“This is sacred ground. I fear even to kneel, much less to tread upon it. But I think the Lord Jesus meant this also, amidst a multitude of meanings, ‘O Father, why hast thou forsaken me, making me feel one with the sinners whom thou forsakest? Is it that thou art breaking for a time the sensible bond between me and thee in order to bind me to them? Is it that I may be made one with them, so as to make them one with me? Wouldst thou make me to be sin that the world may be made to be righteousness?’”
I remembered the words of Paul, “Him that knew not sin Godmade sinin our behalf”: but I had never understood them before. Nor did I now, but I thought I caught a glimpse of their meaning. It was only a glimpse, and I sat silent, afraid as it were to move lest I should lose it. I seemed in a new world, or rather, in a mixed world, in which the old and the new were contending. I could neither see clearly nor move freely as yet. I felt that light and freedom were around and very near, forcing their way towards me, if I would but reach out my hand to them. But I could not do it.
“I feel,” said I, “as though, in time, these hard words might become intelligible, or rather, I should say, beautiful and full of comfort to me. But how different they are from the last words of Socrates!” “Most different,” replied Clemens. “Often have I pondered on the difference. I was born in Athens, and I admire the literature and language of my native city. But my mother was of Jewish extraction; and when I worship, and pray, and feel sorrow, and seek consolation, it is in the thought and phrase (though not in the language) of my mother’s people. And again and again have I reflected on the strange contrast between the two ‘last words,’ the Jewish and the Greek. These ‘last words’ represent last thoughts.Socrates felt righteous, and happy, and not ‘forsaken,’ and not at all anxious about his friends nor about his doctrine. The Lord Jesus felt forsaken—doubly forsaken. First He sorrowed for His disciples because He knew that they would forsake Him; and He prayed for them that they might not utterly fail. Afterwards He Himself felt forsaken by the Father.
“Perhaps, so far, Socrates may seem to have the advantage. But what has followed? Socrates is enshrined in books, a companion and dear friend of students for ever, but in books. He is not for the crowd in the street, nor for the ploughman in the field, nor for the poor, the simple, and the unlettered. And though he may fortify some of us against the fear of death, he does not bring the deepest consolation to those who are suffering under a perpetual burden of pains or sorrows. But the Spirit of the Lord Jesus moves among all sorts and conditions of life in all the races of mankind, bringing joy to them that rejoice righteously, and wholesome sorrow to those that sin, and strength to the heavy laden, and comfort to all that mourn, and freedom from all servile fear. Yes, He brings freedom, even to those enemies against whom He makes war, turning their consciences against themselves and making them His willing captives to lead others captive in turn. For indeed this captivity is no captivity but an embracing with the arms of a Father revealed in the Son according to the words of Hosea ‘I taught Ephraim to walk. I took him in my arms. He knew not that I healed him. I drew him with cords, with bands of love.’ Dear friend, it is my firm conviction that those only can relieve pain of the heart who have felt pain of the heart. Those only can save the forsaken who have felt forsaken. It was in fact because Christ had been forsaken that He was enabled to draw Paul towards Him with the cords of His constraining love.”
“But,” said I, “if love was the foundation of Christ’s doctrine, how is it that Mark hardly ever mentions it? Should I be wrong in saying that Mark never mentions ‘love’ at all except in one place where Jesus, being asked what is the greatest commandment, quotes from the scripture the ancient commandment to love God and one’s neighbour?” “Alas,”replied Clemens, “you would be only too right! Yet believe me, Christ’s doctrine of doctrines was ‘love’—and that, too, not the old commandment, but a new commandment, because Christ introduced into the world a new kind of love, a more powerful love, a constraining love. This He imparted through His blood to His disciples, as is made clear in this new gospel”—and here he took a roll out of his garment—“about which I spoke to you lately, and in a letter, by the same author, which is an appendix to the gospel.” And then he read to me, from John’s gospel, the words, “A new commandment give I unto you that ye love one another,” and “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples if ye have love one to another”; and he pointed out the newness and greatness of the love, reading the words, “Greater love hath no man than this that a man lay down his life for his friends.” Lastly, he added, from the epistle, “God is love.”
All this astonished me not a little, and I replied, “Here at last, it seems to me, we have the only true gospel, Paul’s gospel, the gospel of the constraining love of Christ. But how came it to pass that, whereas this was the true gospel, such a gospel as Mark’s, full of marvels, and portents, and exorcisms, should be the first published to the world—so I have been told on good authority—a gospel that gives a whole column to the dancing of the daughter of Herodias and not one line to ‘love one another’?”
“Often and often,” replied Clemens, “have I asked myself the same question. I think, though I am not sure, that the reason is this. After the resurrection of the Lord, the apostles went forth to the world to attest the resurrection, and to preach the gospel, saying, in effect, what we find Peter and Paul actually saying in their epistles. But perhaps you have not read Peter’s epistle?” I had not. “If you had, you would have found that Peter, like Paul, teaches this commandment of love. Doubtless all the apostles did the same. Consequently, before any gospels were written, all the churches were familiar with this doctrine of love, and with the doctrine of the resurrection. These were the important things. These had been handed down by the apostles to the elders, and by the firstgeneration of the elders to the second. These, therefore, the churches knew. But the unimportant things, as Paul deemed them, the things that concerned Christ in the flesh, and His works of healing and of casting out spirits, and His sayings in the flesh to the disciples, and His discussions and controversies with the Pharisees, and how He was delivered over to Pilate, and how He suffered this and that particular humiliation (such as ‘spitting’ and ‘smiting’) in exact accordance with the scriptures—these things the churches had not committed to memory in any kind of detail. These therefore the earliest evangelist wrote down. Hence it came to pass that he recorded, in large measure, not the most important but the least important things.”
