the "country" intended were not Galilee but Judæa.1 Strauss here, as elsewhere, leaves the choice between the two accounts undecided; but rather inclines to the synoptical, except in respect of the apparent difficulty of explaining, on that hypothesis, the sudden and extreme exasperation of the Jewish rulers, and the seeming admission of an earlier Judæan residence in the expression"How often would I have gathered thy children together, and ye would not!" It was urged that the same cause which determines the difference in the general contents of the fourth gospel and those of the synoptics may also account for their divergence as to the scene of the ministry; and in this view it was suggested that the discourses recorded by John as delivered in Jerusalem, requiring for their comprehension a more mature development of Christianity than that attained during the first apostolic period, were omitted in the primitive tradition recorded by the synoptics, and were first restored to their proper place in the narrative by John, who wrote when Christianity was more advanced. But then it occurred to ask on what grounds, either of special aptitude in the inhabitants of the respective places or otherwise, can we assume the popular and the esoteric to have been in real fact so nicely apportioned to Galilee and Jerusalem? Who misunderstood Jesus more lamentably than did the "Jews" of the fourth gospel, and how can we suppose the synoptical writers, who record so much of the final residence of Jesus in Jerusalem, to have been ignorant of earlier visits, or, knowing, to have so entirely suppressed them? The terms of the lamentation over Jerusalem, 1 See John iv. 43, 44 compared with Matth. xiii. 54; Mark vi. 1, 4; Luke iv. 23, 24; and especially the emphatic words, "edegavтo avtov ói Tadıdaιoi,' which Lücke undertakes to expound as follows:-They received him indeed, but not in the right spirit; so that properly speaking they did not receive him; and so the words as to the "native country" refer to Galilee after all! Was Jesus then, it may be asked, better received in Judæa? 2 Strauss, "Life of Jesus," vol. i., p. 400, Translation. as given in Luke and Matthew, were indeed accounted for by assuming the earlier journeys of the fourth gospel; yet it could hardly be considered as affording satisfactory evidence of a conscious suppression of fact in the narratives in which they occur; especially when it was remembered that all Jews might fairly be called "children" of the metropolitan city, and that the whole course of the previous labours of Jesus in Galilee or elsewhere might be consistently viewed as intended for their conversion. So that we seem in this case to be driven to the alternative that either the synoptical writers knew nothing of an essential portion of the ministry of Jesus, or else that the author of the fourth gospel deliberately invented a large portion of what he relates, and was influenced by considerations differing from those of the mere historian. Again, the description of the character of Christ in the synoptics is not only different but incompatible with that in the fourth gospel. The Messianic status is variously described in the synoptics as sonship by generation, titular or official sonship, sonship by moral conformity of will, etc.; in the fourth gospel alone it takes the special and peculiar form of absolute divinity, of the pre-existent Logos" of Alexandrian theosophic speculation; a notion so ill according with the human character of Jesus, that it is extremely difficult to imagine how a familiar friend and disciple could ever have entertained it. Indeed Dr. Karl Hase, a zealous defender of the authenticity of the gospel, 66 2 1 This seeming variance has, however, been confidently relied on by those insisting that the fourth gospel really agrees with the others, as being intended to supply their historical omissions. It is urged that an exclamation, which, looking to the synoptical accounts alone, seems entirely destitute of meaning, and to be explained only by the circumstances related in the fourth gospel, vouches for the veracity and accuracy of that gospel. But is the exclamation really destitute of meaning in the synoptical accounts? Strauss has recently shewn convincingly that it has even in these accounts a very sufficient meaning (see Zeitschrift für wiss. Theologie, 6th year, p. 84); the "Toσakis" being explained by the character in which Jesus speaks. Comp. with Matthew xxiii. 37 the passage immediately preceding. 