inconceivable. How can they have come to say the contrary of what is as clear as daylight?

The solution of the riddle is, however, not so difficult after all; we must only have the courage to think out the ideas of the story to the end. If the disciples by that of which Jesus reminds them are made to see that by leaven Jesus did not mean loaves but teaching, then in those earlier cases they cannot have seen and eaten loaves, but must simply have heard about loaves—and have heard too that the loaves meant teaching. In other words, the things of which they were reminded (and rightly reminded), when they thought of the Feedings, were not events in the life of Jesus, but discourses, in which he had compared his teaching with bread, by which the soul is satisfied. Now it suddenly dawns upon us also why more bread is said to have remained over than there was at first. Had the bread been real, this would have been a pure miracle. On the other hand, when Jesus propounds his teaching, it is quite natural that it should arouse new ideas in the minds of his hearers, and awaken new impulses; and that they them selves, enriching what they had heard by their own experiences and feelings, should carry it farther.

It is not enough, therefore, to see that the two miracle stories were certainly one at the beginning, and only came to be regarded as two distinct events at a later date when through the carelessness of the narrators the number of the partakers, of the loaves, and of the baskets of broken pieces, was changed. We must go farther and declare, in all seriousness, that no miraculous feeding took place, nor even a feeding which merely appeared miraculous. It would be tempting to us to explain the matter by sup posing that very many persons in the crowd were provided with more provisions than Jesus and his disciples, and that Jesus example simply induced them to place these at his disposal. But had this been the case, the disciples could just as little, by being reminded of it, have been led to understand that by leaven Jesus meant teaching, as they could by being reminded of a real miracle of feeding.

The only miraculous feature in the stories of the Feedings is therefore this: that by the side of them the story of the leaven of the Pharisees should also have found a place in the Gospels. Certainly Mk. and Mt. have not proved themselves very careful here; the words “Do ye not perceive?” apply to them also. But we have no reason to complain of them. If they had noticed the contradiction, they would certainly not have omitted the stories of the Feedings, but, rather, the narrative under consideration; and it would then have been much harder for us to recognise the real situation. In reality, they have faithfully preserved the narrative, because it had been transmitted to them. And we must recognise this with the greater satisfaction, because in other places in their Gospels we have been obliged to note many arbitrary alterations in the accounts, and because, again, it has not been possible for them to preserve correctly other matter, they themselves having become acquainted with it in a distorted form. Thus, for example, exactly what was narrated about Jesus’ discourse concerning that remarkable bread (the teaching) which, when it was divided and partaken of, did not decrease but increased, will certainly at a very early date have been misunderstood by people who were not present, just as the Synoptists have misunderstood it, by including it in their books as a miraculous event.

19. ARE THE OTHER MIRACLES FACTS FOR JN.?

We must quote yet another passage from the Synoptics to elucidate the question as to what opinion the Fourth Evangelist held with regard to the miracle-stories. When John the Baptist was in prison, he sent his disciples to Jesus to ask whether he was the promised Saviour, or whether they must look for another. We must remember here that, from the time of the baptism of Jesus, John could not have been clear on this matter (see p. 79 f.). The answer of Jesus is almost verbally identical in Mt. (xi. 4-6) and in Lk. (vii. 22 f.): “Go your way and tell John the things which ye do hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up and the poor have good tidings preached to them. And blessed is he whosoever shall find none occasion of stumbling in me.” Could Jesus have done anything more calculated to destroy the effect of his words than, in his list of works of wonder which reaches a climax in the awakening from the dead, to specify at the end of them preaching to the poor, that is to say, something quite ordinary, something not at all wonderful, something which could not make the slightest impression on the disciples of John as an answer to their question whether he was the promised Saviour, their ideas of his superhuman power being what they were. Or may we suppose that the Evangelists have inappropriately added this from clumsiness? Assuredly not. They have taken the greatest possible care that we should read in their books of all the five classes of wonders which Jesus enumerates before this answer to the Baptist.

Now, in both consistently (Mk. omits the whole story of the Baptist’s messengers) there appear before this date only the healing of a leper (Mt. viii. 1-4 = Lk, v. 12-14) and of palsied men (Mt. viii. 5-13 = Lk. vii. 1-10; Mt. ix. l-8 = Lk. v. 17-26); and in Mt. (ix. 18-26), besides these, in agreement with the order of events in Mk. (v. 21-43), the awakening of the daughter of Jairus. This Lk. introduces too late for the answer to the Baptist’s question (not until viii. 40-56). But, instead of it he has introduced earlier (vii. 11-17) the awakening of the young man at Nain, about which Mt. and even Mk. say nothing at all. On the other hand, Mt. ix. 27-34 introduces the healing of two blind men and a dumb man, about which Lk. and even Mk. are silent. In Jesus enumeration there is no dumb man, but mention is made of the deaf; since, however, both are described by the same Greek word (kophós), there do, as a matter of fact, appear in Mt. before chapter xi. all the ailments mentioned by Jesus. In Lk. the blind and the deaf are omitted. Instead of this, Lk. tells us in vii. 21 that in the presence of the messengers of the Baptist Jesus healed many blind and other ailing persons, about whom there is not a word in Mt.

Both Evangelists, therefore, although in complete disagreement with each other, have been at pains to make Jesus enumeration appear literally true; and, this being so, could they have deprived it of its whole force by making so unsuitable an addition (concerning the preaching to the poor)? Or was it perhaps later copyists who did this? But even in their case, the matter would be equally inexplicable.