“I understand now,” said I, “but is it not to be regretted?” “For all reasons but one,” replied Clemens, “I think it is to be regretted. I am often sorry that Mark does not give us the Lord’s Prayer. I suppose he omitted it, as being known to everybody. But, as it is, we have two versions, and Matthew’s is very different from Luke’s. A version by Mark might have taught us whether the two versions are from one original, or whether the Lord gave His disciples two prayers at two different times—perhaps one before the resurrection, one after it. Again, Mark does not give us any account of the Lord’s resurrection. Some think that a page of the manuscript of his gospel was lost. I, too, once thought so; but now I am disposed to think that he stopped short here, saying, ‘Here begins the testimony of the apostles. It is their part to testify to the Lord’s resurrection.’ In any case it is to be regretted.”
“But,” said I, “your expression, just now, was, ‘to be regretted forall reasons but one.’ What did you mean by that?” “I meant,” said Clemens, “that if all the evangelists had agreed exactly in their reports of all Christ’s words, there might have been, amidst many advantages, this one disadvantage, the danger that the letter of the words of the Lord might have become a second law, like the law of Moses, to be interpreted by lawyers. In that case, what the Lord said about divorce, and marriage, and about the manner oflife of the evangelists, and their sustenance, and about giving up or retaining one’s possessions—all these things might have been collected into a small code. On this code might have been written a large commentary; on that, perhaps, another commentary, still larger. Thus the Church of Christ might have drifted into the legalities of men far away from the one true law of Christ, as it is defined in Paul’s epistles ‘Bear ye one another’s burdens,’ and (in the new gospel that I shewed you just now) ‘Love one another with the love with which I have loved you’.”
“Tell me more about that new gospel,” said I. “I would gladly do so,” said Clemens, “if time permitted. But the shadows are lengthening and the hour we were to spend together is past. Most willingly would I stay with you, but my work calls me away. Tomorrow, however, if you would like to come to my lodging in the house of Justus, at the corner of the market-place, soon after sunset, I shall have returned to Nicopolis, and you shall have a sight of the new gospel and such aid as I can give you in explaining it.” So we parted for the time, after I had eagerly accepted his invitation.
“How many things I should have asked him if he could only have stayed!” was my first thought, as Clemens disappeared behind the bushes. My next thought was, “How many new things I already have to think about!” Mechanically I turned homewards and took a few steps on the way to the city. Then I sat down to reflect.
Not many minutes had elapsed before I heard footsteps behind me. Presently, a little on my left, Clemens, without noticing me, passed striding hastily onwards in the direction of Nicopolis. I called to him. He turned and came up to me with an exclamation of joy, “I am thankful to have found you so soon. It has been on my mind that I ought to have at least explained to you why I did not offer to lend you this new gospel.” “I would not have lent it to anyone had I been in your place,” said I. “Yes,” said Clemens, “you would have. Trust me, dear friend, if you believed this gospel, as I do, you would long to lend it to those who did not as yet believe it. But the truth is, I did not wish to lend it to you without a few words of introduction, for which I feared there would be no time. I forgot that the moonlight would suffice to guide me to the end of my journey. Have you leisure and desire for a little more conversation? Without it, I fear this little book might make you stumble, might even repel you. It is entirely different from the other three gospels both in its style and in its language. Whether reporting Christ’s sayings or relating His actions, it almost always differs from the earlier accounts. It is also largely different in the facts related. What say you?”
“I say ‘Thanks,’ with all my heart,” replied I; then, as we sat down together, “May I ask first, who wrote it?” “You not only may, but ought,” he replied. “It is just the question I expected from you, and, alas! just one of the questions that I cannot answer in the usual way by saying ‘A the son of B.’ It seems to hint the authorship in dark expressions. At the end of the book it says, ‘This is the disciple that beareth witness of these things and he that wrote these things’; but the texts vary and it is not quite clear whether the ‘writer’ and the ‘bearer of witness’ are one and the same. Nor does it give any name to the witness or the writer, nor any means of ascertaining the name or names, except that it describes him, a little before, as being ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved, who also leaned on His breast,’ i.e. at the last supper. Also, going back further, I find it written concerning a certain flow of blood and water from the side of the Saviour on the cross, ‘He that hath seen hath borne witness and his witness is true, and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye may believe.’ Going back further still, and comparing the beginning with the end of the gospel, the reader is led indirectly to the conclusion that the disciple that ‘hath borne witness’ is John the son of Zebedee.
“This John is often referred to as one of the chief apostles, in the three gospels; but his name is not so much as once mentioned in the fourth. Whenever ‘John’ occurs in this gospel, it is always John the Baptist, even though ‘Baptist’ is not added. Not till the last chapter does it become clear that the author is one of the ‘sons of Zebedee’.” “But might it not be James?” said I. “It might,” replied Clemens, “but for the following fact. The gospel goes on to say, in effect, that, whereas Peter was to be crucified hereafter, this disciple was to live so long that a report sprang up in the church that he would never die. Now this could not apply to James, as he was beheaded quite early in the history of the church. It follows therefore that the author was John, who, though he became a martyr, or witness, for the Saviour, survived his martyrdom and lived to a great age.”
