Chapter XVII: Part 17

_Comparison with the Synoptists._--The following are the most obvious
differences between the original book and the Synoptists. John has a
metaphysical prologue; Matthew and Luke have historical prologues; and
Mark is without any prologue. The earthly scene is here Judea, indeed
Jerusalem, with but five breaks (vi. 1-vii. 10) is the only long one;
whilst over two-thirds of each Synoptist deal with Galilee or Samaria.
The ministry here lasts about three and a half years (it begins some
months before the first Passover, ii. 13; the feast of v. 1 is
probably a second; the third occurs vi. 4; and on the fourth, xi. 55,
He dies): whilst the Synoptists have but the one Passover of His
death, after barely a year of ministry. Here Jesus' teaching contains
no parables and but three allegories, the Synoptists present it as
parabolic through and through. Here not one exorcism occurs; in the
Synoptists the exorcisms are as prominent as the cures and the
preaching, John has, besides the passion, seven accounts in common
with the Synoptists: the Baptist and Jesus, (i. 19-34); cleansing of
the Temple (ii. 13-16); cure of the centurion's (ruler's) servant
(son) (iv. 46-54); multiplication of the loaves (vi. 1-13); walking
upon the water (vi. 16-21); anointing at Bethany, (xii. 1-8); entry
into Jerusalem (xii. 12-16): all unique occurrences. In the first,
John describes how the Baptist, on Jesus' approach, cries "Behold the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world"; and how he says
"I saw the spirit descending upon Him, and I bore witness that this is
the Son of God." But the Synoptists, especially Mark, give the slow
steps in even the apostles' realization of Jesus' Messianic character;
only at Caesarea Philippi Simon alone, for the first time, clearly
discerns it, Jesus declaring that His Father has revealed it to Him,
and yet Simon is still scandalized at the thought of a suffering
Messiah (Mark viii. 28-34). Only some two weeks before the end is He
proclaimed Messiah at Jericho (x. 46-48); then in Jerusalem, five days
before dying for this upon the cross (xi. 1-10, xv. 37). As to the
Baptist, in all three Synoptists, he baptizes Jesus, and in Mark i.
10, 11 it is Jesus who sees the Spirit descending upon Himself on His
emerging from beneath the water, and it is to Himself that God's voice
is addressed; in John, Jesus' baptism is ignored, only the Spirit
remains hovering above Him, as a sign for the Baptist's instruction.
And in Matt. xi. 2-6, the Baptist, several months after the Jordan
scene, sends from his prison to ascertain if Jesus is indeed the
Messiah; in John, the Baptist remains at large so as again (iii.
22-36) to proclaim Jesus' heavenly provenance. The cleansing of the
Temple occurs in the Synoptists four days before His death, and
instantly determines the hierarchs to seek His destruction (Mark xi.
15-18); John puts it three years back, as an appropriate frontispiece
to His complete claims and work.

The passion-narratives reveal the following main differences. John
omits, at the last supper, its central point, the great historic act
of the holy eucharist, carefully given by the Synoptists and St Paul,
having provided a highly doctrinal equivalent in the discourse on the
living bread, here spoken by Jesus in Capernaum over a year before the
passion (vi. 4), the day after the multiplication of the loaves. This
transference is doubtless connected with the change in the relations
between the time of the Passover meal and that of His death: in the
Synoptists, the Thursday evening's supper is a true Passover meal, the
lamb had been slain that afternoon and Jesus dies some twenty-four
hours later; in John, the supper is not a Passover-meal, the Passover
is celebrated on Friday, and Jesus, proclaimed here from the first,
the Lamb of God, dies whilst the paschal lambs, His prototypes, are
being slain. The scene in the garden is without the agony of
Gethsemane; a faint echo of this historic anguish appears in the scene
with the Greeks four days earlier, and even that peaceful appeal to,
and answer of, the Father occurs only for His followers' sakes. In the
garden Jesus here Himself goes forth to meet His captors, and these
fall back upon the ground, on His revealing Himself as Jesus of
Nazareth. The long scenes with Pilate culminate in the great sayings
concerning His kingdom not being of this world and the object of this
His coming being to bear witness to the truth, thus explaining how,
though affirming kingship (Mark xv. 2) He could be innocent. In John
He does not declare Himself Messiah before the Jewish Sanhedrin (Mark
xiv. 61) but declares Himself supermundane regal witness to the truth
before the Roman governor. The scene on Calvary differs as follows: In
the Synoptists the soldiers divide His garments among them, casting
lots (Mark xv. 24); in John they make four parts of them and cast lots
concerning His seamless tunic, thus fulfilling the text, "They divided
My garments among them and upon My vesture they cast lots": the
parallelism of Hebrew poetry, which twice describes one fact, being
taken as witnessing to two, and the tunic doubtless symbolizing the
unity of the Church, as in Philo the high priest's seamless robe
symbolizes the indivisible unity of the universe, expressive of the
Logos (_De ebrietate_, xxi.). In the Synoptists, of His followers only
women--the careful, seemingly exhaustive lists do not include His
mother--remain, looking on "from afar" (Mark xv. 40); in John, His
mother stands with the two other Marys and the beloved disciple
beneath the cross, and "from that hour the disciple took her unto his
own (house)," while in the older literature His mother does not appear
in Jerusalem till just before Pentecost, and with "His brethren" (Acts
i. 14). And John alone tells how the bones of the dead body remained
unbroken, fulfilling the ordinance as to the paschal lamb (Exod. xii.
46) and how blood and water flow from His spear-pierced side: thus the
Lamb "taketh away the sins of the world" by shedding His blood which
"cleanseth us from every sin"; and "He cometh by water and blood,"
historically at His baptism and crucifixion, and mystically to each
faithful soul in baptism and the eucharist. The story of the risen
Christ (xx.) shows dependence on and contrast to the Synoptic
accounts. Its two halves have each a negative and a positive scene.
The empty grave (1-10) and the apparition to the Magdalen (11-18)
together correspond to the message brought by the women (Matt. xxviii.
1-10); and the apparition to the ten joyously believing apostles
(19-23) and then to the sadly doubting Thomas (24-29) together
correspond to Luke xxiv. 36-43, where the eleven apostles jointly
receive one visit from the risen One, and both doubt and believe,
mourn and rejoice.