2 Matt. v. 45. goes so far as to say that no one out of Bedlam could have imagined the master on whose breast he leaned at supper, to be the Creator and Lord of the world; although at the end of life, in anticipation of the final victory of Christianity, the apostle may have seen things in another light, etc., etc. But the theory of the fourth gospel implics not merely modification, but reversal of the disciple's human recollections; a complete subordination of the actual to the ideal; in the "Logos" we have not a human being exalted, but a Divine being if not actually lowered, at least temporarily condescending from his real altitude,1 and assuming the form of man only for the transient purpose of his overt manifestation. There is an entire absence of analogy between the lowly moral teacher of the synoptics and the visionary Christ of the fourth gospel; and unsupported by independent testimony, we can never feel sure that the particulars related of such a being, his high wrought metaphysical discourses, etc., were suggested by personal recollection rather than by à priori postulates and conceptional necessities of theory. Moreover, in regard to general Christian theory, and the specific relation of the "new wine" of the fourth gospel to the continuing Judaism generally contemplated in the synoptics, there are many contrarieties to which it might be useful to refer, were there not inconsistencies of a similar kind within the compass of the synoptical gospels themselves; and these cannot be fully understood until after attaining that wider view which is at present the object of endeavour. In a number of minor particulars too the fourth gospel is strikingly at issue with the others. Here, for instance, the incarnation changes its character; from an absolutely essential, it becomes only a relatively necessary circumstance, little more, in fact, than 1 Comp. John iii. 13, 31, with Phil. ii. 7. 2 "Had he not come in the flesh," says the Epistle of Barnabas, ch. v. "how could men have been able to look on him that they might be saved?" Comp. 1 Tim. iii. 16. Epistle to Diognetus, ch. viii. (where for Toñσai read nλaφῆσαι). Also Irenæus Hær. v. 1, 1. 4 a scenic incidental accompaniment. The baptism and temptation, as recorded elsewhere, jar with the circumstances here stated; and Harmonists vainly puzzle themselves in attempting to reconcile the original recognition of Jesus by John in the synoptics with the distinct disclaimer of any such prior knowledge3 in the fourth gospel. And, while the synoptics distinctly assert the public ministry to have begun only after John had been cast into prison, the fourth gospel emphatically places the signal demonstration at Cana before that event. The behaviour of the Samaritans in the 4th chapter of John belies the inhospitable disposition attributed to them in Luke (ix. 52), to say nothing of the prejudiced antipathy on the Christian side, apparently authorised in Matthew (x. 5); and if Nicodemus was a real person, associated with Joseph of Arimathea in the burial of Jesus, how is it that the synoptics make no mention of him? It is still more significant that in the fourth gospel no mention occurs of the transfiguration, the agony in the garden, or the institution of the sacraments? Above all, why should an event of such infinite importance, both in itself and its immediate connection with the catastrophe, as the raising of Lazarus, have been altogether omitted by the synoptics ?5 Then there are many circumstances and utterances in the fourth gospel without apparent object, whose incongruity or irrelevancy calls aloud for explanation. Why, for instance, should the Saviour, whose religion is love, speak so harshly to his mother?6 Whence the mysterious speech to the bridegroom at Cana" and the allusions to the "second day" and "third day" in the opening chapters? Why is 1 See Baur, "Evangelien," pp. 105, 106. 2 Matt. iii. 14. 5 The incompatibility of the respective gospels as to the day of the last supper and the crucifixion is shewn in detail by Strauss, part iii., ch. 2, § 121. In the translation, vol. iii., pp. 139, 276. It should be generally recollected that the critical analysis of Strauss is the basis of that of Baur. • Ch. ii. 4. 7 Ch. ii. 10. the cleansing of the temple antedated? Why should the Evangelist, after telling us that Christ baptised, correct himself afterwards by saying that his baptism was only vicarious? Have the seemingly desultory remarks of Jesus from the fifth to the end of the tenth chapter any link of intelligible connection? Why should the writer take so much pains to shew that the events elsewhere stated to have accompanied the Passover really happened before the Passover;2 and why in ch. xix. 35, the anxious and emphatic attestation to circumstances apparently trivial or accidental? These and other similar questions must be answered in a way tallying with the general character of the gospel, and including all seeming anomalies; otherwise we cannot be sure of having passed beyond the sphere of conjecture, or of having penetrated the real intent of the writer. The Plan or Theory of the Gospel. These questions could only be answered through a careful study of the gospel itself; keeping in view the very obvious consideration that if of two conflicting accounts one appears to be under the control of a leading purpose, while the other betrays either no such bias, or only a smaller amount of it, the latter will have the higher claim to credit as a history. The problem was solved by F. C. Baur, who in a minute analysis3 shewed how a consistent plan pervades the composition; how by dismissing altogether the fancied history of facts, we reach at last the true history of ideas, As the garb of flesh which the gospel describes as in itself profitless (vi. 63), though serving as a visible form or frame-work for the 1 Ch. iii. 22. Comp. iv. 2. 2 See John xiii. 1-29; xviii. 28; xix. 14, 31, 42. Essay on the Character and Composition of the Fourth Gospel, Tübingen Theol. Jahrbücher, vol. iii.—since incorporated with his work on the Gospels. |