Chapter III: Introduction

From the beginning of the third century to near the close of the seventeenth, the Fourth Gospel was by a common and substantially a unanimous consent attributed to the Apostle John. This authorship was then questioned, at first by an English critic by the name of Evanson. The discussion was soon transferred to Germany, where it waxed warm, and whence it was again transferred to England and this country.[1] It may now be regarded as the most hotly contested question in biblical criticism. The controversy has been intensified by prejudices and feeling on both sides. It is indeed impossible to discuss it with cool indifference, as a mere matter of curious literary interest. If this Gospel was written by the Apostle John, we have the testimony of an undoubted eye-witness--not his conclusions but his account of facts in respect to which he could not well be deceived--certainly not, unless we are prepared to believe that Jesus was himself a deliberate deceiver; testimony of an eye-witness whose honesty not even the most resolute skepticism would or could well call in question. This testimony would establish beyond question such facts as the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, the healing of the man born blind, the resurrection of Lazarus, and the death and resurrection of Jesus himself. In other words, it would establish beyond the possibility of reasonable question, the truth of historical Christianity. Accordingly, Renan, who to a certain extent accepts the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel, is compelled to maintain that the pretended resurrection of Lazarus was a pious fraud to which Jesus lent himself because it was necessary to the success of his mission, and because his growing religious enthusiasm justified to his conscience this means, for the sake of the end to be accomplished by it. Moreover, we have in this Gospel a report of words of Jesus, which leave to us no alternative but to accept him as in a peculiar sense the Son of God, or to regard him either as a religious impostor or a religious enthusiast. The synoptics leave some opportunity for discussion as to the place which Jesus assumed to fill. The Fourth Gospel does not. Thus the question of the authorship of this Gospel is not merely a question in literary criticism, but even more one respecting the nature of Christianity. Accordingly we find, on the one hand, the advocates of its apostolic authorship more or less resting their belief upon the inherent beauty of the book, and the opponents more or less declaring the true ground of their opposition to it, viz., that it presents what they call a mythological view of Jesus, and a dogmatic view of his teachings; in other words, that it presents Jesus distinctively as the incarnate Son of God, and represents the central truth in his teaching to have been the necessity of faith in him. Both these aspects of truth are indeed presented in the other Gospels, but not with the same clearness, nor with the same prominence, as in the Fourth Gospel. Hence the latter is assailed with peculiar vigor by the opponents of evangelical Christianity, and is, for the same reason, maintained with equal vigor by evangelical believers. It does not come within the province of this work to enter into the details of this controversy. To give the arguments, pro and con, would require a treatise, and for a consideration of them the reader is of necessity referred to the various works which have been written on this subject. The student will find the most vigorous assault on the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel in the second volume of “Supernatural Religion,” which, however, must be read with considerable allowance for a scholarship evidently warped by determined prejudices, and which is certainly one-sided, if not absolutely false in many particulars. Among the many defences of the authenticity of the Gospel, I have found nothing more comprehensive or satisfactory than that contained in the first volume of Godet’s Commentary on John. With this, however, may be advantageously compared Luthardt’s “St. John, the Author of the Fourth Gospel,” Prof. Fisher’s “Supernatural Origin of Christianity,” and the introductions to the commentaries, especially those of Luthardt, Lange, Alford, Meyer and Tholuck. Here I propose merely to set before the reader briefly a compact statement of the more important facts in the case, confining myself mainly to those that are undisputed--facts which led the world for fifteen centuries to attribute the Fourth Gospel to John without a doubt, and which on a more careful examination have led the great majority of scholars to adhere to that conclusion.

=The Apostle John.= The Apostle John was probably a native, certainly a resident, of Galilee. His mother, Salome,[2] early became a follower of Jesus. She was probably one of the women of Galilee who accompanied him on his missionary tours, and ministered to him of their substance.[3] She was with him on his last journey to Jerusalem, and during the passion week, and was one of those women who were last at the cross and first at the sepulchre.[4] Like the other followers of Jesus, she anticipated the establishment of a temporal kingdom, was ambitious for her sons James and John, and made an application for special favors for them when the kingdom should be established. From a comparison of Matt. 27:56 with John 19:25, it would appear that she was own sister to the Virgin Mary, in which case John was own cousin to Jesus. This opinion is not accepted by all critics, but I believe it to be the correct one. See note on John 19:25. John’s father, Zebedee, was a well-to-do fisherman on the shores of the sea of Galilee. Of him we know very little. He was sufficiently prosperous to own several boats and to hire men to work for him. Tradition makes him of noble birth; and this tradition is perhaps confirmed by the fact that John had some acquaintance with the high-priest.

John has been characterized by those critics who wish to make out that his character is inconsistent with the idea of his authorship of the Fourth Gospel, as ignorant and unlettered, on the authority of Acts 4:13, and as a vehement and bigoted Jew on the authority of Galatians, chap. II, and of the peculiar Hebraic tone of the Book of Revelation. Both characterizations are quite gratuitous assumptions. In connection with every Jewish synagogue was a parochial school, in which the pupils were taught reading, writing, and the rudiments of such natural sciences as were then in existence. The Jewish children of the common people were far better educated than those of Greece or Rome. There is every reason to believe that John received this common education of the age and community in which he lived, and there is absolutely no reason whatever to suppose the contrary. It was only by the Pharisees that John was considered as ignorant and unlettered, and they affixed the same stigma upon Jesus himself.[5] To the Pharisees the only learning worth the name was learning in the traditional lore of the church. Of this the Galilean fisherman was ignorant. In the eyes of a Pharisee of Jerusalem, Plato himself would have been ignorant and unlearned. As little reason is there to believe that John was a vehement and bigoted Jew. There is not the slightest evidence that John was among the Judaizing Christians to whom Paul so frequently refers, and whom throughout his life he combated. With one exception, Judas Iscariot, all the twelve were taken from Galilee. This province of Palestine was innocent of that formalism and narrowness which characterized the southern province of Judea. The people had lived in amicable relations with their heathen neighbors, and had intermarried with them ever since the days of the treaty of amity between Solomon and the King of Tyre.[6] The line of commerce between Damascus and the Mediterranean lay directly across this province. Mineral springs of real or fancied value near the southern coast of the Sea of Gennesaret made it the summer resort of the wealthy Romans of the entire land. Thus history and location, commerce and social relations, combined to make the inhabitants of Galilee indifferent to the rigid formalism of the Judeans, and comparatively free from their narrow race and religious prejudices. Indeed, the two assertions that John was ignorant and unlearned, and at the same time a narrow and bigoted Jew, contradict each other. Jewish bigotry and reverence for the traditional lore of the Jewish church always went together.