The Johannine discourses reveal differences from the Synoptists so
profound as to be admitted by all. Here Jesus, the Baptist and the
writer speak so much alike that it is sometimes impossible to say
where each speaker begins and ends: e.g. in iii. 27-30, 31-36. The
speeches dwell upon Jesus' person and work, as we shall find, with a
didactic directness, philosophical terminology and denunciatory
exclusiveness unmatched in the Synoptist sayings. "This is eternal
life, that they may know Thee the only true God and Jesus Christ whom
Thou hast sent" (xvii. 3), is part of the high-priestly prayer; yet
Père Calmes, with the papal censor's approbation, says, "It seems to
us impossible not to admit that we have here dogmatic developments
explicable rather by the evangelist's habits of mind than by the
actual words of Jesus." "I have told you of earthly things and you
believe not; how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?"
(iii. 12), and "Ye are from beneath, I am from above" (viii. 23), give
us a Plato-(Philo-) like upper, "true" world, and a lower, delusive
world. "Ye shall die in your sins" (viii. 21); "ye are from your
father the devil" (viii. 44); "I am the door of the sheep, all they
that came before Me are thieves and robbers," (x. 7, 8); "they have no
excuse for their sin" (xv. 22)--contrast strongly with the yearning
over Jerusalem: "The blood of Abel the just" and "the blood of
Zacharias son of Barachias" (Matt. xxiii. 35-37; and "Father, forgive
them; for they know not what they do" Luke xxiii. 34). And whilst the
Synoptist speeches and actions stand in loose and natural relation to
each other, the Johannine deeds so closely illustrate the sayings that
each set everywhere supplements the other: the history itself here
tends to become one long allegory. So with the woman at the well and
"the living water"; the multiplication of the loaves and "the living
Bread"; "I am the Light of the world" and the blind man's cure; "I am
the Resurrection and the Life" and the raising of Lazarus; indeed even
with the Temple-cleansing and the prophecy as to His resurrection,
Nicodemus's night visit and "men loved the darkness rather than the
light," the cure of the inoperative paralytic and "My Father and I
work hitherto," the walking phantom-like upon the waters (John vi.
15-21; Mark vi. 49), and the declaration concerning the eucharist,
"the spirit it is that quickeneth" (John vi. 63). Only some sixteen
Synoptic sayings reappear here; but we are given some great new
sayings full of the Synoptic spirit.

_Characteristics and Object._--The book's character results from the continuous operation of four great tendencies. There is everywhere a readiness to handle traditional, largely historical, materials with a sovereign freedom, controlled and limited by doctrinal convictions and devotional experiences alone. There is everywhere the mystic's deep love for double, even treble meanings: e.g. the "again" in iii. 2, means, literally, "from the beginning," to be physically born again; morally, to become as a little child; mystically, "from heaven, God," to be spiritually renewed. "Judgment" ([Greek: krisis]), in the popular sense, condemnation, a future act; in the mystical sense, discrimination, a present fact. There is everywhere the influence of certain central ideas, partly identical with, but largely developments of, those less reflectively operative in the Synoptists. Thus six great terms are characteristic of, or even special to, this Gospel. "The Only-Begotten" is most nearly reached by St Paul's term "His own Son." The "Word," or "Logos," is a term derived from Heracleitus of Ephesus and the Stoics, through the Alexandrian Jew Philo, but conceived here throughout as definitely personal. "The Light of the World" the Jesus-Logos here proclaims Himself to be; in the Synoptists He only declares His disciples to be such. "The Paraclete," as in Philo, is a "helper," "intercessor"; but in Philo he is the intelligible universe, whilst here He is a self-conscious Spirit. "Truth," "the truth," "to know," have here a prominence and significance far beyond their Synoptic or even their Pauline use. And above all stand the uses of "Life," "Eternal Life." The living ever-working Father (vi. 57; v. 17) has a Logos in whom is Life (i. 4), an ever-working Son (v. 17), who declares Himself "the living Bread," "the Resurrection and the Life," "the Way, the Truth and the Life" (vi. 51; xi. 25; xiv. 16): so that Father and Son quicken whom they will (v. 21); the Father's commandment is life everlasting, and Jesus' words are spirit and life (xii. 50; vi. 63, 68). The term, already Synoptic, takes over here most of the connotations of the "Kingdom of God," the standing Synoptic expression, which appears here only in iii. 3-5; xviii. 36. Note that the term "the Logos" is peculiar to the Apocalypse (xix. 13), and the prologue here; but that, as Light and Life, the Logos-conception is present throughout the book. And thus there is everywhere a striving to contemplate history _sub specie aeternitatis_ and to englobe the successiveness of man in the simultaneity of God.