This seemed to me an unsatisfactory way of writing history, and not quite fair to readers. For ought they not to be partlyguided, in their judgment of the historian’s statements, by their knowledge of his character, and of his opportunities for obtaining information? “How much more satisfactory,” said I, “is the honest straightforwardness of the Greek writer, ‘This is the third year of the history that Thucydides compiled’.” “You are right,” replied Clemens, “I cannot deny it. It would have been more satisfactory—if it could have been written with truth—that we should read at the end of this little roll, ‘I John, the son of Zebedee, wrote this work.’ But what if he did not write it yet had a great part in originating it? What if there was some kind of joint production, revision, or correction, of the work, so that it would not have been true to say, ‘I John wrote it’?”
“Is there any evidence of this?” I asked. “A little,” he replied. “It is the only one of the four gospels that contains ‘we’ in its conclusion, thus, ‘Weknow that his testimony is true.’ I have also heard a tradition that it was revealed to Andrew that John was to write the gospel and that his fellow-disciples and bishops should revise it. But the following is more important evidence: John the son of Zebedee wrote a book called the Apocalypse—have you seen it?” I said that I had glanced at it. “It was written when he was a very old man, after he had been sent to the mines in Patmos by Domitian, and it is written in, I will not say bad Greek, but a dialect of Greek entirely different from that of any of the gospels or epistles. Now the fourth gospel is written in very fair Greek and in a style as different as possible from that of the Apocalypse. It is quite impossible that John, after writing the Apocalypse when he was eighty or ninety, should then write a gospel in a style so absolutely different.”
“Then why,” said I, “should the gospel be called by his name?” “I explain it thus,” said Clemens. “When John returned from Patmos a very old man, saved from the fiery trial of the sufferings he had undergone—both before his condemnation and also afterwards in the mines—it was natural that every word uttered by him should be treasured up. I have heard it said that he could hardly be carried into the church, and that, when there, he repeated nothing but ‘Little children,love one another.’ In time, the brethren grew weary of this and remonstrated with him. This seems to have gone on for a long while. For (as I have said above) a report was current about him that he would ‘never die’ but would wait for the Lord’s coming. There is no record (known to me) of any time, place, or manner, of his departure. I infer that, during the period of his decrepitude, the brethren at Ephesus would collect traditions from him and preach his gospel for him as far as they could. Afterwards, when it was clear that he would die, the gospel would be reduced to writing.” “But this,” said I, “greatly lowers the value of the gospel as history.” “It does,” said he, “and its historical value may also be lowered by the fact that, even before the gospel was written, the apostle was a great seer of visions. A seer is not the best kind of historian. He is liable to mix vision with fact. Especially might this be done by a seer that had seen Christ both before and after Christ’s death. But still I greatly value this gospel because, like the epistles of Paul, it seems to me to go to the root of the matter. I told you just now that the old man, when he could say nothing else, repeated over and over again the words ‘Little children, love one another.’ When they asked him to say something else, he said ‘that was enough.’ And the old man was right. It is ‘enough’—if we can receive strength to do it.”
“This greatly attracts me,” said I. “But, if your explanation is true, a great deal depends upon the apostle’s friend, or friends, who wrote down the substance of his traditions and arranged them as a gospel.” “A great deal, as you say,” replied Clemens. “I have been informed that there was a great teacher near Ephesus, who was called preeminently ‘the Elder’—a name given, I believe, by students to their teacher, even in some of the schools of the Stoics. Has that ever fallen within your experience?” “Something of the kind,” I replied. “I remember that Epictetus lately spoke of himself as ‘the Elder.’ It seemed to me a modest way of saying ‘I whom you call your Teacher, or your Master, but I merely call myself your Elder.’ He said we ought to be so superior to the fear of death that his great business ought to be to keep us from dying toosoon, not to make us fearless of death. ‘This,’ he said, ‘ought to engage the attention ofthe Eldersitting in this chair.’ And then he added, ‘This ought to be the great struggle ofyour TeacherandTrainer, if indeed you had such a one’—as though Elder and Teacher were much the same thing.”
“That,” said Clemens, “is exactly to the point. Well then, you must know that John the son of Zebedee is commonly supposed to have written not only a gospel but also an epistle, or perhaps three epistles. The first epistle is quite in the style of the gospel, but it mentions not ‘John,’ nor even ‘I,’ at the beginning, but ‘we,’ ‘That whichwehave heard.’ The two other letters, which are very short, begin, ‘The Elderto so-and-so.’ These two letters are in style similar to that of the first, but some doubt exists as to their authorship, and I have seen it written, in connexion with them, that the Wisdom of Solomon was not written by Solomon but ‘by his friends to do him honour.’ Whoever wrote that, seems to have believed that ‘the Elder’ mentioned in the two epistles was not John the son of Zebedee but one of his ‘friends’.”
“What was the Elder’s name?” said I. “The two epistles do not mention it,” replied Clemens. “But the Elder near Ephesus of whom I spoke above, was called by the same name as the son of Zebedee, ‘John’; and the tradition that mentions him (along with another teacher named Aristion) appears to distinguish the two Johns, mentioning both in the same sentence. I ought to add that I mentioned this same Elder above as defending Mark on the ground that he was the mere interpreter of Peter. ‘Mark,’ said the Elder, ‘made it his single object to leave out nothing of the things that he heard and to say nothing that was false therein.’ Now you will find—I think I have already mentioned the fact—that this new gospel frequently intervenes, where Luke omits, or alters, anything that is in Mark, so as to explain Mark’s obscurity or set forth Mark’s tradition in different language. This points to the conclusion that the writer of the fourth gospel agreed with the Elder called John in his verdict on Mark, which is, in effect, ‘Not erroneous in fact though imperfect in expression.’ My own belief is that this tradition about two persons of the same name is accurate; andthat, besides John the Apostle, there was also the Elder John, residing in or near Ephesus about the same time.”