The important facts in the history of John, so far as known, are few and soon told. John the Baptist was second cousin of Jesus, and John the Apostle was probably, as we have seen, his own cousin. The two Johns were, therefore, probably acquainted. At all events, when the Baptist began preaching the gospel of repentance for the remission of sins, the Apostle was among his disciples; and when the Baptist pointed out Jesus as the one whom God had indicated to him as the promised Messiah, John was among the first to leave the old teacher to follow the new one. This was, however, a temporary following only. We next meet him fishing with his father at the Sea of Galilee, where Jesus finds him and his brother, and calls them to become permanent followers of him. This summons, without hesitation or delay, they obey. From this time onward John is the constant companion of Jesus. With Peter and James he belongs to an inner circle of friends: the three are selected to be the sole witnesses of the resurrection of Jairus’s daughter; they alone go up into the Mount of Transfiguration, and witness his glory there; they alone accompany him to the Garden of Gethsemane, and are invited to be the sharers of his sorrow there; when the arrest takes place, and all the disciples forsake their Master and flee, John and Peter turn back and follow him to the scene of his trial, and the former, with a courage for which few critics give him credit, goes without concealment, as a disciple, openly, into the house of Caiaphas, follows the Master to the trial before Pilate, and when the sentence of crucifixion is pronounced, accompanies the procession to the place of execution, to remain by the cross till all is over. When the news of the resurrection is brought to the disciples, he and Peter are the first to reach the sepulchre. In the subsequent history of the Church, as recorded in the book of Acts, he does not take a prominent part. To him was committed the care of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and probably this sacred charge prevented him from quitting Palestine while she lived.[7]

For the subsequent history of John we are dependent on tradition. This is, however, in his case, less uncertain than in many other cases. As Christianity spread over the heathen world, Jerusalem ceased to be the centre of Christian operations; but, while the Roman Empire continued pagan and persecuting, Rome could not take the place of Jerusalem, as subsequently it did. Hence, for the first century, Asia Minor was the great field of missionary work, and Ephesus, which was the scene of Paul’s greatest triumphs and most successful labors,[8] became the centre of the Christian church. Here John became settled in his later life. From this point he seems to have exercised an apostolic supervision over the churches of all Asia Minor. The few traditional stories of his old age accord with what the Gospels indicate of his character. When he could no longer preach, it is said that he was accustomed to be carried into the church, and to repeat from the pulpit as the sum and substance of Christian doctrine, “Little children, love one another!” He was banished to the island of Patmos, where, according to the book of Revelation, he witnessed the vision therein recorded. He subsequently returned to Ephesus, where it is probable he died at an extremely advanced age--not much, if any, less than a hundred years old.

=The character of John= has been strangely misconceived. He is with reason identified with the unnamed “disciple whom Jesus loved,” and who at the Last Supper rested his head on Jesus’ bosom; the Epistles attributed to him breathe a spirit of love; the Gospel attributed to him is of all the Gospels the most spiritual in its tone. From these premises, the character of John has been constructed; it has been supposed that he was by nature peculiarly tender, gentle, loving, and spiritually-minded; that his was a woman’s character. He is so portrayed in art, and to some extent in literature; and the special friendship which Christ has been supposed to have entertained for him is attributed to a character by nature peculiarly loveable.

There are, however, other considerations which any such view totally ignores. James and John were by Jesus called Boanerges, “the sons of thunder;” it was John who prohibited a strange disciple from casting out devils in Jesus’ name, because he followed not the Twelve; it was John who desired to call down fire from Heaven upon the Samaritan village which refused to entertain his Master; it was James and John who, with their mother, applied secretly to Jesus for the highest offices for themselves in his anticipated kingdom; it was John who followed Jesus into the courtyard of the high-priest, when all the other disciples forsook him and fled; John who stood with the Galilean women near the cross at the time of the crucifixion; John who with Peter defied the edict of the Sanhedrim after the death of Jesus, prohibiting them from teaching or speaking in his name.[9] These are not the acts of one whose nature was characteristically timid, gentle, or spiritually-minded. By nature John was ardent, courageous, impetuous, and not more broad-minded or spiritually-minded than his co-disciples. Indications of these traits are not wanting, as we shall presently see, in the Gospel and the Epistles which bear his name.

But he was of all the Twelve the most receptive. When Christ foretold his passion, Peter remonstrated with him. When Jesus spoke of the heavenly mansions and of his departure to prepare a place therein for his disciples, Thomas expressed his doubt and his perplexity by the question, “We know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way?” When Jesus pointed to himself as the manifestation of the Father, Philip, dissatisfied, asked for a direct revelation of the Father. When Jesus promised to his disciples a spiritual manifestation of himself, Judas (not Iscariot), after the manner of modern theology, desired to have that manifestation explained to him before he could accept the truth. When Jesus rebuked Judas Iscariot for complaining of Mary’s act in anointing her Lord, Judas was angered.[10] But we look in vain in the Gospels for any instance in which John expressed any rebuke of Christ, or any opposition to him, or any doubt of his teaching, or demanded any other evidence of its truth than the simple word of his Lord. Of all the disciples the most receptive, he was the one whose character underwent the greatest and most radical change. The John that we know is the John transformed by the renewing influence of the spirit of Christ; he is the John that is a new creature in Christ Jesus. He was, I believe, the beloved disciple, because he was the one in whom the love of Christ had the freest course and wrought the fullest and the largest results. This simple fact must be borne in mind in considering the question of the internal evidences for and against the Johannine authorship of the Gospel.

=The external evidence.= Those who expect to find a demonstration of the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel in the external evidences, will be disappointed. The literature of the first three centuries does not afford a demonstration of authorship of any ancient book. But the authorship of John’s Gospel I believe to be as well established, on a fair consideration of all the evidence, external and internal, as that of any work of the same era.