_Narratives Peculiar to John._--Of his seven great symbolical, doctrinally interpreted "signs," John shares three, the cure of the ruler's son, the multiplication of the loaves, the walking on the waters, with the Synoptists: yet here the first is transformed almost beyond recognition; and the two others only typify and prepare the eucharistic discourse. Of the four purely Johannine signs, two--the cures of the paralytic (v. 1-16), and of the man born blind (ix. 1-34)--are, admittedly, profoundly symbolical. In the first case, the man's physical and spiritual lethargy are closely interconnected and strongly contrasted with the ever-active God and His Logos. In the second case there is also the closest parallel between physical blindness cured, and spiritual darkness dispelled, by the Logos-Light as described in the accompanying discourse. Both narratives are doubtless based upon actual occurrences--the cures narrated in Mark ii., iii., viii., x. and scenes witnessed by the writer in later times; yet here they do but picture our Lord's spiritual work in the human soul achieved throughout Christian history. We cannot well claim more than these three kinds of reality for the first and the last signs, the miracle at Cana and the resurrection of Lazarus.

For the marriage-feast sign yields throughout an allegorical meaning. Water stands in this Gospel for what is still but symbol; thus the water-pots serve here the external Jewish ablutions--old bottles which the "new wine" of the Gospel is to burst (Mark ii. 22). Wine is the blood of the new covenant, and He will drink the fruit of the vine new in the Kingdom of God (Mark xiv. 23-25); the vineyard where He Himself is the true Vine (Mark xii. 1; John xv. 1). And "the kingdom of heaven is like to a marriage-feast" (Matt. xxii. 2); Jesus is the Bridegroom (Mark ii. 19); "the marriage of the Lamb has come" (Rev. xix. 7). "They have no wine": the hopelessness of the old conditions is announced here by the true Israel, the Messiah's spiritual mother, the same "woman" who in Rev. xii. 2, 5 "brought forth a man-child who was to rule all nations." Cardinal Newman admits that the latter woman "represents the church, this is the real or direct sense"; yet as her man-child is certainly the Messiah, this church must be the faithful Jewish church. Thus also the "woman" at the wedding and beneath the cross stands primarily for the faithful Old Testament community, corresponding to the beloved disciple, the typical New Testament follower of her Son, the Messiah: in each case the devotional accommodation to His earthly mother is equally ancient and legitimate. He answers her "My hour is not yet come," i.e. in the symbolic story, the moment for working the miracle; in the symbolized reality, the hour of His death, condition for the spirit's advent; and "what is there between Me and thee?" i.e. "My motives spring no more from the old religion," words devoid of difficulty, if spoken thus by the Eternal Logos to the passing Jewish church. The transformation is soon afterwards accomplished, but in symbol only; the "hour" of the full sense is still over three years off. Already Philo says "the Logos is the master of the spiritual drinking-feast," and "let Melchisedeck"--the Logos--"in lieu of water offer wine to souls and inebriate them" (_De somn._ ii. 37; _Legg. all._ iii. 26). But in John this symbolism figures a great historic fact, the joyous freshness of Jesus' ministerial beginnings, as indicated in the sayings of the Bridegroom and of the new wine, a freshness typical of Jesus' ceaseless renovation of souls.

The raising of Lazarus, in appearance a massive, definitely localized historical fact, requires a similar interpretation, unless we would, in favour of the direct historicity of a story peculiar to a profoundly allegorical treatise, ruin the historical trustworthiness of the largely historical Synoptists in precisely their most complete and verisimilar part. For especially in Mark, the passing through Jericho, the entry into Jerusalem, the Temple-cleansing and its immediate effect upon the hierarchs, their next day's interrogatory, "By what authority doest thou these things?" i.e. the cleansing (x. 46-xi. 33), are all closely interdependent and lead at once to His discussions with His Jerusalem opponents (xii. xiii.), and to the anointing, last supper, and passion (xiv. xv). John's last and greatest symbolic sign replaces those historic motives, since here it is the raising of Lazarus which determines the hierarchs to kill Jesus (xi. 46-52), and occasions the crowds which accompany and meet Him on His entry (xii. 9-19). The intrinsic improbabilities of the narrative, if taken as direct history, are also great: Jesus' deliberate delay of two days to secure His friend's dying, and His rejoicing at the death, since thus He can revivify His friend and bring His disciples to believe in Himself as the Life; His deliberate weeping over the death which He has thus let happen, yet His anger at the similar tears of Lazarus's other friends; and His praying, as He tells the Father in the prayer itself, simply to edify the bystanders: all point to a doctrinal allegory. Indeed the climax of the whole account is already reached in Jesus' great saying: "I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in Me ... shall not die for ever," and in Martha's answer: "I believe that Thou art the Christ, the Son of God, who hast come into the world" (xi. 26, 27); the sign which follows is but the pictorial representation of this abiding truth. The materials for the allegory will have been certain Old Testament narratives, but especially the Synoptic accounts of Jesus' raisings of Jairus's daughter and of the widow's son (Mark v.; Luke vii.). Mary and Martha are admittedly identical with the sisters in Luke x. 38-42; and already some Greek fathers connect the Lazarus of this allegory with the Lazarus of the parable (Luke xvi. 19-31). In the parable Lazarus returns not to earth, since Abraham foresees that the rich man's brethren would disbelieve even if one rose from the dead; in the corresponding allegory, Lazarus does actually return to life, and the Jews believe so little as to determine upon killing the very Life Himself.

_Special Difficulties and Special Greatness._--The difficulties, limitations and temporary means special to the book are closely connected with its ready appeal and abiding power; let us take both sets of things together, in three couples of interrelated price and gift.