There is here again, as in the question of Jesus utterance about leaven, only one solution: the most striking and seemingly the most embarrassing version must be the most original. Jesus himself must have added, “and the poor have the gospel preached to them.” But he could only have done so if all the previously mentioned persons are on the same level, that is to say, if he meant spiritually blind, spiritually lame, spiritually leprous, spiritually deaf, and spiritually dead. And here again, just as in the case of the stories of feeding, the concluding words are intelligible only on this understanding. “Blessed is he whosoever finds none occasion of stumbling in me”: this means that the Baptist should not take offence at Jesus for coming forward in such simple guise, as a mere teacher and prophet, and should recognise him as the promised Saviour, in spite of his humble appearance. This, in truth, was why John had had doubts on the matter. In thinking of the promised Messiah, he thought, as his whole race did, of a person who would come forward with superhuman power, drive the Romans from the land and set up a mighty kingdom, in which the Jews would reign.

Here then we have a new instance how utterances of Jesus have often been faithfully preserved in the Synoptics. In this saying we may depend upon it that we have the words of Jesus in all essentials, particularly in their conclusion, just as he spoke them (the question whether he enumerated at the beginning one ailment more or less need not detain us); and this is the more noteworthy, since the Evangelists have entirely misunderstood it, and have made great efforts to show that their misunderstanding is right. At the same time, we have in it a new example of the way in which Jesus availed himself of figurative language which might easily be misunderstood, and which actually was understood in such a manner that objective works of wonder were supposed to be intended when he had spoken merely of spiritual experiences unaccompanied by any miracle.

For the Fourth Gospel, therefore, we have here a foundation upon which to build if we would assume that not only the feeding of the five thousand, but also the healing of the man born blind, of the man paralysed for thirty-eight years, of the son of the royal official, and the awakening of Lazarus, were from the first meant to describe merely the healing of souls. It makes no difference, of course, if the son of the royal official is described as suffering, not from one of the ailments enumerated in Mt. xi. 5, but from a fever. In fact, by recognising this figurative style of speech, we may also venture to seek such an explanation of the last remaining miracles of the Fourth Gospel, the turning of water into wine at Cana, and Jesus’ walking on the sea, even though these are not miracles of healing.

We may not, of course, in any case go as far as to sup pose that all these stories, in their figurative meaning, actually came from Jesus himself. Had they done so it would be inconceivable that about most of them the Synoptics should know nothing. What we gather, therefore, is at most this, that the author of the Fourth Gospel still had correct information as to the metaphorical style in which Jesus delighted to express himself, and that he copied this in the spirit of his master. At the same time, it is true, we must reckon fully with the possibility that he did not gain this by first-hand knowledge of Jesus style of speech, but in the roundabout way described above: he believed that in all his miracle-stories he had to do with real events; not until later did they become to him figures for mere ideas, and the question whether they really happened become of but secondary importance. Not even now are we able to come to a decision upon these two points of view; perhaps indeed, as already intimated, Jn. could not himself have said which of them he had finally adopted.

20. TRADITIONS KNOWN ONLY TO JN.?

In any case we must be quite clear that at the root of each of the two points of view there are quite distinct presuppositions. If Jn. from the first gave forth his miracle-stories merely as the figurative clothing of religious ideas, then we may be all the more certain that he invented them himself; he could not have had them from the lips of Jesus, for had that been their source the Synoptics also would have given them. If, on the other hand, Jn. regarded them as real events, then they must have come to him from some authorities in whom he had confidence. Is it possible perhaps to decide now which of the two suppositions is right? In other words, is there a tradition concerning the Life of Jesus which was known only to Jn. and remained unknown to the Synoptics?

The far-reaching importance of this question can be realised at once. If Jn. was acquainted with such a tradition, he may have derived from it all that he has in addition to what the Synoptics tell us; and in this much else is included besides the miracle narratives we have been considering. On this basis very many people immediately think they may assume that all these additional matters are also historical. But the pleasure which they thus give themselves is premature. Supposing that Jn. drew from a tradition—for the time being we are willing to assume that he did—have we then disposed of the question, Why do the Synoptics know nothing about this tradition? Who was the first to know of it? Was it the Apostle John? Could he really, in Jesus’ lifetime, have noted certain things of which Peter and the other apostles had no experience? And yet the Synoptists themselves drew from the communications of the Apostles or of their disciples! We might acquiesce, if the things which appear only in the Fourth Gospel were all minor matters, In that case, we might think that to the other Apostles or to the Synoptics they seemed to be unimportant. But the healing of the man born blind, the healing of the man palsied for thirty-eight years, the raising of Lazarus, the farewell discourses of Jesus, the washing of the disciples’ feet on the last evening of his life, etc.!

Or can we believe that some worshipper of Jesus—not further known to us—outside the circle of his twelve apostles, observed all these things, one, for instance, as people of late have been fond of suggesting, who lived in Judaea, and, having nothing to tell us about Galilee, had all the more to tell us about what Jesus did in Judaea? Of such an one it would be equally true to say that he could have observed nothing which the apostles did not also know of. Does not the Fourth Gospel say continually that they were all present on all these occasions?