It is not questioned by any one that at the beginning of the third century the Fourth Gospel was in general use in the churches, and universally recognized as written by the Apostle John. Eusebius, Origen, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, are among those who bear testimony to this fact. The Fourth Gospel is recognized as John’s composition in the canon of Muratori, A. D. 175; and by Irenæus, who died about 202, and who was a pupil of Polycarp, himself a pupil of John. References to sayings of Jesus reported only by John are also found in the writings of Tatian, A. D. 170, Justin Martyr, A. D. 120-160, and the various Gnostic writers of the second century. These references do not conclusively prove the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel, for these earliest writers are not accustomed to give the names of authors from whom they quote; but they do conclusively prove that as early as the first part of the second century, sayings of Christ, found only in the Fourth Gospel, were attributed by the Church to Jesus. The best report of these quotations which I have seen is to be found in the second volume of “Supernatural Religion,” and they are there the more effective because the author in vain endeavors to break their force, by what most readers will consider an ingenious but ineffective special pleading. Let the reader compare these quotations with the parallel passages in the Fourth Gospel; he will not doubt that the later writers borrowed from the earlier one. The only alternative is the irrational hypothesis that both borrowed from the same source and one generally recognized in the primitive Church; in other words, that there was a Gospel containing the same matter that is now found in the Fourth Gospel, but that it has so entirely disappeared that no tradition even of its existence has survived, and that in its place a forgery has been palmed off upon the Church so successfully, that in the beginning of the third century it was universally accepted as the original work of the Apostle whose name it has ever since borne.

Space does not allow me to give in detail these quotations, which are numerous; it would be still more out of the province of this introduction to enter into the arguments by which the rationalistic writers endeavor to reconcile these quotations with their hypotheses. I can but briefly indicate a few of them, referring the student to the larger works for the examination in detail of the parallelism between these early ecclesiastical writers and the Fourth Gospel. Justin Martyr thus refers to the testimony of John the Baptist: “I am not the Christ ... for he cometh who is stronger than I, whose shoes I am not meet to bear” (comp. John 1:19-27). He cites Christ as saying, “Unless ye be born again, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven,” and adds the comment, “Now that it is impossible for those who have been born to go into the matrices of the mother is evident to all” (comp. John 3:3-5). Tatian refers to the sayings, “The darkness comprehends not the light” (comp. John 1:5), and “All things were by him, and without him was not anything made” (comp. John 1:5, 3). Hegessippus (A. D. 125) refers to “that which is spoken in the Gospels, ‘That was the true light which lighteth every man who cometh into the world’” (comp. John 1:9). In the writings of the Naaseni and Peratæ, Gnostic sects of the beginning of the second century, we have several unmistakable references to sayings that are peculiar to the Fourth Gospel. “I am the door,” (comp. John 10:7); “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son be lifted up,” (comp. John 3:14); “If thou hadst known who it is that asketh thee, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water, springing up,” (comp. John 4:10); “The Saviour hath said, ‘That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit,’” (comp. John 3:6); “Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven,” (comp. John 6:53). These are by no means all the citations from the writers of the first two centuries which appear to have been taken from the Fourth Gospel, but they will suffice to give the reader an idea of the nature of the evidence which is regarded by most Christian writers, and by some rationalistic critics--Matthew Arnold, for example--as establishing the fact that the Fourth Gospel was in existence and recognized as an authority in the Church in the beginning of the second century. If this is the fact, it is reasonably certain that it was the work of the Apostle John, since if it had been written by any one else as early as that date, that is, during the lifetime of some of the contemporaries of John, the forgery would certainly have been detected.

=The internal evidence.= The facts indicated above are not questioned by any critic. But though from the beginning of the third century to the close of the eighteenth, the Fourth Gospel was unanimously attributed to the Apostle John, it is maintained by those critics who deny the Johannine authorship that a fair consideration of the external evidence now extant, leaves it uncertain whether the unanimous opinion of the Church in the first century was correct, and that the internal evidence, _i. e._, the character of the Gospel itself, when contrasted (1) with the other Gospels, (2) with the known character of John, (3) with the other writings attributed to him, makes it certain that he was not the author.

Unquestionably the Fourth Gospel presents very different matter and a very different aspect of Christ’s life and character from that presented by the other three Gospels. The three Gospels give an impression almost exclusively Galilean; the Fourth Gospel narrates almost exclusively a ministry in Judea; the three Gospels indicate one which might have been completed in a single year; the fourth indicates three years as the duration of Christ’s ministry; the three Gospels report chiefly Christ’s ethical discourses; the fourth reports chiefly his doctrinal discourses; love to men’s neighbor is the predominate theme in the three Gospels; faith in a divine Saviour is the predominate theme in the fourth; the three Gospels portray the work of Jesus Christ; the fourth portrays his person and character; the three Gospels repeat the same incidents and instructions in slightly different language; the fourth repeats scarcely anything found in the other three; and when, as in its account of the feeding of the five thousand, it does repeat, the manifest object of the repetition is to introduce a report of a discourse of Jesus omitted in the other narratives.

It is also true that there is a marked difference between the style of John’s Gospel and the Book of Revelations. This difference is so considerable that it is vigorously maintained that the same author could not have written both books. “The difference,” says Lucke, “between the language, way of expression and mode of thought and doctrine of the Apocalypse and the rest of the Johannine writings is so comprehensive and intense, so individual and even so radical; the affinity and agreement on the contrary either so general, or in detail so fragmentary and uncertain, that the Apostle John, if he really is the author of the Gospel and of the Epistles--which we here advance--cannot have composed the Apocalypse either before or after the Gospel and the Epistles.” This difference is of two kinds, a difference both of style and of spirit. The language of the Apocalypse is comparatively harsh and Hebraic, that of the Gospel a comparatively fine and flowing Greek. The author of the Apocalypse, it is claimed, is an intense Jew, whose imagery is borrowed from the Hebrew Scriptures, and whose object is the exaltation of the Jewish people; who narrates the outpoured punishment of God on the enemies of God’s chosen people, and whose celestial capital of the kingdom without end is the new Jerusalem. The author of the Fourth Gospel, it is claimed, could not have been a Jew or of Jewish extraction; he makes no attempt to conceal his enmity of the Jews; he stigmatizes them as the enemies of Christ, and as the children of the devil;[11] and he writes of them and of their customs as no Jew would or could have written of the customs of his own people.[12]

It is not my purpose here to enter upon a discussion of these objections. It must suffice to say that they are founded on a false conception of the character of John and a false assumption that what John was when he first met Jesus by the banks of the Jordan, that he was after a life-time spent as a disciple, learning of him and undergoing that transformation of character which has been the peculiar and glorious fruitage of Christ’s husbandry. Instead of entering into such a discussion, I shall ask the reader to consider briefly what are some of the more notable characteristics of the Fourth Gospel, and what would be the conclusion as to its authorship from an independent and original examination of its pages.