The book's method and form are pervadingly allegorical; its instinct and aim are profoundly mystical. Now from Philo to Origen we have a long Hellenistic, Jewish and Christian application of that all-embracing allegorism, where one thing stands for another and where no factual details resist resolution into a symbol of religious ideas and forces. Thus Philo had, in his life of Moses, allegorized the Pentateuchal narratives so as to represent him as mediator, saviour, intercessor of his people, the one great organ of revelation, and the soul's guide from the false lower world into the upper true one. The Fourth Gospel is the noblest instance of this kind of literature, of which the truth depends not on the factual accuracy of the symbolizing appearances but on the truth of the ideas and experiences thus symbolized. And Origen is still full of spontaneous sympathy with its pervading allegorism. But this method has lost its attraction; the Synoptists, with their rarer and slighter pragmatic rearrangements and their greater closeness to our Lord's actual words, deeds, experiences, environment, now come home to us as indefinitely richer in content and stimulative appeal. Yet mysticism persists, as the intuitive and emotional apprehension of the most specifically religious of all truths, viz. the already full, operative existence of eternal beauty, truth and goodness, of infinite Personality and Spirit independently of our action, and not, as in ethics, the simple possibility and obligation for ourselves to produce such-like things. And of this elemental mode of apprehension and root-truth, the Johannine Gospel is the greatest literary document and incentive extant: its ultimate aim and deepest content retain all their potency.

The book contains an intellectualist, static, determinist, abstractive trend. In Luke x. 25-28, eternal life depends upon loving God and man; here it consists in knowing the one true God and Christ whom He has sent. In the Synoptists, Jesus "grows in favour with God and man," passes through true human experiences and trials, prays alone on the mountain-side, and dies with a cry of desolation; here the Logos' watchword is "I am," He has deliberately to stir up emotion in Himself, never prays for Himself, and in the garden and on the cross shows but power and self-possession. Here we find "ye cannot hear, cannot believe, because ye are not from God, not of My sheep" (viii. 47, x. 26); "the world cannot receive the spirit of truth" (xiv. 17). Yet the ethical current appears here also strongly: "he who doeth the truth, cometh to the light" (iii. 21), "if you love Me, keep My commandments" (xiv. 15). Libertarianism is here: "the light came, but men loved the darkness better than the light," "ye will not come to Me" (iii. 19, v. 40); hence the appeal "abide in Me"--the branch can cease to be in Him the Vine (xv. 4, 2). Indeed even those first currents stand here for the deepest religious truths, the prevenience of God and man's affinity to Him. "Not we loved God (first), but He (first) loved us"; "let us love Him, because He first loved us" (1 John iv. 10, 19); "no man can come to Me, unless the Father draw him" (vi. 44), a drawing which effects a hunger and thirst for Christ and God (iv. 14, vi. 35). Thus man's spirit, ever largely but potential, can respond actively to the historic Jesus, because already touched and made hungry by the all-actual Spirit-God who made that soul akin unto Himself.

The book has an outer protective shell of acutely polemical and exclusive moods and insistences, whilst certain splendid Synoptic breadths and reconciliations are nowhere reached; but this is primarily because it is fighting, more consciously than they, for that inalienable ideal of all deepest religion, unity, even external and corporate, amongst all believers. The "Pneumatic" Gospel comes thus specially to emphasize certain central historical facts; and, the most explicitly institutional and sacramental of the four, to proclaim the most universalistic and developmental of all Biblical sayings. Here indeed Jesus will not pray for the world (xvii. 9); "ye shall die in your sins," He insists to His opponents (viii. 44, 24); it is the Jews generally who appear throughout as such; nowhere is there a word as to forgiving our enemies; and the commandment of love is designated by Jesus as His, as new, and as binding the disciples to "love one another" within the community to which He gives His "example" (xv. 12, xiii. 34, 15). In the Synoptists, the disciples' intolerance is rebuked (Mark ix. 38-41); Jesus' opposition is everywhere restricted to the Pharisees and the worldly Sadducees; He ever longs for the conversion of Jerusalem; the great double commandment of love is proclaimed as already formulated in the Mosaic law (Mark xii. 28-34); the neighbour to be thus loved and served is simply any and every suffering fellow-man; and the pattern for such perfect love is found in a schismatical Samaritan (Luke x. 25-37). Yet the deepest strain here is more serenely universalist even than St Paul, for here Jesus says: "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should ... have everlasting life" (iii. 16). True, the great prologue passage (i. 9) probably reads "He was the true Light coming into the world, that enlighteneth every man," so that the writer would everywhere concentrate his mind upon the grace attendant upon explicit knowledge of the incarnate, historic Christ. Yet Christian orthodoxy, which itself has, all but uniformly, understood this passage of the spiritual radiation throughout the world of the Word before His incarnation, has been aided towards such breadth as to the past by the Johannine outlook into the future. For, in contrast to the earliest Synoptic tradition, where the full Christian truth and its first form remain undistinguished, and where its earthly future appears restricted to that generation, in John the Eternal Life conception largely absorbs the attention away from all successiveness; Jesus' earthly life does not limit the religion's assimilation of further truth and experience: "I have many things to tell you, but you cannot bear them now," "the Father will give you another Helper, the spirit of truth, who will abide with you for ever" (xvi. 12, xiv. 15). This universalism is not simply spiritual; the external element, presupposed in the Synoptists as that of the Jewish church within which Jesus' earthly life was spent, is here that of the now separate Christian community: He has other sheep not of this fold--them also He must bring, there will be one fold, one shepherd; and His seamless tunic, and Peter's net which, holding every kind of fish, is not rent, are symbols of this visible unity. Ministerial gradations exist in this church; Jesus begins the feet-washing with Peter, who alone speaks and is spoken to; the beloved disciple outruns Peter to Jesus' monument, yet waits to go in till Peter has done so first; and in the appendix the treble pastoral commission is to Peter alone: a Petrine pre-eminence which but echoes the Synoptists. And sacramentalism informs the great discourses concerning rebirth by water and the spirit, and feeding on the Living Bread, Jesus' flesh and blood, and the narrative of the issue of blood and water from the dead Jesus' side. Indeed so severe a stress is laid upon the explicitly Christian life and its specific means, that orthodoxy itself interprets the rebirth by water and spirit, and the eating the flesh and drinking the blood to which entrance into the Kingdom and possession of interior life are here exclusively attached, as often represented by a simple sincere desire and will for spiritual purification and a keen hunger and thirst for God's aid, together with such cultual acts as such souls can know or find, even without any knowledge of the Christian rites. Thus there is many "a pedagogue to Christ," and the Christian visible means and expressions are the culmination and measure of what, in various degrees and forms, accompanies every sincerely striving soul throughout all human history.