It is thus, besides, quite immaterial whether we assume the eye-witness in question (whether we think of him as the apostle John or as one who was not an apostle) to have written the Fourth Gospel himself or only to have given information to the author. In no case can what this person alone tells us be derived from actual observation of the events; for, if it were, we should read of it in the Synoptics as well.

21. AMPLIFICATION OF THE STORY OF LAZARUS ON THE BASIS OF LK.

But instead of instituting general inquiries into such a tradition, we will at once show by examples how we may very easily think of the matter. We do not by any means assert that it must really have so happened; it is quite sufficient if it may have so happened. We will start again with the most instructive story in the Fourth Gospel, that of the Raising of Lazarus. His name reminds us of the parable in Lk. (xvi. 19-31), in which a Lazarus appears by the side of a rich man. At first sight the two narratives seem to be radically different: in Lk. we have before us a figure in a parable, in Jn. a real person; in Lk. a poor and sick man who after his death is compensated for his sufferings, in Jn. a man for whom neither sufferings nor compensation come in question. But the two figures have at any rate one point of contact. The rich man in Lk. (xvi. 27-31) in his torment wishes Abraham to send Lazarus back to earth to warn the brethren of the rich man. Abraham answers, “they have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them.” The rich man objects: “Nay, father Abraham, but if one go to them from the dead, they will repent.” Abraham, however, decides that “if they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if one rise from the dead.”

Let us now imagine this parable to have been discussed in a sermon. It is not difficult to conjecture what may have been said. The brothers of the rich man who have Moses and the prophets are, of course, the Jews. The preacher had thus a most excellent opportunity of proving the truth of Abraham’s concluding words, to the effect that even one who had risen from the dead would not induce them to repent. Jesus had actually risen, and, notwithstanding, the Jews, with trifling exceptions, had rejected his preaching, though so many heathen had accepted it. Now if Lazarus, in answer to the request of the rich man, had been sent back to earth to preach to his brethren, he would have been made to do in the parable what, according to the belief of Christians, Jesus in reality did by his resurrection. If the preacher reckoned on his hearers possessing some intelligence, he may perhaps, with raised finger, have continued the parable thus: “as a matter of fact, Lazarus has risen, and the brethren of the rich man have not listened to him.” Some hearer who had not understood the delicate meaning of this turn it may even have been a woman hearer—then went home, we may further imagine, and said: “To-day the preacher said that Lazarus has arisen.” “Really, such a thing I have never heard.” “But he said so without a doubt.” “Who awakened him then?” “He did not say that. But who should have awakened him, if it was not Jesus himself?”

In this way the kernel of the narrative in Jn. was provided: Lazarus has been awakened by Jesus. And without any idea of deception or forgery, without even any censurable indulgence in phantasies, but purely from a very excusable misunderstanding! We need not go on describing further how one little feature after another may have, now and again, been added. Let it suffice that this may very well have happened; and again without any idea of deception, but purely with the idea that the thing cannot well have happened in any other way. For instance, what was more natural than that Lazarus, before his death, should have been ill, and that Jesus should have been informed of this? If we only imagine a sufficient number of people contributing to the story, and adding one detail after another, the Fourth Evangelist in the end need only have dotted the i’s, so to say, in order to get the story in due form into his book.

This consideration is by no means unimportant. It relieves him of the charge of having himself invented the whole narrative. Certainly we could not shrink from making this charge, if the attempt we have made above, to explain the matter differently, might not be considered successful; for the fact that Lazarus was not awakened, we do not now, after all that has been said, need to prove. In fact, we should have to ask ourselves whether this reproach of having invented the whole narrative would really be a reproach, since quite certainly we could not reproach the preacher in question with it, if, relying on the intelligence of his hearers, he carried the parable of Lk. a step further and said, Lazarus has arisen. But we have preferred our own theory because it has enabled us to assume that the raising of Lazarus was “delivered” to the Fourth Evangelist as a real miracle, and because we can understand better how, at least in many passages of his book, he could attach so much importance to the fact of this and the other miracles having really happened (p. 20 f.).

22. OTHER AMPLIFICATIONS IN JN.

Taking next the narrative of the healing of the man born blind, its origin could easily be understood on the sup position that some preacher discussed a story of the healing of another blind man taken from the Synoptics, and held the Jewish people to be meant by the man. In that case, it was very natural for him to say that this blind man was so from his birth. In a quite similar way, indeed, the discourse of Stephen (Acts vii.) aims at showing that the Jewish people had mistaken the will of God from the first. Some hearer who was not too attentive might easily have gathered from the discourse that Jesus had really healed a man who was blind from birth. In this particular case, however, we are in a position to say further how some of the details in the narrative in Jn. may have arisen. In Mk. viii. 22-25 we read that a blind man was made to see by Jesus, not at once but by degrees. If a preacher enlarged upon this, he might easily reach the thought: the spiritually blind only succeed gradually in recognising Jesus, the person who makes them whole. The thought is in Jn. ix. 17, 31-33, 38 expressed in such a way that the healed man at first regards Jesus only as a prophet and a devout man sent by God, and only in the end comes to perceive that he is the Son of man, in other words, the Saviour of the world. Further, from the same passage in Mk. the point in Jn. ix. 6 is borrowed, that Jesus’ spittle served as the remedy. The only new features are the way in which this is used, and the washing of the eyes in the Pool of Shiloah.