Imagine then that we have just discovered this ancient manuscript, a manuscript which unquestionably dates from the beginning of the third century, probably from a still earlier period, and which we have abundant evidence was then unanimously attributed to the Apostle John. We enter upon its examination that we may form for ourselves a judgment who its real author probably was. In this examination there are three characteristics which force themselves upon our attention as predominant: (1) the claims which it presents; (2) its literary character; (3) the indications which it affords as to the personality of its author.

=1. Its claims.= It assumes to be written by an eye-witness. In his introduction the writer says distinctly of the subject of his biography: “We beheld his glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father.” In the Epistle attributed to him, he reiterates this statement even more explicitly. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life ... that which we have seen and heard declare we unto you.” In his account of the crucifixion he emphasizes the fact that he is an eye-witness of the events described. “He that saw it bare record and the record is true; and he knoweth that he saith true that ye might believe.” And yet again in the closing chapter, generally regarded as written subsequent to the rest of the volume, and as supplementary to it, the writer is identified with the unnamed beloved disciple. “This is the disciple who testified of these things and wrote these things, and we know that his testimony is true.”[13]

In reading the book we constantly come upon indications that the work is by an eye-witness or by one who writes in order to give that impression. No one of the Evangelist’s narratives more abounds with graphic touches, slight but significant, such as indicate the vivid remembrance of one who was not only an eye and ear witness, but also one who treasures up in a remarkably retentive memory incidents which mere tradition would not have preserved. John the Baptist “looks upon Jesus,” and points him out to his disciples, by his peculiar gaze; Jesus “turns” and sees them follow; wearied with the journey he sits “thus on the well;” there is “much grass” where he feeds the five thousand; when Mary anointed Jesus the “house was filled with the odor of the ointment;” when Judas went out to complete the betrayal “it was night;” the night “was cold,” and Peter stands with the servant of the high-priest warming himself at a fire of coals in the court-yard.[14] These may serve as illustrations. Examples the reader will find in great abundance, and references to them in the notes. Of all the Gospels, the Fourth Gospel is the one which reports most fully the private conferences between Jesus and the Twelve, and the only one which reports his “asides” and his personal feelings in explanation of his public acts.[15] These features in the narrative do not prove that it was written by an eye-witness, but they indicate that it was written either by an eye-witness, or by one who desired to produce that impression; either by one of the Twelve or by a deliberate and skilful forger.

=2. Its literary character.= The differences between this Gospel and the other three which I have already very briefly described, are very considerable. They have led different minds to very different conclusions respecting the authorship of the Fourth Gospel. It is, however, safe to say that they are just such as might be expected if the Fourth Gospel was written after the other three, and by some one familiar with them, or at least with the traditions embodied in them. This Gospel presents precisely the aspect which would be presented by a book written for the purpose of supplementing the accounts already possessed by the primitive churches, and of portraying an aspect of character not adequately portrayed by the earlier writers. It presents, too, exactly that aspect which would be presented by a narrative written after the rapid growth of the Church, and its prophetic incursions into heathenism had given the writer a better conception than his co-disciples possessed of the spiritual character of the new religion. Matthew, Mark, and Luke might perhaps have believed that the privileges of Christianity were to be confined to Jews and Jewish proselytes. Though many of Christ’s words which they report indicate a broader scope, it is by no means clear that they comprehended them. But no one can doubt that the author of John’s Gospel, when he wrote, believed that the atonement of Jesus Christ was for all humanity, his religion for all classes, races, and conditions of mankind. It is the Fourth Gospel which tells us that He was the true Light which lighteth _every man_ which cometh into the world, that God so loved the _world_ that he gave his only beloved Son that whosoever believeth in him should have everlasting life, and that _whosoever_ comes to him he will in no wise cast out; it is the Fourth Gospel which reports Christ’s interview with the woman of Samaria and his subsequent preaching to the Samaritans, which brings out more clearly than either of the others the grounds of Christ’s practical abrogation of the Pharisaic law of the Sabbath, which dwells more than any other Gospel on the spiritual aspects of his kingdom and the divine nature of the king.[16] All this we might expect from one writing after more than half a century of Catholic Christianity had interpreted the nature, mission, and words of Christ to his church.

Let us add that a forger would not have suffered his narrative to stand in such a marked contrast with the previous and recognized narratives already in the possession of the churches. He would have commingled the ethical with the doctrinal, the human with the divine. He would have repeated in a modified form some of the incidents and teachings already reported by the other Evangelists, that he might thus give a color of authenticity to his narrative. The very contrast between the Fourth Gospel and the other three, on which skeptic writers rely to prove its untrustworthiness, is an indication that it cannot be the work of fraud. If that aspect of Christ’s character and teachings reported by John’s Gospel was not recognized by the primitive church as true, or if the author was not himself known in the age in which the narrative was produced, and so known that his simple name was a sufficient guarantee of the accuracy of his narrative, an account so dissimilar from those already in the possession of the churches would have received little credit and no general, certainly no universal, acceptance.

=3. Indications of authorship.= A further examination of this Gospel gives a definite impression respecting the character of the author. He is evidently thoroughly familiar with Jewish manners and customs. He knows whereof he writes. He has lived in the country and mingled with the people. His knowledge is not that of a student of books, nor that of a mere casual traveler. But he writes for those who are not familiar with Palestine or its social life. He inserts parenthetical explications of Jewish customs. He explains to his Gentile readers the use of the firkins of water at the wedding-feast “for purifying after the manner of the Jews;” the wrapping of the body of Jesus, as the manner of the “Jews is to bury;” the refusal of the Pharisees to enter Pilate’s hall “lest they should be defiled.” The feast of Tabernacles is the Jews’ feast of Tabernacles, the Passover is the Jews’ Passover, and the Preparation for it is the Preparation of the Jews.[17] These references are so incidental as to indicate a writer thoroughly familiar with Jewish life; yet they are so marked as to indicate equally clearly a writer whose readers were not Jews but Gentiles.