_Origin and Authorship._--The question as to the book's origin has lost its poignancy through the ever-increasing recognition of the book's intrinsic character. Thus the recent defenders of the apostolic authorship, the Unitarian James Drummond (1903), the Anglican William Sanday (1905), the Roman Catholic Theodore Calmes (1904), can tell us, the first, that "the evangelist did not aim at an illustrative picture of what was most characteristic of Jesus"; the second, that "the author sank into his own consciousness and at last brought to light what he found there"; the third, that "the Gospel contains an entire theological system," "history is seen through the intervening dogmatic development," "the Samaritan woman is ... a personification," "the behaviour of the Greeks is entirely natural in such a book." We thus get at cross-purposes with this powerful, profound work. Only some such position as Abbé Loisy's critical summing up (1903) brings out its specific greatness. "What the author was, his book, in spite of himself, tells us to some extent: a Christian of Judeo-Alexandrine formation; a believer without, apparently, any personal reminiscence of what had actually been the life, preaching and death of Jesus; a theologian far removed from every historical preoccupation, though he retains certain principal facts of tradition without which Christianity would evaporate into pure ideas; and a seer who has lived the Gospel which he propounds." "To find his book beautiful and true, we need but take it as it is and understand it." "The church, which has never discussed the literary problem of this Gospel, in nowise erred as to its worth."

Several traditional positions have indeed been approximately maintained or reconquered against the critics. As to the Gospel's date, critics have returned from 160-170 (Baur), 150 (Zeller), 130 (Keim), to 110-115 (Renan) and 80-110 (Harnack): since Irenaeus says its author lived into the times of Trajan (90-117), a date somewhere about 105 would satisfy tradition. As to the place, the critics accept proconsular Asia with practical unanimity, thus endorsing Irenaeus's declaration that the Gospel was published in Ephesus. As to the author's antecedents, critics have ceased to hold that he could not have been a Jew-Christian (so Bretschneider, 1820), and admit (so Schmiedel, (1901) that he must have been by birth a Jew of the Dispersion, or the son of Christian parents who had been such Jews. And as to the vivid accuracy of many of his topographical and social details, the predominant critical verdict now is that he betrays an eye-witness's knowledge of the country between Sichem and Jordan and as to Jerusalem; he will have visited these places, say in 90, or may have lived in Jerusalem shortly before its fall. But the reasons against the author being John the Zebedean or any other eyewitness of Jesus' earthly life have accumulated to a practical demonstration.

As to the external evidence for the book's early date, we must remember that the Epistle to the Hebrews and the Book of Revelation, though admittedly earlier, are of the same school, and, with the great Pauline Epistles, show many preformations of Johannine phrases and ideas. Other slighter prolusions will have circulated in that Philonian centre Ephesus, before the great Gospel englobed and superseded them. Hence the precariousness of the proofs derived from more or less close parallels to Johannine passages in the apostolic fathers. Justin Martyr (163-167) certainly uses the Gospel; but his conception of Jesus' life is so strictly Synoptic that he can hardly have accepted it as from an apostolic eyewitness. Papias of Hierapolis, in his _Exposition of the Lord's Sayings_ (145-160) appears nowhere to have mentioned it, and clearly distinguishes between "what Andrew, Peter, ... John or Matthew or any other of the Lord's disciples spoke," and "what Aristion and the presbyter John, the Lord's disciples, say." Thus Papias, as Eusebius about 314 insists, knew two Johns, and the apostle was to him a far-away figure; indeed early medieval chroniclers recount that Papias "in the second book of the Lord's sayings" asserted that both the sons of Zebedee were "slain by Jews," so that the apostle John would have died before 70. Irenaeus's testimony is the earliest and admittedly the strongest we possess for the Zebedean authorship; yet, as Calmes admits, "it cannot be considered decisive." In his work against the Heresies and in his letter to Florinus, about 185-191, he tells how he had himself known Bishop Polycarp of Smyrna, and how Polycarp "used to recount his familiar intercourse with John and the others who had seen the Lord"; and explicitly identifies this John with the Zebedean and the evangelist. But Irenaeus was at most fifteen when thus frequenting Polycarp; writes thirty-five to fifty years later in Lyons, admitting that he noted down nothing at the time; and, since his mistaken description of Papias as "a hearer of John" the Zebedean was certainly reached by mistaking the presbyter for the apostle, his additional words "and a companion of Polycarp" point to this same mistaken identification having also operated in his mind with regard to Polycarp. In any case, the very real and important presbyter is completely unknown to Irenaeus, and his conclusion as to the book's authorship resulted apparently from a comparison of its contents with Polycarp's teaching. If the presbyter wrote Revelation and was Polycarp's master, such a mistake could easily arise. Certainly Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, made a precisely similar mistake when about 190 he described the Philip "who rests in Hierapolis" as "one of the twelve apostles," since Eusebius rightly identifies this Philip with the deacon of Acts xxi. A positive testimony for the critical conclusion is derived from the existence of a group of Asia Minor Christians who about 165 rejected the Gospel as not by John but by Cerinthus. The attribution is doubtless mistaken. But could Christians sufficiently numerous to deserve a long discussion by St Epiphanius in 374-377, who upheld the Synoptists, stoutly opposed the Gnostics and Montanists, and had escaped every special designation till the bishop nicknamed them the "Alogoi" (irrational rejectors of the Logos-Gospel), dare, in such a time and country, to hold such views, had the apostolic origin been incontestable? Surely not. The Alexandrian Clement, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius, Jerome and Augustine only tell of the Zebedean what is traceable to stories told by Papias of others, to passages of Revelation and the Gospel, or to the assured fact of the long-lived Asian presbyter.