23. DIVERGENCE AS TO JESUS DEATH.

We must look all the more closely now into the one, but very important, point in which, with much plausibility, people may find in Jn. a correct tradition based upon faithful recollection, a tradition by which the story of the Synoptics is shown to be faulty. It concerns the day of Jesus’ death. According to all four Gospels, Jesus died on a Friday. This was, according to the Synoptics (Mk. xiv. 12, 14; xv. 1), the 15th of the month Nisan (corresponding almost to our April), but according to Jn. (xiii. 1, 29; xviii. 28; xix. 14, 31) the 14th. This means an extremely serious difference. On the afternoon of the 14th Nisan the lambs were slain in the fore-court of the Temple at Jerusalem, and then after sunset, at the meal of the Passover festival (the place of which is taken by our Easter festival), were eaten. The 15th Nisan was the first of the seven days of the festival, and in sanctity and the strictness with which all work was refrained from, was almost equivalent to a Sabbath. It is important to remember that this is true also of the night between the 14th and the 15th of Nisan, because amongst the Jews the day began with sunset.

The difference between Jn. and the other Gospels is seen, therefore, particularly in two points. According to the Synoptics, Jesus celebrated the Passover meal, together with his disciples, on his last evening. But not according to Jn.; according to his account, Jesus’ last supper was, rather, on the preceding day, which was not a feast-day; and when the Jews ate the Paschal lamb twenty-four hours later, he already lay in the grave. Consequently his arrest, condemnation, crucifixion, and burial, which according to both accounts were compressed into less than twenty-four hours (to the next sunset after his last supper), also followed, according to Jn., on the working-day before the festival; but according to the Synoptics on the first feast day which involved strict suspension of all work.

The following table will serve to make this clear. The days of the month Nisan, placed in the middle, are common to the Synoptics and Jn. The † denotes the crucifixion of Jesus.

24. DAY OF JESUS DEATH ACCORDING TO THE SYNOPTICS CONCEIVABLE.

Was Jesus trial possible on the feast-day? It would seem not. And if Jn. is right, this point is so decisive that we may seek the truth in this Gospel everywhere else as well. He would, in that case, appear as the eye-witness whose purpose in his story is tacitly to correct the Synoptics (see above, pp. 52-57).

But consider what this means. Hitherto, as compared with the Synoptics, the Fourth Gospel has always proved less correct, and often quite untrustworthy. Is this discovery to be all at once reversed? May we believe that the Synoptists have made a mistake like this even on this one point (the day of Jesus’ death)? Can we, if we do so, believe anything else at all in their books on any one point? What took place in these last hours of the life of Jesus must have stamped itself indelibly on the minds of the disciples. How could they have told, or merely through an obscure recital have suggested to their hearers, that their Lord was present to partake with them of the Jewish paschal meal, if this was not the case at all? How can they have wrongly stated, or only suggested, that he was arrested, condemned, crucified, and buried on the feast-day, when all this seems to be made impossible by the sanctity of the day itself? Of course, up to the present it seems an equally great riddle that Jn. should have been led by some mistake to relate the contrary. But, in any case, we have the most .pressing occasion to see exactly whether the statement of the Synoptics is really unacceptable.

According to Jewish law, as committed to writing in the Mishnah, the oldest part of the Talmud, about 200 A.D., in order to pass a death sentence two sittings of the High Council—that is to say, of the highest judicial court—were necessary, and a night must intervene between them. Now, since no judicial proceedings might be held on the Sabbath, a trial which might end in a death-sentence could not commence on the day before (and therefore also, we may be sure, on the day before the first day of the Feast of the Passover). On this view of the matter, the story of the Synoptics seems in all circumstances to be excluded; for, according to this, the first sitting took place in the night which to the Jews already formed part of the feast-day, and the second actually on the morning of this first feast-day (Mk. xiv. 17, 53-64; xv. 1). But—and this is a point which is not usually noted—even the Johannine account would be impossible. Even if we assume that a trial of Jesus took place in the palace of Caiaphas (xviii. 24-28), as it had already done (xviii. 13-23) in the palace of Annas (Jn. does not tell us at all what happened before Caiaphas), we must still insist that between the two trials there intervened not a night, but only a few hours of one and the same night. If in conformity with the regulations a night was to be allowed to intervene between the two sittings, the trial, even according to Jn., could not have commenced; for, according to his account, the 14th of Nisan had already begun when Jesus was arrested, so that the second trial could not have fallen before the 15th Nisan, which would mean the great feast-day. Accordingly, as regards both stories, we cannot avoid devoting space to the following consideration.

At this time the Jews were no longer allowed to execute a sentence of death; that could be done only by the Roman governor, and so at that time by Pontius Pilate, who was present in Jerusalem throughout the Passover feast with a force of soldiers which had been increased on account of the immense throng of people. But, this being so, it was of no importance to the Jews to pass the death-sentence formally, since they had to ask Pilate to confirm and execute it. They could achieve their purpose equally well by simply making their charge against Jesus before Pilate without previously condemning him. The high-priest, who always presided, required in the first instance, therefore, simply to declare that no judicial court would be held, but only a charge be prepared to bring before Pilate; in that case, the law we have mentioned would have proved no obstacle. We may well believe that the High Council had shrewdness enough to hit upon this expedient.

