The Lost Gospel and Its Contents Part 12

And yet we are to be told that Justin "knew nothing" of the Fourth Gospel, and that his Logos doctrine was "identical" with that of Philo.

SECTION XVIII.

DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN ST. JOHN AND THE SYNOPTICS.

The author of "Supernatural Religion" devotes a large portion of his second volume to setting forth the discrepancies, real or alleged, between the Synoptics and the Fourth Gospel.

In many of these remarks he seems to me to betray extraordinary ignorance of the mere contents of the Fourth Gospel. I shall notice two or three remarkable misconceptions; but, before doing this, I desire to call the reader's attention to the only inference respecting the authors.h.i.+p of this Gospel which can be drawn from these discrepancies.

St. John's Gospel is undoubtedly the last Gospel published; in fact, the last work of the sacred canon. The more patent, then, the differences between St. John and the Synoptics, the more difficult it is to believe that a Gospel, containing subject-matter so different from the works already accepted as giving a true account of Christ, should have been accepted by the whole Church at so comparatively recent a date, unless that Church had every reason for believing that it was the work of the last surviving Apostle.

Take, for instance, the [apparent] differences between St. John and the Synoptics respecting the scene of our Lord's ministry, the character of His discourses, the miracles ascribed to Him, and the day of His Crucifixion, or rather of His partaking of the Paschal feast. The most ignorant and un.o.bservant would notice these differences; and the more labour required to reconcile the statements or representations of the last Gospel with the three preceding ones, the more certain it is that none would have ventured to put forth a doc.u.ment containing such differences except an Apostle who, being the last surviving one, might be said to inherit the prestige and authority of the whole college.

It would far exceed the limits which I have prescribed to myself to examine the Fourth Gospel with the view of reconciling the discrepancies between it and the Synoptics, and also of bringing out the numberless undesigned coincidences between the earlier and the later account, of which the writer of "Supernatural Religion," led away by his usual dogmatic prejudices, has taken not the smallest notice.

The reader will find this very ably treated in Mr. Sanday's "Authors.h.i.+p of the Fourth Gospel" (Macmillan).

My object at present is of a far humbler nature, simply to show the utter untrustworthiness of some of the most confidently a.s.serted statements of the writer of "Supernatural Religion."

I shall take two:

1. The difference between Christ's mode of teaching and the structure of His discourses, as represented by St. John and the Synoptics respectively.

2. The intellectual impossibility that St. John should have written the Fourth Gospel.

1. Respecting the difference of Christ's mode of teaching as recorded in St. John and in the Synoptics, he remarks:--

"It is impossible that Jesus can have had two such diametrically opposed systems of teaching; one purely moral, the other wholly dogmatic; one expressed in wonderfully terse, clear, brief sayings and parables, the other in long, involved, and diffuse discourses; one clothed in the great language of humanity, the other concealed in obscure, philosophic terminology; and that these should have been kept so distinct as they are in the Synoptics, on the one hand, and the Fourth Gospel on the other. The tradition of Justin Martyr applies solely to the system of the Synoptics, 'Brief and concise were the sentences uttered by Him: for He was no Sophist, but His word was the power of G.o.d.'" [106:1] (Vol. ii. p. 468)

To take the first of those a.s.sertions. So far from its being "impossible" that Jesus "can have had two such diametrically opposite modes of teaching," it is not only possible, but we have undeniable proof of the fact in that remarkable saying of Christ recorded by both St. Matthew and St. Luke: "All things are delivered unto Me of My Father, and no man knoweth the Son, but the Father; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." (Matth. xi. 27). The author of "Supernatural Religion" has studied the letter of this pa.s.sage very carefully, for he devotes no less than ten pages to a minute examination of the supposed quotations of it in Justin and other Fathers (vol. i. pp. 402-412); but he does not draw attention to the fact that it is conceived in the spirit and expressed in the terms of the Fourth Gospel, and totally unlike the general style of the discourses in the Synoptics. [107:1] The Fourth Gospel shows us that such words as these, almost unique in the Synoptics, are not the only words uttered in a style so different from the usual teaching of our Lord--that at times, when He was on the theme of His relations to His Father, He adopted other diction more suited to the nature of the deeper truths He was enunciating.

Then take the second a.s.sertion:--

"One [system] expressed in wonderfully terse, clear, brief sayings and parables, the other in long, involved, and diffuse discourses."

Again:--

"The description which Justin gives of the manner of teaching of Jesus excludes the idea that he knew the Fourth Gospel. 'Brief and concise were the sentences uttered by Him, for He was no Sophist, but His word was the power of G.o.d.' (Apol. I. 14) No one could for a moment a.s.sert that this description applies to the long and artificial discourses of the Fourth Gospel, whilst, on the other hand, it eminently describes the style of teaching with which we are acquainted in the Synoptics, with which the Gospel according to the Hebrews, in all its forms, was so closely allied." (Vol. ii. p. 315)

Now I a.s.sert, and the reader can with very little trouble verify the truth of the a.s.sertion, that the mode of our Lord's teaching, as set forth in St. John, is more terse, axiomatic, and sententious--more in accordance with these words of Justin, "brief and concise were the sentences uttered by Him," than it appears in the Synoptics.

