involves. The references to the undying worm and the unquenchable fire certainly suggest the finality of the issues of the judgment, provided one feels confident that they were meant to refer to that event (see Mk. ix. 47, 48; cf. Mt. v. 29, 30). The most emphatic declaration of such a final issue of judgment is Mt. xxv. 46: “These shall go into eternal punishment; but the righteous into eternal life." One's view as to the probable originality of this passage will, however, depend upon the theory which he adopts respecting the primary intent of the judgmentscene as a whole.1

Jesus assured his disciples of a resurrection and of a blessed life in heaven. They shall be, he said, "as angels in heaven" (Mk. xii. 25); “accounted worthy to attain to that world, and the resurrection from the dead" being "sons of God, sons of the resurrection" (Lk. xx. 35, 36). Their good deeds shall be "recompensed in the resurrection of the just" (Lk. xiv. 14). From these passages many scholars infer that unbelievers are not to share, in any sense, in a resurrection;2 but this is a precarious argumentum e silentio (cf. Mk. xii. 26; John v. 29; Acts xxiv. 15). Jesus did not think of Hades as a realm of unconsciousness, but of activity, and therefore had no special motive to touch upon the question, discussed by the Jews, whether all, or only some, should be awakened from the sleep of death. Moreover, when he speaks of the resurrection of the pious, he lays no special emphasis upon the corporeal aspect of it, but conceives of it as the perfecting of the life in all that concerns its divine destiny (Mk. xii. 24-27). That a resurrection in this sense is promised to the righteous only, does not in the least prove that others continue without bodily form, or that they abide in an unconscious existence, or cease to be.3

1 Wendt, Lehre Jesu, p. 188, Weiss, Matthäusev., p. 540, and Holtzmann, Handcommentar, in loco, regard this verse as an addition by the evangelist. It is held to be an amplification of Mt. xvi. 27, in agreement with the idea of Dan. xii. 2.

2 So Weiss, Bibl. Theol. § 34, d; Beyschlag, N. T. Theol. I. 211 (Bk. I. ch. viii. § 11).

3 Cf. Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality, p. 336 sq.

PART II

THE TEACHING OF JESUS ACCORDING TO

THE FOURTH GOSPEL

CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTORY

WITH respect to the authorship of the fourth Gospel three views are now current. (1) The representatives of the so-called liberal school in Germany hold that it is spurious. It is the product of a Hellenizing type of thought which was rife in the second century. It is a construction of the life and teaching of Jesus in accordance with certain forms of speculative thought, and is therefore untrustworthy as a source of historical information or of doctrinal teaching. It is a species of historical romance dominated by the neo-Platonic idea of the Logos, or Reason, which the author identifies with the preexistent Christ. "The fourth Gospel is only estimated rightly when it is considered to be a product of philosophical poetizing, with a religious tendency, emanating from the third Christian generation. As a source for the history of Christ in the flesh it is almost worthless.”1

(2) A series of attempts has been made to show that the Gospel, although not written by the apostle John, was mainly composed of genuine Johannine memoranda, in very much the same way as the first Gospel embodied the Logia. Weizsäcker assigned it to a disciple of John who was supposed, however, to have based his work upon apostolic traditions.2 To this view Hase, who had long defended

1 Jülicher, Einleitung in d. N. T., pp. 258, 259.

Untersuchungen über die evangelische Geschichte, Gotha, 1864.

the genuineness of the gospel, gave his assent in his Geschichte Jesu (Leipzig, 1876). The most conspicuous adherent of this mediating theory at present is Wendt who has elaborated it in detail and in a somewhat different form from his predecessors. He holds that the evangelist possessed and used a series of genuine memoranda of the Lord's words, prefaced by brief historical introductions, which he edited and supplemented. These genuine Logia related mainly to the later period of Jesus' ministry, but were so distributed by the editor as to cover his whole public life. They were preceded by the prologue in substantially the form in which we have it. The principal grounds of this hypothesis are as follows: (a) The natural course of thought is often interrupted by parentheses which are most naturally referred to a redactor; e.g. i. 15 interrupts the connection between vv. 14 and 16; xiii. 18, 19 breaks the connection between xiii. 12-17 and xiii. 20. (b) The discourses and the historical framework of the gospel exhibit a different cast of ideas. The latter emphasize Jesus' miracles as the "signs" of his messiahship; the former his words and works. (c) Certain events are placed in the early part of his ministry which our Synoptic sources refer to its later stages, e.g. the cleansing of the Temple (cf. ii. 13 sq. with Mk. xi. 15 sq.) and the assertion of his Messianic claims. Wendt holds that this Johannine material must be separated from the later additions by a critical process, but that when this is done, it is found to "furnish a subject-matter quite in harmony with the contents of Jesus' teaching as attested by the other sources." The opponents of this view commonly urge against it two principal considerations, first, the testimony of the book itself to its production by an eye-witness (xix. 35; xxi. 24), and, second, the completeness of its literary plan and execution and its marked sameness of style throughout.