“But,” I asked, “might not ‘John the elder’ naturally be taken to mean ‘older in age’ as opposed to ‘John the younger’? And is it not strange that, in view of the great age of John the Apostle, such a distinctive appellation should be given to his namesake?” “Perhaps it would be,” replied Clemens. “But it is not given. Have you not noticed that I did not speak of ‘John the Elder’ but of ‘the Elder, John’? The two are quite different. The former (at least among Christians) would simply mean ‘John the Presbyter or Elder’ as distinct from ‘John the Deacon,’ ‘John the Bishop,’ and so on. But ‘the Elder, John’—a phrase twice repeated in my tradition—may imply that the teacher was known during his life among his pupils as ‘the Elder,’ and that, after his death, ‘John’ was added for the sake of clearness. I believe it was the custom to describe the elders near Ephesus in this indefinite way.”
The view here taken by Clemens has been somewhat confirmed of late years by a practice that I have noticed—a bad practice, I think—in the young Irenæus. In the course of his lectures, when referring to his authority—instead of mentioning an elder by name, Polycarp, Aristion, Papias, John, as the case may be—he used such expressions as “He that is greater than we are,” “The divine old man and herald of the truth,” “He that is superior to us,” and all these, as far as I could gather, about elders in the province of Ephesus. Concerning this indefiniteness I am in the same mind now as I was when I replied to Clemens, “It is very unfortunate.”
“It is,” said he, “but I believe it is fact. Well then, according to my view, one particular elder of these Johannine elders—I mean the elders in the region of Ephesus collected round the aged apostle, John the son of Zebedee—was so much superior to the rest that he was called preeminently ‘theElder.’ If ‘the Elder’ preached and wrote for John the Apostle, and if the Elder’s name was John, there would be an additional reason why the writer of the gospel would avoid the name John (except in connexion with John the Baptist) throughout the gospel.
“But my conviction is that the aged apostle, besides preferring oral tradition to books (as you will see from the last lines of his work), shrank from putting himself forward as the author by the name of ‘John,’ and insisted that, if he was to be mentioned at all, it was to be only by the title, ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved.’ John the Elder may have accepted this condition because he felt it to express a deep truth—namely, that the Lord Jesus is best known through some one whom He has loved.
“You know how carefully the Greeks distinguish ‘voice’ or ‘sound’ from ‘word.’ Well, this new gospel introduces John the Baptist as testifying to Christ and saying that he was a mere voice, ‘I am thevoiceof one crying in the wilderness,Make straight the way of the Lord.’ To the inferior and preparatory witness is given a distinctive name ‘John.’ The superior and perfected witness was also called ‘John’ after the flesh; but the writer of the gospel preferred that the name after the flesh should be dropped, yes, and even his distinctive personality merged, as it were, in the title, ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’.”
“But you spoke, above, about ‘brethren’ as perhaps preaching John’s gospel for him during his decrepitude. Now you seem to incline to think that only one man wrote it?” “Yes,” replied Clemens, “I used ‘brethren’ first, to leave the question open. Then I endeavoured to give reasons for thinking it was one brother; and this conclusion is supported by the style. There are some slight differences in this gospel between the words of the Lord and the words of the evangelist, in respect of style. That is natural; indeed, one would expect many more. But, taken as a whole, the gospel does not shew many styles, as Luke’s does, but only one style—extending to the words of all characters introduced in the book, so that it is sometimes hard to say where a speaker ceases to speak and the evangelist begins to comment.”
“But this is surely astonishing,” said I, “that the author should have so little regard for the words of the Lord as not to make it absolutely and always clear where they end, and where his own comments, or the words of someone else, begin.”“It is astonishing,” said Clemens, “but I am disposed to think that John the Apostle himself may in some cases have left his friends in doubt; and the Elder—or whoever it was that wrote the gospel—may have thought it best to leave the ambiguity as he found it. I pointed out to you above how the differences between the three gospels had this advantage that they forced the reader to think of the spirit rather than the letter of the words of the Lord. But they also had a danger, namely, that men might be puzzling their brains as to the differences of scribes and reporters instead of refreshing their hearts with the Spirit of Christ. Now if the Elder had, so to speak, simply added a fourth parallel column to the three existing parallel columns of the sayings of the Lord, the result might have been to increase that danger.
“You may say that if the Elder felt sure that he had received the exactly correct form of the Lord’s words from John the Apostle, he ought to have set them down thus, whatever might be the consequences. But I do not believe that he did feel sure. More probably he knew that it was impossible, from the old man’s reminiscences, to restore the words exactly, as uttered by Jesus, and that it was best not to attempt a restoration, but to prefer paraphrase, giving their spiritual essence. Or else, in cases where the three evangelists differed seriously among themselves, the Elder might think it best to substitute an entirely new tradition on the same subject.”