Only consider, as regards the whole subject, how urgent the matter was! If, during the festival, the people were to declare for Jesus, recognising him as the Messiah, towards which recognition they had a few days before at Jesus entry into Jerusalem already made a very suspicious beginning (Mk. xi. 1-11), it would be too late to take action. The original determination to remove him had been formed even before the beginning of the festival (Mk. xiv. 1 f.). After the festival had started and Jesus had been arrested, not another hour was to be lost. The Christians heard nothing at all of that purely juristic observation of the high-priest, which we have conjectured; or they paid no attention to it for they saw in it, unquestionably and quite correctly, a mere excuse, and they held fast, in a way that we can very easily understand, to the familiar idea that the High Council was the highest judicial Court in their nation.

Simon, who was compelled to bear Jesus cross, was coming at the time “from the country” (Mk. xv. 21). But who can say that he had been working there? He belonged, in truth, to Cyrene in North Africa, and therefore clearly was one of the number of pilgrims who had come to Jerusalem solely in order to keep the feast. At such a feast two million men may easily have assembled; for we know that about 65 A.D. 256,500 paschal lambs were counted at the slaughter in the fore-court of the Temple, and no part of their flesh might be left over until the next morning (Ex. xii. 4, 10). Beyond question very many of those who had come to the feast must have passed the night outside the city, so that Simon may very well have returned to it before nine o’clock in the morning (Mk. xv. 25). The Greek words may mean not only “from the field,” but equally well “from the country.”

Similarly, from the fact that the Synoptics call the day of Jesus’ death “the day of preparation” we may not conclude that they support Jn. when he tells us in his gospel that it was a working-day. “Day of preparation,” that is to say, day for making preparations, was in fact the name of every Friday, because people prepared for the Sabbath by doing the works which were forbidden on the Sabbath itself. And this would be equally appropriate if the Friday were a feast-day; for some kinds of activity forbidden on the Sabbath were allowed then, particularly (see Ex. xii. 16) the cooking of foods, which were kept warm from every Friday evening to be used on the Sabbath when there could be no fire. Mk. expressly says (Mk. xv. 42) that the day of preparation was “the day before the Sabbath”; cp. Lk. xxiii. 54; Mt. xxvii. 62.

Jesus execution would not have been possible on the feast-day if the Jews themselves had had to carry it out. But as a matter of fact this was the business of Pilate; and what he did the Jewish authorities would not of course regard as a violation of the feast-day for which they could be held responsible. Nor was there any need to fear a rising among the people in favour of Jesus after Pilate had pronounced his sentence; it might be taken for granted that he would suppress anything of the kind with the utmost rigour.

Still less does the burial of Jesus, which according to all four Gospels (Mk. xv. 42-46; Jn. xix. 38-42) was carried out before sunset on the very day of Jesus’ death, prove that the first feast-day had not begun before this sunset, as Jn. would have us believe (according to the Jewish division of the day). All four accounts agree that Jesus died on a Friday. If then the time of burial had been delayed because this (according to the Synoptics) was a feast-day, it would have fallen on a Sabbath, a day on which it must have been still more strictly excluded. Moreover, the burial on the day of death itself is not merely a custom (see above, p. 19), but in the case of one who has been hanged, is expressly commanded in the Law (Deut. xxi. 22 f.).

25. THE DAY OF JESUS DEATH ARTIFICIALLY FIXED IN JN.

True, it always remains a riddle how Jn. can have been led to give us his account, which, in view of what we have said, is necessarily wrong. But the riddle can be solved, and even Jn. himself expressly indicates how this may be done. According to xix. 31-36, Pilate, at the instigation of the Jews, gives command for the thighs of Jesus and of the two men who were crucified with him to be broken, that their death might be hastened, and that they might be buried before the sunset with which in Jn. the feast begins. But the soldiers find Jesus already dead, and therefore in his case do not carry out the command. Jn. then tells us that this happened in order that the passage in the Old Testament might be fulfilled: “a bone of him shall not be broken.” Of whom? The paschal lamb (Ex. xii. 46). Consequently, Jn. regards Jesus as the true paschal lamb, and thinks that in him what is said of the paschal lamb in the Old Testament must be fulfilled. Paul had expressed the thought: “for our passover also hath been sacrificed, even Christ” (1 Cor. v. 7); Jn. elaborates it more exactly, and tells of the sufferings and death of Jesus as they must have happened if they were in precise agreement with the injunctions about the paschal lamb.

He does this, it should be noted, not merely in the matter we have mentioned, where he tells us that Jesus bones were not broken, but in every case where there are injunctions in the Old Testament about the lamb which might have been fulfilled in Jesus as well. The lamb had to be slain in the afternoon (Ex. xii. 6; Deut. xvi. 6: towards evening, but in Jesus time as early as from one or two o’clock). In accordance with this, Jesus is still standing before Pilate (Jn. xix. 14) at midday, though, according to the Synoptics (Mk. xv. 25), he was crucified at nine o’clock in the morning. This, however, makes it the more difficult to understand why Jn. should represent that Jesus was already dead towards five o’clock in the afternoon, for we know that, by no means seldom, crucified men have continued to live on the cross for several days. Further, the lamb had to be chosen on the 10th of Nisan (Exod. xii. 3); in harmony with this, the anointing of Jesus in Bethany, which, according to the Synoptics (Mk. xiv. 8) as well as Jn. (xii. 7), is of the nature of a consecration for his death, is represented in Jn. xii. 1 as taking place on the sixth day before the feast, though Mk. xiv. 1 tells us that it happened on the second day before it (the first and the last day being included; reckoning backwards, therefore, from 15th Nisan as the first day of the feast, this gives us really the 10th Nisan). But, in particular, the day on which the lamb had to be slain was the 14th Nisan (Ex. xii. 6), and this now explains the whole dislocation which Jn. has introduced into the last events of Jesus’ life. In the interest of an idea, to Jn. an idea of some importance, Jesus has been made to carry out to the exact letter, in his own person, the whole fate of the paschal lamb, in order to show that all the injunctions concerning it have now been fulfilled and so abolished for ever, and with them all the commands of the religion of the Old Testament.