The indications are not less clear that the writer, whoever he may have been, was not himself a sharer in Jewish prejudices. Jew he may have been; an intolerant Jew he certainly was not. He is familiar with the Pharisees and with the Pharisaic law, but he has no sympathy with the one and no admiration for the other. We can hardly be mistaken in thinking that his native prejudices are adverse rather than favorable to the inhabitants of Judea. More than any of the other Evangelists his language respecting them indicates his aversion to them. He is the Evangelist who reports the mobs in Jerusalem against Jesus, and the secret counsels for his assassination, and the deliberate judgment of Caiaphas that it is better for the rulers to kill the Galilean Rabbi than to hazard their own offices, and the persistent persecution of Jesus; he it is who with delicate sarcasm stigmatizes Caiaphas as high-priest for “that same year;” the very language which he employs in describing the religious festivals of Judea as “feasts of the Jews,” indicates an author not in sympathy with the religious formalism of Judea; the very phraseology with which he characterizes the reluctance of the Jews to enter into Pilate’s judgment-hall, indicates a writer having little sympathy for the formalism which was never a characteristic of the Galilean Jews, and always was a characteristic of the more intense and bigoted Jews of the Syrian province of Judea.[18]

Nor can we be mistaken in surmising that the author was, by nature and temperament, ardent, impulsive, vehement. The intensity of his nature has been tamed by age, experience or grace, or the three combined; but the indications of his native character crop out in occasional utterances. The records of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are absolutely colorless. They are without epithets. Their simple and artless narrative is left to produce its own impression. This is less true of the Fourth Gospel than of the other three. The intense indignation which the writer feels against Judas Iscariot, he is at no pains to conceal. He it is who reports Jesus as declaring early in his ministry, One of you is a devil; he it is who characterizes Judas Iscariot as a thief; he who twice declares that Satan entered into Judas Iscariot.[19] These are the most notable exhibitions of his feelings; but one can hardly read through the entire narrative without realizing in its tone and spirit the evidence that the author was a man of intense and passionate earnestness, kept under marvelous self-restraint.

Finally, it is clear that the author is a man of some native capacity for culture and of large education. He is familiar with the Greek language and with the Greco-Oriental philosophy. He writes with a pure and flowing style. His introduction could have been penned only by one who had become habituated to those forms of philosophic thought which some cities of Greece, and notably Ephesus, had imported from Alexandria and the further East. It could only have been written for readers who were familiar with that philosophy and could best be approached by employing its phraseology.

We find then in the direct claims and the incidental allusions of the Fourth Gospel indications that it was written by an eye and ear witness, who was with Jesus from the commencement to the close of his ministry; in the broad differences between the Fourth Gospel and the other three gospels, indications that it was written after the others and by one who was familiar with them or with the traditions embodied in them, and who wrote to supplement their accounts; in the general catholic and spiritual atmosphere of the book, indications that it was written after history had begun to interpret the words and work of Christ, and to make clearer his transcendent and incomparable character; and in the style and phraseology of the book, indications that it was written by one who was familiar with Jewish customs but not sharing Jewish prejudices, who possessed an ardent nature which had been brought under the power of a strong self-control, and who to a native capacity for culture added that familiarity with Greek literature and philosophy which only long residence in a thoroughly Greek society could impart.

Now, so far as our limited knowledge enables us to judge, John’s life and character remarkably correspond with these indications of the Gospel which was so long unanimously attributed to his pen. His parents were well-to-do Galileans, and he probably received a fair education in his childhood; his early education as a Galilean would have given him familiarity with Jewish customs, and yet would prejudice him against rather than in favor of the inhabitants of Judea; his later and prolonged residence in Ephesus, of all Greek cities the most Oriental, would have made him familiar with the best Greek culture, and with the mystic philosophy of the Greco-Oriental school; that he possessed a vehement nature is evident from his original title of Son of Thunder; his receptive disposition and his intense love for Jesus might have been expected to tame that nature, without eradicating from his writings all indications of its existence; of all the disciples the most courageous and the most sympathetically intimate with the subject of his biography, he was of them all the one to adhere to Jesus in his dangerous ministry in Jerusalem, and the one therefore to record what all the others have omitted; he was also the one to interpret Christ’s actions by his own suggestion of Christ’s unuttered thoughts; writing after the other Gospels had been written and were already being widely circulated, his omission of events and teachings which they had recorded is not only explicable, but natural and to be anticipated; finally, writing after the destruction of Jerusalem, after the dispersion of the Jews had begun, after the descent of the Holy Spirit had interpreted the mystical promises of another Comforter, after churches had been organized as far west as Rome in which Gentile and Jew met on equal terms, after, in a word, the history of the church had interpreted the prophecies and instructions of its Lord, it would have been strange indeed if he had not given a deeper, truer, and more catholic exposition of Christ’s Gospel than could have been written during the first half-century in Palestine, by those whose comprehension of Christ’s, teaching had not been broadened by residence in a foreign land and an observation of Christ’s redeeming work in a pagan community.

=Other hypotheses.= The conclusion to which a consideration of the external and internal evidence brings the candid student is confirmed by a consideration of the alternative hypotheses presented to him. These are many in form; for it is a significant fact that while those who believe in the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel are entirely agreed in respect to its authorship, and the time and place of its composition, those who disbelieve in its authenticity are not agreed among themselves respecting either. But in general their various opinions may be reduced to two classes.

The first is that the Fourth Gospel is the work of a Gentile Christian writing in the third century. Confessedly this Gospel purports to be written by an eye and ear witness. Confessedly it was unanimously attributed to the Apostle John in the third century. Confessedly it is without a peer in literature, ancient or modern, sacred or secular, Christian or pagan, in the purity of its doctrine, the moral elevation of its style, and the spirituality of its atmosphere. This hypothesis asks us to believe that it is the work of a deliberate ecclesiastical forger, with so little conscience that he neither hesitated to assume the pen of an Apostle nor to attribute to Jesus fictitious discourses and imaginary miracles, yet with so much conscience that he would not put an Apostle’s name to his composition, but left its authorship to be inferred by a self-deluded public; written too by a forger who was so skillful that he deceived the whole contemporaneous church, all sects and sections, Jewish and Gentile, Greek, Roman, and African, orthodox and heretic, and yet who was such a bungler that the gross discrepancies of his account, contrasted with that of the other three evangelists, make his fraud palpable to the ecclesiastical and literary critics of the nineteenth century. This hypothesis demands so great an exercise of credulity that sober critics of even the rationalistic school are generally abandoning it, or have already done so. This opinion may be already characterized as a thing of the past.