“Is it not possible,” said I, “that some part of the gospel may have been written at an earlier date? Are there for example any expressions that shew the Temple to have been still standing at the time of writing?” “I have looked through the volume, searching for such evidence,” replied Clemens, “and can find absolutely nothing except a phrase in a rather obscure and corrupt passage about the existence of a pool, an intermittent pool, near Jerusalem. Now of course a pool is not destroyed even when a neighbouring city is utterly destroyed; and parts of Jerusalem continued to be inhabited, after its capture by Titus, although the walls, and a large part of the city, were razed to the ground. The gospelsays, ‘Thereisin Jerusalem a pool … having five porches.’ I have not ascertained whether this pool is still used (as the narrative says it was then) for medicinal purposes, and whether the ‘porches’ still exist. I must also confess my belief that this is one of several narratives in which perhaps allegory may have modified history. But in any case the phrase ‘there is a pool’ seems to me to afford no basis, worth calling such, for a hypothesis of date. It seems to me of little more importance than if a writer said ‘Thereisa mountain called the Mount of Olives’ or ‘Thereisa brook called Kedron.’ I could, if you liked, discuss the passage with you more fully.”
“Let me rather ask you,” said I, “about a matter that greatly interests me. The words of Christ at the last supper—does John give them as Mark and Matthew do, or as Luke, or as Paul?” “That is a case,” said Clemens, “where John does not correct but substitutes. He does not give these words at all. But he inserts a narrative about Christ’s washing the feet of the disciples, and a precept that the disciples are to do the same. The ‘washing of feet,’ as I could shew you if time allowed, is connected with sacrifice, in Leviticus. As to the partaking of the bread and wine, he says expressly that the Saviour gave some of it to Judas—meaning (I think) to shew that there was no efficacy for good in the food, apart from faith and love.”
“And what,” I asked, “as to the words about ‘forsaking’ uttered on the cross, where Luke again differs from Mark and Matthew?” “Here,” replied Clemens, “I do not feel sure whether John introduces a new saying altogether, or gives the substance of the old saying in Mark. Certainly he does not agree with Luke. And let me add that I have examined a great number of passages where words of Mark, being obscure or difficult, are altered or omitted by Luke, and I find that in almost every case John intervenes to support Mark—only expressing Mark’s meaning more clearly and spiritually.
“Concerning the ‘forsaking,’ I suggested to you before that it is a metaphor. If so, the reality may be expressed by other metaphors in the scriptures, such as ‘I have lost the light of thy countenance,’ ‘I am cast away from the joy of thypresence,’ ‘My soul is deprived of the fountain of thy light.’ The Psalms say, ‘O God, my God … my soul is athirst for thee,’ and again, ‘My soul thirsteth for God, … when shall I come and appear before God?’ The ‘thirst’ implies absence from God. It will be satisfied by ‘coming’ to God. Well, John represents Jesus as saying, ‘I thirst,’ in accomplishment of ‘the scriptures.’ Then (as I take it) the soldiers misunderstand this thirst as meaning simply literal thirst. They offer Christ vinegar. Christ ‘took it,’ says the gospel. Then He said, ‘It is finished’ and ‘rested His head’—that is to say, on the bosom of the Father, and ‘delivered over His spirit’.”
“‘Rested His head’ is a strange expression,” said I. “It is,” said Clemens, “but it occurs in Matthew and Luke as follows, ‘The Son of man hath not where to rest His head,’ meaning ‘He hath no home, no resting-place, on earth, but only with the Father above.’ One of the ablest Greek scholars among the brethren assures me that John also uses the phrase to mean this; and I believe it is not used in Greek in any other sense. So, too, ‘delivered over His spirit’ signifies that in the supreme moment the ‘delivering over’ of the Suffering Servant was not passive but active. He delivered Himself over. But I ought to add that, in Aramaic, the same verb means (in different forms) ‘finish,’ ‘deliver over,’ and—the word used here by Mark and Luke—‘expire’.”
Scaurus had said something of this kind concerning the three gospels, and had argued that it increased the difficulty of ascertaining what Christ actually said. But I had supposed that it would not extend to a gospel written in a Greek city like Ephesus and so long after the other gospels, when Greek traditions might be expected to predominate. I was depressed by this frank avowal on the part of Clemens, and remained in silence for a moment or two weighing its consequences.
Clemens waited patiently for me to resume our conversation. Soon it occurred to me that I had been unreasonable in my expectations if the circumstances were as he had described them. Suppose this new gospel to have originated from the reminiscences of John the son of Zebedee, a fisherman of Galilee, and the aged author of such a book as the Apocalypse. How could such traditions, if set down exactly as they came from the old man’s lips, fail to abound in Jewish phrases and thoughts such as I had met with in the apocalyptic work? But these would have made the gospel very unsuitable for Greeks and Romans and indeed for almost all except Jews. It was therefore natural, and indeed almost necessary, that the old man’s recollections, after being imparted to his friends, who would probably be the elders of Ephesus, should be freely interpreted, or perhaps paraphrased, in a form fit for all readers. Such interpreters, or such an interpreter, might not always be perfectly successful.