It might be doubted whether that Evangelist whose work Clement of Alexandria called—and certainly not unjustly—the pneumatic, or the spiritually-centred, gospel, can have attached such importance to this verbal fulfilment of the Old Testament. Yet Jn. has expressly drawn attention to the fact that when Jesus thighs were not broken, an Old Testament prophecy was fulfilled. And in like manner, it is only he who gives Jesus cry on the cross, “I thirst” (xix. 28), and adds that it was made in fulfilment of a passage in the Old Testament (Ps. xxii. 16). It is only he who tells us (xix. 23 f.) that after Jesus crucifixion his cloak and his tunic were differently disposed of, and who adds here also that this was done in fulfilment of a passage in the Bible, the 19th verse of this same 22nd Psalm: “they divided my raiment among them, and upon my vesture did they cast lots.” The Synoptics introduce from this Psalm (besides the cry undoubtedly made by Jesus, “My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?”) other matter that might serve to embellish the story of Jesus passion (Mt. xxvii. 39, 43); but they have rightly understood verse 19 to imply only one action (Mk. xv. 24). Jn., in understanding it of two actions, shows, on the one hand, that he has no idea how often, times without number, in the Old Testament one idea is expressed by two clauses slightly differing from each other, and, on the other hand, how anxious he is to demonstrate in the history of Jesus the literal fulfilment of the Old Testament. Much as he felt himself to be exalted above it, so far as it contains injunctions as to life, yet in so far as the prophecies are concerned, he held fast very tenaciously, just as the apostle Paul did, to the thesis that “the scripture cannot be broken” (x. 35). Jesus says to the Jews in this Gospel (v. 39), “Ye search the Scriptures because ye think that in them ye have eternal life” (that is to say, have received assurance of eternal life), “and these are they which “in reality “bear witness of me” Compare further the quotations in xiii. 18 (compared with xvii. 12), xv. 25, xix. 37, xii. 38, and the reference to the serpent lifted up by Moses in the wilderness as being a symbol of the lifting up of Jesus on the cross in iii. 14 f.; also ii. 17, vi. 31, 45, x. 34.

The matter may therefore be summed up as follows. The Synoptics report that the arrest, condemnation, execution, and burial of Jesus took place on a day on which all these things would be associated with difficulties, but would by no means be impossible; and as to how they could have arrived at this, by mistake or of set purpose, if the day were really another one, no one has yet been able to offer a suggestion which is even remotely probable. In the case of Jn., on the other hand, we can tell point by point how he must have come to fix upon another day, supposing the Synoptics were right. As soon as we have perceived this, the question ought to be decided, Are we obliged to believe Jn. on this one point, even though in everything else we have been able to put so little faith in him?

But if any one persists in giving the preference to Jn. here, we must ask him one more question in conclusion; to what are we to trace the agreement between the last acts in the closing day of Jesus’ life and those associated with the paschal lamb? Is it chance? Chance in no less than four points? Any one who has not the courage to say this, should realise that only one supposition remains, and one which has been put forward only by the very strictest believers: God so arranged the course of the Passion that everything in it agreed exactly with the injunctions concerning the paschal lamb, purposing in this way to make men realise that Jesus died as the true paschal lamb, and thus did away with the Jewish feast of the Passover and the whole Jewish religion. This view may be found wholly unacceptable, and yet no defender of the statement of the days as given in Jn. can refuse to accept it, unless he is prepared to see here a really very remarkable accident.

26. THE STORY OF JESUS RESURRECTION.

As to the occurrences after Jesus resurrection, especially as to what transpired at the empty grave, the Fourth Evangelist tells us so much that is not found in the other Gospels that it might easily be supposed we have here the words of an eye-witness. The more so because amongst these statements we find also one to the effect that the disciple whom Jesus loved—and whom to all appearance we might sup pose to be the author of the Gospel—hastened with Peter to the tomb. But if that were so, the story of Mk. (xvi. 1-8) and of Mt. (xxviii. 1-8) would be quite inconceivable.

Their chief variation from Jn.—though in this feature Lk. agrees with him—is found, that is to say, in the statement that the women who find the tomb of Jesus empty are commissioned by an angel to bid the disciples go to Galilee, for there they would see their risen Lord. According to Mt. the latter event afterwards happened, and it must have been narrated by Mk. as well; but the original conclusion to his Gospel has been lost, and a much later supplement (xvi. 9-20) substituted for it. In Lk. and Jn., on the other hand, all the appearances of the risen Lord take place in or near Jerusalem. And this too seems really to be the only natural course. All the Gospels agree that Jerusalem was the place in which Jesus rose, and that the disciples were still staying there on Easter morning. Why, then, should the disciples be advised to go to Galilee in order that they might see Jesus?