(3) The third view is the traditional one that the Gospel was written by the apostle John. I can hardly do

1 Die Lehre Jesu, pp. 215-342; cf. The Teaching of Jesus, I. 22-28 (orig. pp. 6-10).

more than to indicate the present state of the question. For its discussion in detail I must refer the student to the standard works on New Testament Introduction, and to the many special treatises which the investigation of the problem has called forth.1 It must suffice to point out that the objections to the genuineness of the fourth Gospel proceed mainly from theoretic and internal considerations, while the opposite view, which also appeals to internal evidence, supports its claim by reference to a line of witnesses which reaches back almost to the very verge of the apostolic age. Those who hold the apostolic authorship urge that the fourth Gospel bears every mark of a historical narrative; it is not merely interested in certain disembodied ideas; it deals in a multitude of facts and detailed narrations. In some details it seems to be more accurate than the Synoptics and to be indirectly confirmed by them. The claim that the book reflects the Gnostic controversies of the second century is not warranted by a sound exegesis of the text. It is from the same hand as 1 John, whose attestation is ample. The twenty-first chapter is probably an addition by a later writer, who in the name of a number of persons strongly attests the genuineness of the Gospel (xxi. 24). The external evidence of the apostolic authorship is abundant, and has been materially increased by the discoveries of recent years. The negative school long disputed certain alleged correspondences between the fourth Gospel and the imperfect text of the Clementine Homilies; but when in 1853 Dressel published a complete manuscript of these writings, which had recently been discovered in the Ottobonian library in Rome, there was found in the long lost portion an unquestionable reference to the story of the man born blind.2 The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles, which probably dates from the early years of the second century, seems to me to bear traces of the influence of the fourth Gospel. The same may be claimed respecting the

1 Ample references will be found in Vincent's Student's New Testament Handbook (1893), pp. 61–68.

2 Hom. XIX. ch. xxii.; cf. John ix. 2, 3.

so-called Gospel of Peter, which was discovered at Akhmîm in Egypt in 1886-87, and is believed to date from about 165 A.D. On this subject one of the most competent specialists who has studied it says: "The unmistakable acquaintance of the author with our four evangelists deserves a special comment. He uses and misuses each in turn. To him they all stand on an equal footing. He lends no support to the attempt which has been made to place a gulf of separation between the fourth Gospel and the rest, as regards the period or area of their acceptance as canonical." 1

But perhaps the most notable addition which has recently been made to the external evidence for the genuineness of the Gospel is that afforded by the discovery of the Diatessaron of Tatian. This man was an Assyrian by birth and a hearer of Justin Martyr, and flourished about 155-170 A.D. His earlier life was spent in Rome; later, he lived in the East, especially in Syria. In his Address to the Greeks there were several apparent verbal coincidences with the fourth Gospel which gave rise to the conjecture that if his lost Diatessaron, or Harmony of the Gospels, could be discovered, it would be found to contain the fourth Gospel. A certain writer of the twelfth century, Dionysius Bar-Salibi, states that the Diatessaron began with the words: "In the beginning was the Word." This testimony was rejected by the negative criticism. But when at length in 1886 a complete Arabic manuscript of the Diatessaron was brought from Egypt to Rome, it was found that Dionysius was correct, and that the work embodied all four Gospels. This discovery shows that the fourth Gospel was accepted without question as apostolic among the Syrian churches, where Tatian spent his later life, about the year 160 or 165 A.D.2 These are but examples of recent additions to the testimony. All things considered, the genuineness of the fourth Gospel is amply

1 Professor J. Armitage Robinson, in his edition of the Gospel of Peter, p. 33.

2 The Diatessaron is published in English with full introduction and notes by J. Hamlyn Hill. Edinburgh, 1894.