It was foolish of me not to have foreseen this. But still I was disappointed. “This,” said I, “adds a new element of uncertainty, if John has sometimes preserved traditions of Christ’s words translated from the Jewish tongue.” “It does,” said Clemens, “and so does another fact that applies both to Greek and to Hebrew or Aramaic. You know that, in Greek, ‘hesaid’ or ‘used to say,’ or ‘itsays,’ often signifies ‘hemeant’ or ‘itmeans.’ The same is true in Hebrew. Hence if an evangelist or scribe, after giving Christ’s actual words, forexample, ‘Do righteousness,’ were to add ‘But he meant,Do alms’—because, in Hebrew, ‘righteousness’ often means ‘alms’—it would be possible to misinterpret the addition as meaning ‘But he [also]said(or,used to say)Do alms,’ thus erroneously creating a second precept. For these and other reasons I cannot feel sure that the saying ‘I thirst,’ about which we were just now conversing, may not be a paraphrase of the Lord’s words about being ‘forsaken.’ John the son of Zebedee may have known that the latter words were misunderstood from the first by the soldiers, and also that they were misinterpreted by some Christians. Hence I think the aged apostle may have prayed for a revelation as to the true meaning of the words, and it may have been revealed to him, ‘The Lord said—that is, He really said, His real meaning was—that He “thirsted”.’ This indeed would be a surprise or paradox compared with what the gospel says elsewhere. But the scriptures are full of such paradoxes.”
“But how ‘elsewhere’?” said I. “Do you mean that here Christ feels thirst whereas ‘elsewhere’ He quenches thirst? I do not remember that.” “I forgot,” replied Clemens, “that you had not read the new gospel. That gospel represents Christ as saying to a sinful woman, ‘Give me to drink,’ and afterwards, to the same woman, ‘He that believeth on me shall never thirst,’ and, after that, to the Jews, ‘If any one be athirst, let him come unto me and drink.’ This same gospel says that the ‘food’ of the Son is to do the will of the Father. This, then, may be described as His meat and drink. If, therefore, He ‘thirsts,’ He is athirst to do the Father’s will, so that He hungers and thirsts for righteousness in the souls of sinful men and women, thirsting to free them from thirst by giving them the water of life. All through His life He has not thirsted because the living water has been passing freely from the Father to Him and from Him to others. But now, on the point of death, the Giver of the water of life is Himself caused to thirst for it! The Father, in His infinite love, causes the Son Himself to thirst for that love! Instead of helping others, the Son is constrained to ask as it were to be helped—in order that He may help others better. This is perhaps thedeepest and most wonderful of all the Lord’s deep sayings—‘I thirst for the righteousness and love of God, that I and mine may be in the Father, and that the Father may be in me and mine.’ In the end, this will be one of the Lord’s words that ‘will never pass away.’ But what was its effect at the time? When Socrates uttered his last wishes, Crito was at hand to say, ‘This shall be done.’ But when Christ cried ‘I thirst,’ no friend was at hand to satisfy that thirst, and the cry was taken by the soldiers as meaning, ‘I thirst for a little of your sour wine’!”
“It seems to me,” said I, “that you regard this gospel, not exactly as history, but as history mingled with poetry or with vision?” “Not quite so,” said Clemens. “I should prefer to say, ‘as historyinterpretedthrough spiritual insight or poetic vision.’ I take the historical fact to be that there came into the world, as man, a divine Being, endowed with a power of drawing man and God into one, by drawing the hearts of men towards Himself, and, through Himself, to the Father. Making men one with Himself, He also made them one with each other in Himself. This is the great historical fact, the fact of facts, foreordained before the foundation of the world. This, then, is the fact that needs to be brought out clearly in the history of Christ—not the facts (though they are facts) that the Pharisees often washed their hands and that the daughter of Herodias danced before John the Baptist was beheaded. Well, then, put yourself in the position of—whoever it was that wrote this fourth gospel, say, ‘the Elder.’ Imagine him returning fresh from an interview with the old man John, the son of Zebedee, who will not allow himself to be called a ‘son of thunder’⸺.”
“But why,” said I, “should he not have allowed himself to be called John the son of Zebedee? And why should he object to be called one of the sons of thunder, if Jesus called him so?” “As to the latter name,” replied Clemens, “I very much doubt whether Mark has translated the term correctly; I will tell you why, another time: but assuredly he was not a noisy ‘son of thunder’ as we should understand the phrase in the west.
“As to the former name, you will find in this gospel that‘Simon son of John’ is thrice mentioned as Peter’s name, in a passage where Peter is rebuked for having denied his Master. It is, so to speak, his name after the flesh, his unregenerate name. ‘Peter,’ or ‘stone,’ is his regenerate name. So, ‘John son of Zebedee’ would be this disciple’s unregenerate name. The fourth gospel never uses that name except once, in the phrase ‘the sons of Zebedee,’ on the same occasion on which Peter is rebuked as ‘Simon son of John.’ For the most part John the son of Zebedee is described (in this gospel) as ‘the other disciple’—that is, the one as yet unheard, the one whose testimony is still to be given. Or else, the name is connected with Christ’s love—‘the disciple that Jesus loved.’ He feels that he owes all that he has, his very being, to the fact that Jesusloved him, that Jesus made him what he now is. Moreover Jesus gave him, by perpetual visions after His death, an insight into the meanings of His words uttered before death. Hence he might feel that Christ’s words, once dark sayings, have now become clear. From being old, they have become quite new, so as to require an altogether new record.”
“I am not sure,” said I, “that I understand your meaning. Do you hold that the fourth gospel differs from the three because of the special character of John the son of Zebedee, or because of the special interpretation of ‘the Elder’?” “Because of both,” said Clemens. “Then,” said I, “you think that John the son of Zebedee, far from being a ‘son of thunder’ in the sense in which Pericles might be so called by Aristophanes, was a man of a retiring and vision-seeing nature, who merged himself in Christ; and that his namesake, the Elder, believed that the aged apostle was as it were a mirror, in whom, and in whose traditions, it was possible to discern more of Christ’s real expression than in the ancient document of Mark.”