The other hypothesis is more plausible and captivating. This is that the Fourth Gospel was written by an amanuensis or a disciple of the Apostle John, that its essential facts were derived from him, that it was written in his old age, that his recollection was already growing dim and his reports of the words of Jesus are unconsciously modified by his philosophy and experience, and that these reports are still further modified by the free pen of the amanuensis or the disciple who perfected the written record; and it is urged that this hypothesis explains both verbal peculiarities and the title given to it from early ages, viz., not the Gospel of John, but the Gospel according to John.[20]

In support of this opinion there is quoted an ancient legend found in the canon of Muratori (A. D. 175), which runs as follows: “The fourth of the Gospels is by the disciple John. He was being pressed by his disciples and (fellow) bishops, and he said, ‘Fast with me this day, and for three days; and whatsoever shall have been revealed to each one of us, let us relate it to the rest.’ In the same night it was revealed to the Apostle Andrew that John should write the whole in his name, and that all the rest should revise it.” It must suffice to say of this opinion that in its most pronounced form it is wholly unsustained by evidence. It is ingenious, but not substantial. Doubtless the reports of Christ’s disciples are not verbatim. Doubtless we have in many instances the sentiments of Christ embodied in the words of John. Possibly some glosses and explanations added originally by an amanuensis or scribe may have become incorporated in the narrative.[21] But that the book is in no sense a composite production, that it is the work of one not of many minds, that we have essentially the portrayal of the life and character of Jesus by a single author, is evident on even a casual perusal, and still more on a careful analysis of the work.

=Discourses of Jesus.= The Gospel of John abounds with reports of the discourses of Jesus; it is more a report of his discourses (λόγια) than of his works (ἔργα); the miracles reported are generally only a text for a discourse which follows. The student, passing from the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew, or the parables in Perea, in Luke, to the sermon on the Bread of life at Capernaum (John, ch. 6), or on the Good Shepherd, at Jerusalem (John, ch. 10), feels the difference between them, a difference chiefly in the phraseology employed, sometimes in the phases of truth taught, but never amounting to a contradiction in the essential teaching. The same doctrine respecting the authority of Christ is conveyed by Matt. 11:27, and John 5:19-30; the same truth as to the nature and necessity of a new and divine life in the soul is expressed in Mark 4:26-29, and in John 6:50-58; similar parallels in essential truth may be found in the synoptics to all that is taught in the Fourth Gospel; but the form of expression is strikingly different. Thus, in the study of the Fourth Gospel, the question is constantly pressed upon the student, how far the reports of Christ’s addresses by John are to be regarded as reported in the words of Christ.

In answer to this we have, on the one hand, Christ’s promise reported by John: “The Comforter ... shall bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you” (ch. 14:26); on the other, we have reason to believe that the reports are not verbatim. (_a_) This would require a supernatural exercise of memory nowhere claimed by the Evangelists, and therefore not to be claimed by the church for them. (_b_) In some instances, _e. g._, the case of the conversation with Nicodemus and the woman at the well, it is certain that John could not have been present, and must have derived his information either from Jesus or from the other party to the conference. (_c_) The language in which the discourse is reported is analogous not only in words, but also in the forms of expression to that of the narrator; the likeness is so marked that in several instances the critics are not fully agreed how much is to be regarded as the discourse of Jesus, and how much as the accompanying comment of John. (_d_) The thought is sometimes, and the language is often, obscure. And though this obscurity is increased by mistranslations, and by the division into verses, which hides from the reader the true unity of the discourse, nevertheless it exists in the Greek original. Such obscurity does not exist in the reports of Christ’s discourses in the other Gospels. (_e_) The largest public discourse as reported would not have required over eight minutes in delivery. I believe then that in the Fourth Gospel we have the substantial thoughts of Christ, reproduced generally in the words and with the phraseology of John, whose mind, under the divine inspiration, preserves the essential truth unimpaired, but represents it, not as a mechanical repeater of words, but as a disciple who freely reproduces the ideas of his Master, but largely in language of his own.

=Object and character.= We are not left to surmise the object of the author of the Fourth Gospel. He himself tells us what it was: “These are written that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that, believing, ye might have life through his name.”[22]

According to John’s Gospel, true religion consists not in obedience to an external law, but in a new life in the soul, by which it is transformed, and the soul, its habits and character, are brought into conformity with the law of God, that is, the law of love. This new and divine life is implanted supernaturally from above; it is fed perpetually by the influence of the divine Spirit; it emancipates the soul from all bondage to sin and the law; for it preparation is made by the life and death of the Lord; in it God is manifested in a peculiar manner to the soul and abides with it, an indwelling Comforter. This life comes through a vital faith in Jesus as in a peculiar sense the Son of God, in whose life the believer finds his ideal of true life, by whose death he is redeemed from death, by whose spiritual power he is raised a new creature in Christ Jesus, by whose abiding presence he is guided, guarded, strengthened, fed. Those incidents and discourses in the life of Christ which illustrate and enforce this aspect of Christian truth and experience are those which John gives us in his Gospel. The other Gospels represent the duties of the disciples, John their privileges; the other Gospels bid them what they ought to do, John points them to what they can become; the other Gospels represent Christ chiefly as a Saviour coming to seek and to save that which is lost, John as a Friend abiding with his own; in the other Gospels he is a Shepherd in the wilderness, in John the Shepherd in the fold; in the other Gospels the Son is either still in the far country or but just returning to his Father’s home, in John he has returned and is abiding in his Father’s love. In the other Gospels, therefore, Jesus is chiefly represented as a divine teacher, in John as a recognized Saviour; in the other Gospels as the Son of man, in John as the Son of God; in the other Gospels we have seen him as he appears to the wanderer, in John as he is interpreted by the heart of the saved; in the other Gospels the bridegroom is coming for his bride and is still the Unknown; in John he has taken her to himself, and her love at least dimly recognizes in him the One among ten thousand and altogether lovely.