As to the internal evidence, if the Gospel typifies various imperfect or sinful attitudes in Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman and Thomas; if even the mother appears to symbolize faithful Israel: then, profoundly spiritual and forward-looking as it is, a type of the perfect disciple, not all unlike Clement's perfect "Gnostic," could hardly be omitted by it; and the precise details of this figure may well be only ideally, mystically true. The original work nowhere identifies this disciple with any particular historic figure. "He who saw" the lance-thrust "hath borne witness, and his witness is true," is asserted (xix. 35) of the disciple. Yet "to see" is said also of intuitive faith, "whoso hath seen Me, hath seen the Father" (xiv. 9); and "true" appears also in "the true Light," "the true Bread from heaven," as characterizing the realities of the upper, alone fully true world, and equals "heavenly" (iii. 12); thus a "true witness" testifies to some heavenly reality, and appeals to the reader's "pneumatic," i.e. allegorical, understanding.

Only in the appendix do we find any deliberate identification with a particular historic person: "this is the disciple who witnessed to and who wrote these things" (24) refers doubtless to the whole previous work and to "the disciple whom Jesus loved," identified here with an unnamed historic personage whose recent death had created a shock, evidently because he was the last of that apostolic generation which had so keenly expected the second coming (18-23). This man was so great that the writer strives to win his authority for this Gospel; and yet this man was not John the Zebedean, else why, now he is dead and gone, not proclaim the fact? If the dead man was John the presbyter--if this John had in youth just seen Jesus and the Zebedean, and in extreme old age had still seen and approved the Gospel--to attribute this Gospel to him, as is done here, would not violate the literary ethics of those times. Thus the heathen philosopher Iamblichus (d. c. 330) declares: "this was admirable" amongst the Neo-Pythagoreans "that they ascribed everything to Pythagoras; but few of them acknowledge their own works as their own" (_de Pythag. vita_, 198). And as to Christians, Tertullian about 210 tells how the presbyter who, in proconsular Asia, had "composed the _Acts of Paul and Thecla_" was convicted and deposed, for how could it be credible that Paul should confer upon women the power to "teach and baptize" as these _Acts_ averred? The attribution as such, then, was not condemned.

The facts of the problem would all appear covered by the hypothesis that John the presbyter, the eleven being all dead, wrote the book of Revelation (its more ancient Christian portions) say in 69, and died at Ephesus say in 100; that the author of the Gospel wrote the first draft, here, say in 97; that this book, expanded by him, first circulated within a select Ephesian Christian circle; and that the Ephesian church officials added to it the appendix and published it in 110-120. But however different or more complicated may have been the actual origins, three points remain certain. The real situation that confronts us is not an unbroken tradition of apostolic eye-witnesses, incapable of re-statement with any hope of ecclesiastical acceptance, except by another apostolic eye-witness. On one side indeed there was the record, underlying the Synoptists, of at least two eye-witnesses, and the necessity of its preservation and transmission; but on the other side a profound double change had come over the Christian outlook and requirements. St Paul's heroic labours (30-64) had gradually gained full recognition and separate organization for the universalist strain in our Lord's teaching; and he who had never seen the earthly Jesus, but only the heavenly Christ, could even declare that Christ "though from the Jewish fathers according to the flesh" had died, "so that henceforth, even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, now we no further know Him thus," "the Lord is the Spirit," and "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." And the Jewish church, within which Christianity had first lived and moved, ceased to have a visible centre. Thus a super-spatial and super-temporal interpretation of that first markedly Jewish setting and apprehension of the Christian truth became as necessary as the attachment to the original contingencies. The Fourth Gospel, inexplicable without St Paul and the fall of Jerusalem, is fully understandable with them. The attribution of the book to an eye-witness nowhere resolves, it everywhere increases, the real difficulties; and by insisting upon having history in the same degree and way in John as in the Synoptists, we cease to get it sufficiently anywhere at all. And the Fourth Gospel's true greatness lies well within the range of this its special character. In character it is profoundly "pneumatic"; Paul's super-earthly Spirit-Christ here breathes and speaks, and invites a corresponding spiritual comprehension. And its greatness appears in its inexhaustibly deep teachings concerning Christ's sheep and fold; the Father's drawing of souls to Christ; the dependence of knowledge as to Christ's doctrine upon the doing of God's will; the fulfilling of the commandment of love, as the test of true discipleship; eternal life, begun even here and now; and God a Spirit, to be served in spirit and in truth.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--See also the independent discussion, under REVELATION,
BOOK OF, of the authorship of that work. Among the immense literature
of the subject, the following books will be found especially
instructive by the classically trained reader: Origen's commentary,
finished (only to John xiii. 33) in 235-237 (best ed. by Preuschen,
1903). St Augustine's _Tractatus in Joannis Ev. et Ep._, about 416.
The Spanish Jesuit Juan Maldonatus' Latin commentary, published 1596
(critical reprint, edited by Raich, 1874), a pathfinder on many
obscure points, is still a model for tenacious penetration of
Johannine ideas. Bretschneider's short _Probabilia de Evangelii ...
Joannis Apostoli indole et origine_ (1820), the first systematic
assault on the traditional attribution, remains unrefuted in its main
contention. The best summing up and ripest fruit of the critical
labour since then are Professor H. J. Holtzmann's _Handkommentar_ (2nd
ed., 1893) and the respective sections in his _Einleitung in d. N. T._
(3rd ed., 1892) and his _Lehrbuch der N. T. Theologie_ (1897), vol. 2.
Professor C. E. Luthardt's _St John, Author of the Fourth Gospel_
(Eng. trans., with admirable bibliography by C. R. Gregory, 1875),
still remains the best conservative statement. Among the few
critically satisfactory French books, Abbé Loisy's _Le Quatrième
évangile_ (1903) stands pre-eminent for delicate psychological
analysis and continuous sense of the book's closely knit unity; whilst
Père Th. Calmes' _Évangile selon S. Jean_ (1904) indicates how
numerous are the admissions as to the book's character and the
evidences for its authorship, made by intelligent Roman Catholic
apologists with Rome's explicit approbation. In England a considerably
less docile conservatism has been predominant. Bp Lightfoot's _Essays
on ... Supernatural Religion_ (1874-1877; collected 1889) are often
masterly conservative interpretations of the external evidence; but
they leave this evidence still inconclusive, and the formidable
contrary internal evidence remains practically untouched. Much the
same applies to Bp Westcott's _Gospel according to St John_ (1882),
devotionally so attractive, and in textual criticism excellent. Dr
James Drummond's _Inquiry into the Character and Authorship of the
Fourth Gospel_ (1903) does not, by its valuable survey of the external
evidence, succeed in giving credibility to the eyewitness origin of
such a book as this is admitted to be. Professor W. Sanday's slighter
_Criticism of the Fourth Gospel_ (1905) is in a similar position.
Professor P. W. Schmiedel's article "John s. of Zebedee" in the _Ency.
Bib._ (1901) is the work of a German of the advanced left. Dr E. A.
Abbott's laborious _From Letter to Spirit_ (1903), _Joannine
Vocabulary_ (1904) and _Grammar_ (1906) overflow with statistical
details and ever acute, often fanciful, conjecture. Professor F. C.
Burkitt's _The Gospel History_ (1906) vigorously sketches the book's
dominant characteristics and true function. E. F. Scott's _The Fourth
Gospel_ (1906) gives a lucid, critical and religiously tempered
account of the Gospel's ideas, aims, affinities, difficulties and
abiding significance. (F. v. H.)