“That comes near the truth, I think,” replied Clemens. “And yet I should be very far from denying that Mark, and the other early gospels, are right in several features apparently omitted by John—for example, Christ’s love of ‘the little ones,’ and His anxiety lest they should be caused to stumble, and His insistence on the necessity of receiving the Kingdom of God aslittle children. But it seems to me that some of these precepts about ‘little ones’ may have been misunderstood so that the brethren needed Paul’s warning, ‘Benot little childrenin your minds,’ and again, ‘In malice be babes, butin understanding be men.’ The root of all these precepts was the divine feeling of ‘littleness,’ or ‘childhood,’ or ‘sonship.’ This is realised in the Son of God doing the will of the Father. In order to do that will on earth, He must be always keeping His eyes on the Father in heaven. The earlier gospels represent Christ with His eyes fixed on the ‘little ones’ on earth, the sick, the sorrowful, the ignorant, the sinful. That also is true. The new gospel appears to me to attempt to shew how the two truths are combined.”
“But you surely do not mean to say,” I exclaimed, “that Jesus, in the new gospel, never makes mention of the ‘little ones’ or the ‘little children,’ so frequently mentioned by the earlier evangelists!” “I do indeed,” replied Clemens. “He does not make mention of either term once, except that, after the resurrection, seeing the disciples engaged in labour that has lasted through the night and effected nothing, He calls to them and says ‘Little children!’ But yet, although He does not elsewhere use the word ‘children,’ He has the thought constantly before Him. At the beginning of the gospel, He teaches that men must be ‘born from above,’ that is, become little children in the eyes of God. Towards the end, He uses a mother’s word to them (‘teknia,’ ‘darlings’). He also says, ‘I will not leave youorphans,’ and declares that His disciples are to be in Himself, the Son. Now to be in the Son, means to be made ‘a little child’ in the perfect sense of Christ’s meaning.”
“Perhaps,” said I, “this explains why Paul seldom mentions the word ‘little children’.” “‘Seldom’,” said Clemens, “is not the right word. Paulnevermentions it, except in the warning I mentioned above. Moreover John, in his epistle, says, ‘I have written unto you little children,because ye have known the Father.’ That word ‘known’ goes to the root of the matter. The essence of ‘little childhood,’ in Christ’s sense, isnot ignorance, but knowledge—‘knowing the Father.’ And ‘knowing the Father’ implies loving the Father, or desiring the Father.There are cases where ‘desire’ may perhaps be well substituted for ‘love,’ so as to indicate that kind of love which leads one onwards to the object desired. This gospel seems to me to attempt to express—if I may so speak in accordance with the prophets of Israel—a desire of God for man, producing a desire of man for God. The work of the Son of God is to unite these two desires. This is a great mystery, a mystery past mere logic, that God, the Creator, should ‘desire.’ Yet I accept it—as it has been expressed by a certain holy woman of Athens, whom I verily believe to have been inspired by God, ‘The Son of God chose to be lifted up upon the tree of the Cross that we might receive the food of angels. And what is this food of angels? It is the desire of God, which draws to itself the desire that is in the depths of the soul and they make one thing together’.”
This saying was beyond me at the time. But I felt that it contained truth, and that I should grow into some apprehension of it. And what Clemens had said, though very strange at first, had been gradually growing to seem possible and even reasonable, if one may use the word concerning that which accords with the spiritual Logos—namely, that the Son of God, being human, was caused to feel forsaken by God, and to desire God, and to ask why this strange feeling of forsakenness, this unwonted, unsatisfied desire, was brought upon Him by the Father. Then, according to the saying of this holy woman of Athens, the answer of the Father was, “In receiving this forsakenness and this desire for my presence, thou art receiving from me my desire, which draws up to me thy desire, and they two make one together.”
But to return to Clemens, whom I began to trust all the more because I felt that he was keeping back nothing from me. “What I am attempting,” said he, “to express, but expressing very feebly, is this. I am trying to put myself in the position of the Elder, preaching the gospel for John the son of Zebedee in Ephesus, some time after the aged apostle returned from his martyrdom in Patmos, when he was quite decrepit and no longer able to be carried into the midst of the congregation, to utter even a few words. If I came into that old man’s presenceand heard from him traditions about the Master, whom he loved and who loved him, I might say, ‘Here indeed is a revelation of Christ. Here I feel Christ Himself.’ Nevertheless, on going out, I might find it very hard to make a chronological and consecutive history out of his utterances. Sometimes he might be describing past fact; sometimes he might be prophesying the future; sometimes he might speak of the past as if still present—as though he were even now with his Master in Cana or Jerusalem; sometimes he might be rapt in a present ecstasy; sometimes he might be describing ecstatic visions of the past; sometimes he might speak in poetic metaphor, sometimes in literal prose; but always he would be penetrated and imbued with the love of Christ. The result—for me, I confess it—would be that I should go out, thinking, ‘This is not history in the common sense of the term. But it is something, I will not say better, but more needed by the church, than a mere history of facts such as a writer like Mark could have given with fuller information. It gives glimpses into a divine and human personality that includes in itself a real history—a history of a great invisible war of good against evil, a great invisible redemption, God coming down to earth to lift man up to heaven’.”