These aspects of truth may be easily discerned in even a brief survey of the Fourth Gospel.

John opens his narrative by an introduction, in which he borrows the mystical language of Oriental philosophy to characterize Jesus, whom he describes as the Life, the Light, the Word; he reports John the Baptist, not as the preacher of the baptism of repentance, but as a prophet of the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world (ch. 1); in his account of the conversation with Nicodemus (ch. 3), he points out the origin of the spiritual life which Christ imparts to the believer, “Ye must be born from above;” in his report of the conversation with the Samaritan woman, and of the discourse at Capernaum (chaps. 4, 6), he indicates the means by which that life is sustained, by appropriating faith in Christ; and in his record of the intermediate discourse at Jerusalem (ch. 5), the basis for that faith in Christ’s own portrayal of himself as the Son and manifestation of God the Father; in his report of the discourses in the Temple, he sets forth in a different form the same truths. (ch. 7), declares the emancipation from bondage which faith in the Son achieves for the soul, contrasts it with the life of bondage unto sin (ch. 8), and describes the safety and security of the disciples, a security purchased by the death of their Lord (ch. 10); he narrates the resurrection of Lazarus, therein portraying Jesus as the resurrection and the life (ch. 11); he reports those words of Jesus at the Last Supper, the full meaning of which no Christian experience has ever yet fully sounded, in which is promised to the believing disciple a spiritual manifestation of God to the soul, an abiding life of God in the soul, and a joyful realization of all spiritual fullness in God by the soul (chaps. 14, 15, 16); he records the only reported intercessory prayer of the Lord for his disciples (ch. 17), the burden of which is, “As thou Father art in me and I in you, that they also may be one in us;” in the account of the Passion he alone gives the short dialogue between Jesus and Pilate, in which the Lord declares himself a king and his kingdom one of everlasting truth; and in his account of the resurrection (ch. 20), he tells the story of Thomas’s unbelief and of Christ’s warm commendation of “those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Life through faith--this is the burden of John’s Evangel; Jesus Christ the Life-giver, the disciple of Jesus Christ the recipient of a new life--this is the good news which constitutes the Fourth Gospel.

=When and where and for whom written.= A very ancient testimony, that of Irenæus, repeated by Jerome and later writers, fixes the place of publication at Ephesus. This accords with the character of the Gospel itself. The Oriental phraseology employed in the first chapter especially, but also in less degree in other portions of the Gospel, indicates that it was written in a city where Oriental philosophy had a strong hold; and of all Greek cities Ephesus was the most Oriental. Moreover, an ancient and apparently trustworthy tradition makes this city the home of John in his later years. The time of its composition is uncertain. Irenæus states that it was the latest written of the four Gospels. The character of the Gospel, as we have seen, confirms this tradition. The book bears marks of being written in old age; it is apparently the production of a ripened Christian experience. Alford fixes the date as between A. D. 70 and A. D. 85; Macdonald, A. D. 85 or 86; Godet, between A. D. 80 and 90; Tholuck, not far from A. D. 100.

[1] For same account in detail of these discussions, see
Godet’s Commentary on St. John’s Gospel, Intro., Chap.
II.

[2] Comp. Matt. 27:56 with Mark 15:40.

[3] Luke 8:3.

[4] Matt. 20:20, 21; Mark 15:40; 16:1.

[5] John 7:15, 48.

[6] 1 Kings 9:10, 11. See Abbott’s Dict. of Rel. Knowledge,
art. _Galilee._

[7] See John 1:35-37, notes; Matt. 4:21; 10:2; 17:1; 20:20;
26:37; Mark 5:37; John 13:23; 14:26, 27; 20:1-8; Acts
3:1, etc.; 8:14-25; Gal. 2:9.

[8] Acts, ch. 19; ch. 20:17-38.

[9] Mark 3:17; Luke 9:49-56; Matt. 20:20; John 18:15; 19:26;
Acts 4:19, 20.

[10] Matt. 16:22; John 14:5, 8, 22; John 12:4, with Matt. 26:14.

[11] John 5:16, 18; 7:13, 19; 8:40, 44, 59; 9:22, 28; 18:31, etc.

[12] See John 2:6, 13; 5:1; 6:4; 7:2; 8:17; 10:34; 15:25;
19:40, 42.

[13] John 1:14; 19:35; 21:24; 1 John 1:1-3.

[14] John 1:36, 38; 4:6; 6:10; 12:3; 13:30; 18:18.

[15] John 12:27, 28; 13:3; chaps. 14-16.

[16] John 1:19; 3:16; 6:37; chaps. 4, 5, 10, 14, 15.

[17] John 2:6; 5:1; 6:4; 7:2; 18:28; 19:40.

[18] See John 7:1, 19, 25, 32; 8:6, 59; 9:22; 10:31; 11:49.

[19] John 6:70, 71; 11:6; 13:2, 27.

[20] The student will find this hypothesis urged with great
literary ingenuity by Matthew Arnold, in “God and the
Bible.”

[21] See John 5:4, and note there.

[22] John 20:31. This declaration makes it unnecessary to
discuss the various theories which have been proposed,
such as that it was written to supplement the other
Gospels and supply their defects, or to refute certain
Gnostic heresies, or to commend Christianity to the
disciples of Oriental philosophy and the like. These may,
or may not, have been subordinate aims of the writer:
the main design he clearly indicates, and it is the
design here indicated which affords the key to the true
interpretation of the Gospel as a whole.

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JOHN.

1:1-18. THE CHRISTOLOGY OF JOHN.--THE PRE-EXISTENCE OF CHRIST.--THE CREATIVE POWER OF CHRIST.--THE REGENERATING WORK OF CHRIST.--THE ILLUMINATION GIVEN BY CHRIST.--THE DIVINE MANIFESTATION IN CHRIST.--THE WORD; THE LIGHT; THE LIFE; THE TABERNACLE; THE ONLY-BEGOTTEN SON.--CONTRASTED WITH JOHN THE BAPTIST; WITH MOSES.--THE GIFTS HE CONFERS; THE WELCOME HE RECEIVES.

