companion; he preferred me to any other; everything I am about to tell you is true, for I have seen it," there is no denying that he should be called by quite another name.

This falsehood, moreover, is not the only one which the author must have committed. We have three epistles which alike bear the name of John. If there is one thing probable in the domain of criticism, it is that the first at least of these epistles is by the same author as the Fourth Gospel. One might almost call it a chapter taken out of that. The diction of the two writings is identical; while the language of the works of the New Testament is so scant in its vocabulary, and so little varied, that such inductions can be drawn with almost absolute certainty. The author of this epistle, like the author of the Gospel, gives himself out as an eye-witness (1 John i. 1-5; iv. 14) of the gospel history. He represents himself as a person well-known, enjoying high consideration in the Church. At first glance, it seems that the most natural hypothesis is to admit that all these writings are indeed the work of John, the son of Zebedee.

Let us hasten to add, nevertheless, that critics of the highest rank have not without grave reason rejected the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel. The work is too rarely cited in the oldest Christian literature; its authority only begins to appear very late.1 Nothing is less like what might be expected from John, an old fisher on the Lake of Gennesareth, than this Gospel. The Greek in which it is written is not in any sense the Palestinian Greek which we are familiar with in the other books of the New Testament. The ideas, in particular, are of an entirely different order. Here we are deep in Philonic and almost Gnostic metaphysics. The discourses of Jesus, as reported by this pretended witness, this confidential friend, are false, often flat, nay, impossible. Finally, the Apocalypse is also given out as the work of one John, who does not, it is true, call himself an Apostle, but who in the churches of Asia arrogates to himself such a primacy that one can hardly fail to identify him with the Apostle 1 See Introduction to this volume, pp. 50-52.

John. Now, when we compare the style and thoughts of the author of the Apocalypse with the style and thoughts of the author of the Fourth Gospel and the first Johannine epistle, we find the most striking discordance. How are we to get out of that labyrinth of strange contradictions and inextricable difficulties?

For my part I see but one way. It is to hold that the Fourth Gospel is, indeed, in a sense "according to John;" that it was not written by John himself; that it was for a long time esoteric and secret in one of the schools which adhered to John. To penetrate the mystery of this school, to learn how the writing in question came forth from it, is simply impossible. Did notes or data left by the Apostle serve as a basis for the text which we read?2 Did a secretary, nurtured by the reading of Philo, and possessing a style of his own, give to the narratives and letters of his master a turn which without this they would never have had? Have we not here something like the letters of Saint Catherine of Sienna, revised by her secretary; or like those revelations of Catherine Emmerich, of which we can say equally that they are by Catherine, and that they are by Brentano,-the ideas of Catherine having passed through the style of Brentano? May not some purely semi-Gnostics, at the end of the Apostle's life, have seized his pen, and under the pretext of aiding him in writing his recollections, and assisting him in his correspondence, incorporated their ideas and favourite expressions, covering themselves with

1 [Renan's argument from the assumed date and authorship of the "Book of Revelation," here and elsewhere (see especially ante, pp. 425, 426; also 57, 262, 290), is made irrelevant by the opinion of Voelter as modified by Eberhard Vischer and coming to be widely held, that this book is fundamentally (in the words of Harnack) "a purely Jewish document, clearly traceable in its outlines and the mass of its details, supplemented and revised by a Christian, who has nothing to do with Israel after the flesh, but thinks only of the Gentile world, out of which the Lamb has purchased with his blood a countless multitude," its dates ranging, according to this view, approximately from A. D. 65 to A. D. 135. - See James Martineau's "Seat of Authority in Religion," pp. 224-226.]

2 John xix. 35; xxi. 24.

his authority?1 Who is that "John the Elder," a sort of double of the Apostle, whose tomb used to be pointed out by the side of John's?2 Is he a different person from the Apostle? Is he the Apostle himself, whose long life was for many years the foundation of the believer's hope ? I have elsewhere touched upon these questions. I shall often return to them again. I have had but one aim in this,—to show that in recurring so often in the "Life of Jesus" to the Fourth Gospel, to fix the thread of my narrative, I have had strong reasons, even if this Gospel was not from the hand of the Apostle John.

1 On this supposition we may explain the silence of Papias, which is so grave an argument against the strict authenticity of the Fourth Gospel. We might even suppose that it is to this Gospel that Papias makes unfriendly allusion in these words: "For I did not rejoice, like the multitude, in those who speak many words, nor in those who call to mind the commandments of others." This would well correspond with the long discourses, wholly foreign from Jesus, which fill the Gospel ascribed to John.

2 Eusebius, H. E. iii. 39.

• John xxi. 22, 23.

4 See Introduction to this volume, passim.

INDEX.

Ascetic doctrine of Jesus, 307-310; its Disciples of Jesus, 186-197, 409.

Baptism, 149, 150, 243; as a sign, 151 Enoch, Book of, 19, 20, 41, 42, 87, 112,

Bethphage (procession of palms), 356, FETISHISM, 78.

Jewish authorities, 75; beliefs, 113-117; Miracles, 12, 13, 26, 31, 71, 267-277, 428;
seditions, 119.

John the Apostle, 52, 57, 74, 285; his NAZARETH, 91, 96-98, 117, 175, 231.