JOHN ALBERT (1459-1501), king of Poland, third son of Casimir IV. king of Poland and Elizabeth of Austria. As crown prince he distinguished himself by his brilliant victory over the Tatars at Kopersztyn in 1487. He succeeded his father in 1492. The loss of revenue consequent upon the secession of Lithuania placed John Albert at the mercy of the Polish Sejmiki or local diets, where the _szlachta_, or country gentry, made their subsidies dependent upon the king's subservience. Primarily a warrior with a strong taste for heroic adventure, John Albert desired to pose as the champion of Christendom against the Turks. Circumstances seemed, moreover, to favour him. In his brother Wladislaus, who as king of Hungary and Bohemia possessed a dominant influence in Central Europe, he found a counterpoise to the machinations of the emperor Maximilian, who in 1492 had concluded an alliance against him with Ivan III. of Muscovy, while, as suzerain of Moldavia, John Albert was favourably situated for attacking the Turks. At the conference of Leutschau in 1494 the details of the expedition were arranged between the kings of Poland and Hungary and the elector Frederick of Brandenburg, with the co-operation of Stephen, hospodar of Moldavia, who had appealed to John Albert for assistance. In the course of 1496 John Albert with great difficulty collected an army of 80,000 men in Poland, but the crusade was deflected from its proper course by the sudden invasion of Galicia by the hospodar, who apparently--for the whole subject is still very obscure--had been misled by reports from Hungary that John Albert was bent upon placing his younger brother Sigismund on the throne of Moldavia. Be that as it may, the Poles entered Moldavia not as friends, but as foes, and, after the abortive siege of Suczawa, were compelled to retreat through the Bukowina to Sniatyn, harassed all the way by the forces of the hospodar. The insubordination of the _szlachta_ seems to have been one cause of this disgraceful collapse, for John Albert confiscated hundreds of their estates after his return; in spite of which, to the end of his life he retained his extraordinary popularity. When the new grand master of the Teutonic order, Frederic of Saxony, refused to render homage to the Polish crown, John Albert compelled him to do so. His intention of still further humiliating the Teutonic order was frustrated by his sudden death in 1501. A valiant soldier and a man of much enlightenment, John Albert was a poor politician, recklessly sacrificing the future to the present.

See V. Czerny, _The Reigns of John Albert and Alexander Jagiello_
(Pol.) (Cracow, 1882).

JOHN ANGELUS (d. 1244), emperor of Thessalonica. In 1232 he received the throne from his father Theodore, who, after a period of exile, had re-established his authority, but owing to his loss of eyesight resolved to make John the nominal sovereign. His reign is chiefly marked by the aggressions of the rival emperor of Nicaea, John Vatatzes, who laid siege to Thessalonica in 1243 and only withdrew upon John Angelus consenting to exchange the title "emperor" for the subordinate one of "despot."

See G. Finlay, _History of Greece_, vol. iii. (1877).