PRELIMINARY NOTE.--The ordinary English reader will find no difficulty in comprehending the truths which John expresses in this introduction to his Gospel, viz., the pre-existence, divine attributes, and divine nature of that Jesus, the Messiah, of whom his book is written. John identifies him with the Word, which was with God from eternity, and with the Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. But it is not so clear why he should use the peculiar and somewhat mysterious language here employed; for the full understanding of this, some historical explanation is necessary. My object in this note is to afford very briefly this historical explanation, as a basis for more detailed consideration of particular words and phrases in the notes.

From the earliest ages the ablest minds have been perplexed by the problem how to reconcile faith in an all-wise, all-powerful, and all-benevolent Creator, with the fact of a creation full of sin and suffering. One of the ablest thinkers of modern times (John Stuart Mill) has declared the problem insoluble, and from the facts of creation has deduced the conclusion that the Creator is neither all-wise, all-powerful, nor all-good; to use his own words respecting the Creator, “his wisdom is possibly, his power certainly limited, and his goodness, though real, is not likely to have been the only motive which actuated him in the work of creation.”--(_Three Essays in Religion._) Oriental philosophy, pondering this problem, proposed for its solution an hypothesis which to a Western mind seems singularly puerile and fantastic, and yet which, in slightly different forms, gained, at one period in the world’s history, an acceptance quite as widespread as any form of philosophy or theology of to-day. This hypothesis, however modified in form, was in essence this, that the evil in the world came not from the Creator, but from some other and inferior Being. In the Persian religion there were two deities, a good and an evil god, Ormuzd and Ahriman, struggling with each other for the supremacy. In the Chaldean philosophy Light was the soul of the universe and the Original First Cause; in the lower realms, far below the space filled with pure and unapproachable light, were darkness, night, and all forth-springing evils, which either the Supreme Light regarded it beneath his dignity to contend with, or which were indestructible and could only be confined within narrow limits, not destroyed. In the Hindoo philosophy, the Great First Cause, the beatific Brahm, lived in perpetual repose, in a supreme and serene indifference to all things. From him, by emanations, proceeded lesser deities, and from these, by a process more or less remote, a corrupt creation. At the beginning of the Christian era, Alexandria, founded by and named in honor of Alexander the Great, was one of the intellectual centres of the world. Here was gathered a library of over 700,000 volumes; here congregated Oriental dreamers, Greek philosophers, and Jewish religionists. Here, in the third century before Christ, was translated into the Greek language the Old Testament Scriptures. Here about 20 B. C., was born Philo, a Jew, of a priestly family, a philosopher and _litterateur_, and a voluminous writer. He was not an original thinker; his works are therefore all the more valuable as a reflection of the current mystical philosophy of his age and school. This dreamy philosophy it is difficult to translate into modern forms of thought. So far as this can be done, it may be said to have involved the following statements: God is simply the absolute, unchangeable Existence, incomprehensible, inconceivable, yet ever to be the object of our thoughts and meditations. He could not come directly into contact with matter without losing something of his ineffable excellence. Hence he gave forth certain divine powers or influences, “incorporeal potencies,” which surround God as the members of a court surround an earthly monarch. The highest of these is the divine Logos or Word of God. Through this Word the world was created, and to the influence of the inferior potencies the evils of the world must be attributed. Again, borrowing the imagery of the Chaldeans, Philo conceives of God as the pure and absolute Light, the original source of effulgence, the Logos or Word as the nearest circle of light proceeding from it, and each separate power as a separate ray, fading more and more away into darkness, as it becomes removed from the original source and centre. From this philosophy was later developed that peculiar and incomprehensible form of thought known as Gnosticism. This Gnostic philosophy, which reached its climax in the second century after Christ, undertook to describe in detail all the emanations from the original inconceivable deity; Reason, the Word, practical Wisdom, theoretical Wisdom, Power, Light, Life, were all lesser deities. The God of the Jews was one of these lower deities; Jesus Christ was a higher deity--the Reason according to some, the Word according to others, who came to deliver the world from its subjection to the inferior deity, and who entered the body of Jesus at his baptism, and departed from it just before his crucifixion. Whether John was acquainted with the writings of Philo we do not know; but he was certainly familiar with this Gnostic philosophy. It had already begun to enter into and corrupt the Christian church during the lifetime of Paul, whose writings contain frequent references to different phases of it (e. g., Col. 2:18; 1 Tim. 4:1-4; 2 Tim. 2:16-18); Ephesus, a city of luxury, effeminacy and superstition (Acts, ch. 19, notes), was a centre of this philosophy; in Paul’s address to the elders of the church at Ephesus (Acts 20:29, 30), and in his letter to Timothy, first bishop of that church (subs. to 2 Tim.), he especially warns against it (2 Tim. 2:16-18; 3:8, 9); and Ephesus was John’s residence, and probably the city in which he wrote his Gospel. (See Introduction.)

John, then, employs the language of this mystical philosophy, in order more effectually to refute its errors. He finds a certain substratum of truth, viz., that there is one God and one Mediator between God and man, underlying this superstructure of error; he begins his Gospel by occupying this ground, and by his phraseology brings himself into sympathy with his Gnostic readers; then, from this common ground he leads them on to the truth respecting the incarnation. It is true, he says to them, that there is a Word of God, but this Word was from the beginning with God, and is indeed God himself, who is not incommunicable, but a self-manifesting God. It is true that there is a Life and a Light; but the Life is God himself, not an inferior and subordinate deity; and the Light is not remote and unapproachable, but lighteth every man that cometh into the world. For this Mediator is not an emanation from God, but God himself, the true Light shining in the darkness (verse 5), the true Life by whom we can not only commune with Christ, but become the very children of God (verses 12, 13). And he has come and tabernacled among men in the flesh, in the earthly life of Jesus of Nazareth.

It only remains to add that there is to be found in the Old Testament (see notes below) a Scriptural basis for John’s use of the language here, particularly his phrase “the Word of God,” and that there is not the least ground for the claims of some rationalistic scholars that John derived his doctrine here from Philo, or from the Alexandrian or Gnostic schools. On the contrary, his doctrine and theirs are radically inconsistent. Philo holds that matter is inherently defiling, that God cannot come into contact with matter, even to fashion it in creation, without defilement; John, that God “was made flesh and dwelt among us,” and yet so far from being defiled thereby, manifested his glory, “the glory of the only-begotten of the Father.”