But for this very reason Mk. and Mt. could never have been led to tell us of this advice to the disciples to go to Galilee, if they had ever heard that Jesus appeared to the disciples in Jerusalem. In no case, therefore, can this account in Lk. and Jn. be the original one; for, if it had been, Mk. and Mt. would unquestionably have heard and accepted it. On the contrary, they must have known of only one account, to wit, that the appearances of the risen Lord had taken place in Galilee.

Even in their case, however, it is remarkable enough that an angel should have to commission the women at the tomb to bid the disciples go to Galilee; and, as a matter of fact, judged by all that we may suppose to have happened, this story is not plausible. Only, the truth is not to be looked for in Lk. and Jn., but in quite a different quarter. In Mk. (xiv. 50) and Mt., that is to say, we read that when Jesus was arrested all the disciples forsook him and fled. Whither? Hardly to Jerusalem; for there what happened to Peter might only too easily happen to them: they might be identified as followers of Jesus. Mk. (xiv. 27 f.) and Mt., however, give us a further clue. When, shortly before his arrest, Jesus prophesied to the disciples that they would all forsake him, he added, “Howbeit, after I am raised up, I will go before you into Galilee.” The idea that he would reach Galilee before them agrees with the account of the angel’s advice to the women; but it is really too obvious to see in this statement merely a veiled indication that the disciples made their escape to their native place, Galilee, and that Jesus appeared to them there, simply because they took up their abode there from the day of his resurrection or a little later (the distance is two or three days journey). Peter, too, after his denial of Jesus, would certainly have followed the rest.

The mistake in Mk. and Mt., therefore, is not that they assume the appearances of the risen Lord to have taken place in Galilee, but that they suppose the disciples to have been still in Jerusalem on Easter morning. But it was this very mistake that must have suggested to Lk. and Jn. the necessity of making a change. If the disciples were still in Jerusalem after Jesus resurrection, these two Evangelists could not but suppose that here also Jesus must have appeared to them. But what to their mind, of course, was the correction of an error, in reality simply added to the -first mistake a second which was much greater.

If, however, in view of this, Jn. does not by any means give us the truth on the main point, it is clear that in the details also we cannot expect to find it. For instance, in the story of Thomas, which is so beautiful in itself, but of which the Synoptics know nothing, and the scene of which, moreover, is likewise Jerusalem. In the case of the story of Mary Magdalene, attractive and affecting though it is to persons of delicate feeling, we can detect from a particular expression that it is not original, but a reconstruction of a story told in the Synoptics. In Jn. Mary Magdalene came to the sepulchre alone, and yet she says (xx. 2), “we know not where they have laid him.” The plural here is only appropriate if there were several women, as in the Synoptics. In xx. 13, the mistake is avoided; Mary Magdalene says here: “I know not where they have laid him.”

And, lastly, the race of Peter and the beloved disciple to the sepulchre! This cannot have happened if the disciples were no longer in Jerusalem. But even if they were still there, we must still insist that the Synoptists never had any knowledge of this race; for, had they had any, who could believe that they would have been silent about it? Moreover, we can see here quite clearly step by step how the statements of the Evangelists developed. Although Mk. and Mt. presuppose that the disciples were still present in Jerusalem, they are quite unaware that any of them has visited the sepulchre (and this will be an echo of the truth that they were no longer in Jerusalem). Lk. already knows something about it, but only in the quite indefinite form (xxiv. 24): “and certain of them that were with us went to the tomb, and found it even so as the women had said, but him they saw not.”Lk. xxiv. 12, according to which Peter ran to the tomb, saw the linen cloths lying, and departed to his home, wondering, certainly did not originally find a place in the Third Gospel but was only added to it subsequently as an abstract from the Fourth. Only, in Lk. the beloved disciple was ignored, because he was not known at all to the readers of the Third Gospel. Jn. already knows the names of the disciples and all the details of their visit to the grave.

And how are these details told? The beloved disciple ran faster than Peter, came first to the grave, and saw the linen cloths lying in it, but did not go in. Peter went in and saw, in addition to the linen cloths, the napkin as well. Afterwards the beloved disciple went in too, saw and believed, that is to say, gained the faith that Jesus had risen. Thus, alternately the one gets an advantage over the other; but, first and last, the beloved disciple appears as the greater.

27. INTRODUCTION OF CONDITIONS OF A LATER PERIOD.

In proportion as it becomes less likely that this could have happened at the tomb of Jesus, the question becomes more pressing, Did it not happen in the later careers of the two disciples? We are reluctant to believe it, and yet it can hardly be otherwise: expression is here given to that later struggle for precedence between the two apostles. Peter excelled the beloved disciple by being bolder and observing more closely the details—of, we may now perhaps say without further ado, the life of Jesus; but in faith, that is to say, in the deeper understanding, the beloved disciple had the advantage.