JOHN FREDERICK I. (1503-1554), called the Magnanimous, elector of Saxony, was the elder son of the elector, John the Steadfast, and belonged to the Ernestine branch of the Wettin family. Born at Torgau on the 30th of June 1503 and educated as a Lutheran, he took some part in imperial politics and in the business of the league of Schmalkalden before he became elector by his father's death in August 1532. His lands comprised the western part of Saxony, and included Thuringia, but in 1542 Coburg was surrendered to form an apanage for his brother, John Ernest (d. 1553). John Frederick, who was an ardent Lutheran and had a high regard for Luther, continued the religious policy of his father. In 1534 he assisted to make peace between the German king Ferdinand I. and Ulrich, duke of Württemberg, but his general attitude was one of vacillation between the emperor and his own impetuous colleague in the league of Schmalkalden, Philip, landgrave of Hesse. He was often at variance with Philip, whose bigamy he disliked, and his belief in the pacific intentions of Charles V. and his loyalty to the Empire prevented him from pursuing any definite policy for the defence of Protestantism. In 1541 his kinsman Maurice became duke of Saxony, and cast covetous eyes upon the electoral dignity. A cause of quarrel soon arose. In 1541 John Frederick forced Nicholas Amsdorf into the see of Naumburg in spite of the chapter, who had elected a Roman Catholic, Julius von Pflug; and about the same time he seized Wurzen, the property of the bishop of Meissen, whose see was under the joint protection of electoral and ducal Saxony. Maurice took up arms, and war was only averted by the efforts of Philip of Hesse and Luther. In 1542 the elector assisted to drive Henry, duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, from his duchy, but in spite of this his relations with Charles V. at the diet of Spires in 1544 were very amicable. This was, however, only a lull in the storm, and the emperor soon began to make preparations for attacking the league of Schmalkalden, and especially John Frederick and Philip of Hesse. The support, or at least the neutrality, of Maurice was won by the hope of the electoral dignity, and in July 1546 war broke out between Charles and the league. In September John Frederick was placed under the imperial ban, and in November Maurice invaded the electorate. Hastening from southern Germany the elector drove Maurice from the land, took his ally, Albert Alcibiades, prince of Bayreuth, prisoner at Rochlitz, and overran ducal Saxony. His progress, however, was checked by the advance of Charles V. Notwithstanding his valour he was wounded and taken prisoner at Mühlberg on the 24th of April 1547, and was condemned to death in order to induce Wittenberg to surrender. The sentence was not carried out, but by the capitulation of Wittenberg (May 1547) he renounced the electoral dignity and a part of his lands in favour of Maurice, steadfastly refusing however to make any concessions on religious matters, and remained in captivity until May 1552, when he returned to the Thuringian lands which his sons had been allowed to retain, his return being hailed with wild enthusiasm. During his imprisonment he had refused to accept the _Interim_, issued from Augsburg in May 1548, and had urged his sons to make no peace with Maurice. After his release the emperor had restored his dignities to him, and his assumption of the electoral arms and title prevented any arrangement with Maurice. However, after the death of this prince in July 1553, a treaty was made at Naumburg in February 1554 with his successor Augustus. John Frederick consented to the transfer of the electoral dignity, but retained for himself the title of "born elector," and received some lands and a sum of money. He was thus the last Ernestine elector of Saxony. He died at Weimar on the 3rd of March 1554, having had three sons by his wife, Sibylla (d. 1554), daughter of John III., duke of Cleves, whom he had married in 1527, and was succeeded by his eldest son, John Frederick. The elector was a great hunter and a hard drinker, whose brave and dignified bearing in a time of misfortune won for him his surname of Magnanimous, and drew eulogies from Roger Ascham and Melanchthon. He founded the university of Jena and was a benefactor to that of Leipzig.

See Mentz, _Johann Friedrich der Grossmütige_ (Jena, 1903); Rogge,
_Johann Friedrich der Grossmütige_ (Halle, 1902) and L. von Ranke,
_Deutsche Geschichte im Zeitalter der Reformation_ (Leipzig, 1882).

JOHN FREDERICK (1529-1595), called _der Mittlere_, duke of Saxony, was the eldest son of John Frederick, who had been deprived of the Saxon electorate by the emperor Charles V. in 1547. Born at Torgau on the 8th of January 1529, he received a good education, and when his father was imprisoned in 1547 undertook the government of the remnant of electoral Saxony which the emperor allowed the Ernestine branch of the Wettin family to keep. Released in 1552 John Frederick the elder died two years later, and his three sons ruled Ernestine Saxony together until 1557, when John Frederick was made sole ruler. This arrangement lasted until 1565, when John Frederick shared his lands with his surviving brother, John William (1530-1573), retaining for himself Gotha and Weimar. The duke was a strong, even a fanatical, Lutheran, but his religious views were gradually subordinated to the one idea of regaining the electoral dignity then held by Augustus I. To attain this end he lent a willing ear to the schemes of Wilhelm von Grumbach, who came to his court about 1557 and offered to regain the electoral dignity and even to acquire the Empire for his patron. In spite of repeated warnings from the emperor Ferdinand I., John Frederick continued to protect Grumbach, and in 1566 his obstinacy caused him to be placed under the imperial ban. Its execution was entrusted to Augustus who, aided by the duke's brother, John William, marched against Gotha with a strong force. In consequence of a mutiny the town surrendered in April 1567, and John Frederick was delivered to the emperor Maximilian II. He was imprisoned in Vienna, his lands were given to his brother, and he remained in captivity until his death at Steyer on the 6th of May 1595. These years were mainly occupied with studying theology and in correspondence. John Frederick married firstly Agnes (d. 1555) daughter of Philip, landgrave of Hesse, and widow of Maurice, elector of Saxony, and secondly Elizabeth (d. 1594) daughter of Frederick III., elector palatine of the Rhine, by whom he left two sons, John Casimir (1564-1633) and John Ernest (1566-1638). Elizabeth shared her husband's imprisonment for twenty-two years.

See A. Beck, _Johann Friedrich der Mittlere, Herzog zu Sachsen_
(Vienna, 1858); and F. Ortloff, _Geschichte der Grumbachischen Händel_
(Jena, 1868-1870).