To advert for a moment to the mere length of the discourses. The Sermon on the Mount is considerably longer than the longest discourse in St.

John's Gospel (viz., that occupying chapters xiv., xv., xvi.). This is the only unbroken discourse of any length in this Gospel. The others, viz., those with Nicodemus, with the woman at Sychem, with the Jews in the Temple, and the one in the Synagogue at Capernaum, are much shorter than many in the Synoptics, and none of them are continuous discourses, but rather conversations. And, with respect to the composition, those in St. John are mainly made up of short, terse, axiomatic deliverances just such as Justin describes.

Take, for instance, the sentences in the sixth chapter:--

"I am the bread of life."

"He that believeth on me hath everlasting life."

"I am that bread of life."

"This is the bread that cometh down from heaven, that a man should eat thereof and not die."

"My flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed."

"It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing."

And those in the tenth:--

"I am the door of the sheep."

"I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep."

"I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine."

Then, if we compare parables, the pa.s.sage in the Fourth Gospel most resembling a parable, viz., the similitude of the Vine and the branches, is made up of detached sentences more "terse" and "concise" than those of most parables in the Synoptics.

The discourses in St. John are upon subjects very distasteful to the author of "Supernatural Religion," and he loses no opportunity of expressing his dislike to them; but it is a gross misrepresentation to say that the instruction, whatever it be, is conveyed in other than sentences as simple, terse, and concise as those of the Synoptics, though the subject-matter is different.

We will now proceed to the last a.s.sertion:--

"One [system of teaching] clothed in the great language of humanity, the other concealed in obscure philosophic terminology."

What can this writer mean by the "philosophic terminology" of our Lord's sayings as reported in the Fourth Gospel? If the use of the term "Logos"

be "philosophic terminology," it is confined to four sentences; and these not the words of Jesus Himself, but of the Evangelist. I do not remember throughout the rest of the Gospel a single sentence which can be properly called "philosophical."

The author must confound "philosophical" with "mysterious." Each and every discourse in the fourth Gospel is upon, or leads to, some deep mystery; but that mystery is in no case set forth in philosophical, but in what the author of "Supernatural Religion" calls the "great language of humanity." Take the most mysterious by far of all the enunciations in St. John's Gospel, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink His Blood, ye have no life in you." What are the words of which this sentence is composed? "Eat," "flesh," "blood," "Son of man," "life." Are not these the commonest words of daily life? but, then, their use and a.s.sociation here is the very thing which const.i.tutes the mystery.

Again, take the salient words of each discourse--"Except a man be born again"--"be born of water and of the Spirit." "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst." "As the Father hath life in Himself, so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself."

"All that are in the graves shall hear His voice and shall come forth."

"The bread that I will give is My flesh." "If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins." "As the Father knoweth Me, even so know I the Father." "I am the Resurrection and the Life." "Whatsoever ye shall ask in My name, that will I do." "If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you but: if I depart, I will send Him unto you."

It is the deepest of all mysteries that one in flesh and blood can say such things of Himself; but it is a perversion of language to speak of these sayings as "philosophical terminology." They are in a different sphere from all more _human_ philosophy, and, indeed, are opposed to every form of it. Philosophy herself requires a new birth before she can so much as see them.

I must recur, however, to the author's first remark, in which he characterizes the discourses of the Synoptics as "purely moral," and those of St. John as "wholly dogmatic." This is by no means true. The discourses in the Synoptics are on moral subjects, but they continually make dogmatic a.s.sertions or implications as p.r.o.nounced as those in the Fourth Gospel. In the Sermon on the Mount, for instance, the preacher authoritatively adds to and modifies the teaching of the very Decalogue itself. "Ye have heard that it was said TO them of old time" (for so [Greek: errhethe tois archaiois] must properly be translated); "but I say unto you." Again, Jesus a.s.sumes in the same discourse to be the Object of wors.h.i.+p and the Judge of quick and dead, and that His recognition is salvation itself, when He says, "Not every one that saith unto Me Lord, Lord, shall enter," &c. "Many shall say to me in that day, Lord, Lord," &c., "then will I profess unto them, I never knew you, depart from me all ye that work iniquity."

Take the following expressions out of a number of similar ones in St.

Matthew:--

"I will make you (ignorant fishermen) fishers of men" (implying, I will give you power over souls such as no philosopher or leader of men has had before you). (iv. 21.)

"Blessed are ye when men shall persecute you for My sake." (v. 11.)

"If they have called the master of the house (_i.e._ Jesus) Beelzebub, how much wore shall they call them of His household." (x.