If any one should still have any scruples about seeing here so bold an introduction of the conditions of a later period into the story of Jesus’ life, he will dismiss them, we should think, when he takes into consideration another passage of a similar kind. We refer to the words spoken by Jesus, iv. 35-38, on an occasion when there seemed to be a possibility of winning over the men belonging to the city of the woman of Samaria. The idea with which the author starts, that the fields (that is to say, the field of his operations among the Samaritans) are white already unto harvest, seems appropriate to the situation. But not a single word in the concluding sentence (iv. 38) is suitable. It is not true that, before the disciples, others laboured to win the Samaritans, or that the disciples themselves did so (cp. p. 13)—to say nothing of the idea that they afterwards entered into the labour of their predecessors. On the other hand, all these sentences are seen at once to be true, if we suppose that Jesus is here speaking of the Christian Mission, and in the way in which some one who was looking back upon the progress of this work during a number of decades would be obliged to speak of it. Then, and then only, is it appropriate to say that the one set of missionaries took the place of the other, and that the later only reaped what the earlier had sown (iv. 37 f.). Here then we can note clearly the careless way in which the author makes Jesus express views which could not have been formed until the much later period in which the author himself lived. But at the same time we can see further that such views do not apply to the Samaritans alone, nor even to them in a special sense, but to all the Gentiles. The author regards the Samaritans—who, as a matter of fact, were not recognised as fellow-countrymen by the Jews (iv. 9; Lk. xvii. 18)—simply as representatives of the whole Gentile world; it is in this that he finds the fields white already unto harvest.

Again, the strange metaphor by which Jesus represents himself as the door through which a rightful shepherd comes to his sheep (p. 36) can be understood if we seek the explanation in the circumstances of a later period. And we can easily do this if we follow the clue provided in 1 Jn. iv. 1-3. The shepherds and the robbers contrasted with them, stand for two classes of Christian teacher; the former acknowledge the true faith in Christ, the latter disavow it. Strictly speaking, then, not Jesus himself, but faith in him is the door by which a true teacher seeks admission to the members of the Christian communities, as compared with false teachers who seek to force an entrance into the communities without any such passport, and so in an unlawful way, and try to capture the leadership of them. In the lifetime of Jesus of course these two classes of teacher were not in existence; they did not arise until a much later period. In x. 8, it is true, Jesus says that all teachers who came forward before him were thieves and robbers; but this is an entirely new thought, and the interpretation of the adjoining verses (x. 1-7, 9, 10a) cannot be made to depend upon it. In these verses teachers who came forward before Jesus cannot be meant, simply because they could never have been in a position to use him as a door.

28. PRECISE STATEMENTS OF TIME IN JN.

The last thing which is made to tell in favour of the accuracy and fidelity of the Fourth Gospel consists of a number of passages in which the day, and even the hour, in which something happened is stated much more carefully than in the Synoptics. Thus i. 29, 35, 43; vi. 22; xii. 12 commence “on the following day”; ii. 1 “on the third day”; in i. 39 it is four o’clock in the afternoon when the two first disciples, Andrew and one who is unnamed, join Jesus; in iv. 6 it is twelve o’clock midday, when Jesus sits by Jacob’s well in Samaria. The inhabitants of the town of Sychar having invited him to stay with them, he remains two days (iv. 40, 43).

If these passages were shown to any one before he knew the rest of the contents of the Fourth Gospel, he would certainly form the opinion that the author must have been a companion of Jesus and deserves to be absolutely trusted even down to the smallest details. But after what has been said in the preceding paragraphs, it is no longer possible to think this. We have actually found that after Jn. has made a statement which is equally precise in form, namely, that Jesus baptised (iii. 22, 26), a few verses later (iv. 2) he himself withdraws it (p. 55 f.). And what is it that happens on each occasion “on the following day”? In i. 29, 35 f. the Baptist is said to have declared Jesus to be the Lamb of God which will take away the sins of the world; in i. 35-42 Andrew and an unnamed disciple are said to have been the first to become disciples of Jesus, and after them Simon, Andrew’s brother, and he is said to have received from Jesus at once, without having given any further proof of his fidelity, the name of honour, Peter, that is to say, “rock.” All this is diametrically opposed to the account of the Synoptics (p. 79 f.; Mk. i. 16-20), and has no likelihood in itself; in fact, if the Baptist had already called Jesus the Lamb of God, and Andrew (i. 41) had described him as the Saviour, it is quite impossible that Jesus should not have been recognised to be the Saviour until a relatively late date (see p. 33). But what is the use of the precise statement, that a matter happened “on the following day,” if it cannot have happened at all?

The only further question that we can ask is, how can Jn. have come to make such precise statements of time? And to this no other answer is possible but that he wished by this device to indicate more clearly the progress made in his story, or intended the words to introduce another important suggestion. When in chap. i. he has arrived at a new stage in the increase in the number of Jesus’ disciples, he says that a new day is beginning. We cannot really be surprised at this in a man who is so little concerned about literal accuracy. It helps to make his story decidedly more vivid and impressive; and it is actually his purpose to paint pictures which will make an impression (see pp. 55 f. and 96 f.). The question whether the statements about Jesus journeys to the feasts (p. 9 f.) have arisen in the same way, or were actually “delivered” to Jn., we must leave undecided.

CONCLUSION.

But enough. A book in which Jesus gives the explanation of the Supper a year before its celebration; in which 500, if not 1000, soldiers, when he whom they are sent to take prisoner says “I am he,” recoil and fall to the ground (xviii. 3-6); in which one hundred pounds of spices are used to embalm his body (xix. 39), ought, at the outset, to be safe from the misunderstanding that it recounts real events. These three points are enough to show that it is dominated by complete indifference as to the faithfulness of a record; that importance is attached only to giving as impressive a representation as possible of certain ideas; and that the whole is sustained by a reverence of Jesus which has lost every standard for measuring what can really happen.