“But,” said I, “do not Matthew and Luke give these glimpses in their description of the incarnation?” “I should rather have said,” replied Clemens, “that, instead of giving glimpses, they attempt to describe a spiritual fact in the language of material history. John, you will find, does not make this attempt. He simply says that ‘the Logos became flesh.’ Then he introduces disciples believing in their Master as Messiah, undeterred by their supposition that He is ‘the son of Joseph’ and ‘from Nazareth.’ John assumes all through his gospel that Jesus came down from heaven and is to go up thither again. He refuses to recognise that this coming down and this going up are impossible for the Son of God incarnate as the son of Joseph. All this appears to me true. And in many respects I admire this little book more than I can find time or words to express. Yet I must deal frankly with you and confess that this new gospel, like the rest, appears to meinadequate. What gospel would be otherwise? All the written records of Christ’s words and acts seem to me to have, as their main use, the awakening in us of a want of something more, a sense of something insufficient and imperfect and unjust to the reality, so that we cry vehemently to God for the reality, the living truth, the spiritual light—such light as no words or books can give us. The Spirit alone can bestow it, crying within us Abba, Father. Some interpreters, however, seem in a special degree to have ‘the mind of Christ.’ Among the foremost of these seems to me to stand ‘the disciple whom Jesus loved’.”
“I understand,” said I, “at least I think I do, a little. You mean that the written biographies must first make the reader feel that they are dead in comparison with the living person. Then the reader is to feel drawn towards his ideal of the living person, and more and more drawn, so that in the end⸺.” “In the end,” said Clemens, “assuredly the living Person will come to him, or draw him to Himself, if he will but be patient in waiting, walking according to the light he already has.” On this he rose to depart. “One word more,” said I. “You told me that John gives nearly a quarter of his gospel to the doctrine of the Lord on the night on which He was delivered over. Does he give much space to the period after the resurrection? And what does he say about that? Does he agree with Matthew and Luke?”
“No,” said Clemens, “he differs greatly, and, as it appears to me, deliberately, intending to correct them. For example, Matthew represents certain women as taking hold of Christ’s feet, before He sends them to carry word to His ‘brethren.’ John says that Jesus said to Mary Magdalene, ‘Touch me not for I am not yet ascended to my Father,’ and then sends her to His ‘brethren.’ Luke says that Christ said to all the disciples, ‘Handle me,’ to shew that He was not a bodiless spirit. John says that an offer of this nature was made to Thomas, but mentions no such offer to any other disciple. Luke says that the disciples gave Jesus food and He ate. John says that Jesus gave food to the disciples. In all these points John appears to me to be nearer than Matthew and Luke to the truth. And sometimes I think that the touching of Christ’s body by thedisciples in the Eucharist, that is to say, the touching of the bread and tasting of the wine in our sacred meal, has been taken by Luke (if not by Matthew) in a literal sense”—here Clemens agreed with Scaurus—“whereas John understood the meaning correctly. But at the same time I think that the Saviour may have been visibly present at the Eucharist, shewing the wounds in His body, though it was not a body that could be touched.”
“Does it not seem to you,” I asked, “that this agrees better with Paul’s descriptions of the manifestations of Jesus after death?” “Yes,” said Clemens, “and in other respects John seems to me to be nearer the truth. For he apparently represents Christ as having ascended to the Father before He could be ‘touched,’ that is to say, before His spiritual body and blood could be imparted to the disciples. Moreover, whereas Matthew places before the Resurrection a tradition relating how Christ imparts to the disciples authority to bind and to loose i.e. to forgive sins, John places it afterwards. And John also describes Peter as plunging into the water and coming to Jesus after the Resurrection,—which seems to me a symbol of Peter passing through the waters of temptation to the Saviour whom he had denied. But Matthew places it before the Resurrection and takes it literally, as though Peter tried to walk on literal water and was nearly drowned, but for the Lord’s help.”
“Then,” said I, after a long pause—for I was not prepared to find Clemens so far in agreement with Scaurus, an unbeliever, concerning the facts of the Christian histories—“you are very far indeed from saying, ‘I believe in every word of the gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke, as being historically accurate.’ Nay, I can hardly think you would say that, even about the gospel of John?” “Assuredly,” he replied, “I would not say that about any of the gospels. Indeed, dear friend, do you yourself think you would venture to say as much as that, even about the history of your favourite Thucydides? And does it not seem to you that, in any book that describes the life of a man, the greater the man, and the more living the life, the greater must be the failure of the book, and the deadness of thebook, as compared with the inexpressible spirit, not to be expressed in any book, no, not in a universe of books?”
Then, rising, and pointing seaward, “Look!” he said, “the moon is up already! Now indeed I must stay with you no longer. I have done my best to deal fairly with you, even to the point perhaps of being not quite fair to this little book, which I now hold in my hand, and am about to place in yours, if you desire it. But are you sure that you do still desire it? If you do indeed, I shall most gladly lend it, and you can return it to me, this time to-morrow, at the house of Justus. But be honest with me as I have tried to be with you. Do not take it as yet if you are not prepared to read it as a book that comes from the east through a western medium; a book that mingles, so as not always to be clearly distinguished, words of the Lord with words of the evangelist, facts and visions, histories and prophecies, metaphors that may be misunderstood, and poems that may be taken as literal prose. It will make you feel perhaps irritated, certainly unsatisfied. Perhaps you may end in saying, ‘I want much more, I want to see the person to whom this book points, but whom no book can make me feel.’ Then it will have done you good. But perhaps you will put it aside and say, ‘I want no more’.”
He paused, and looked anxiously at me. “In that case,” continued he, “I shall have done you harm. But what say you? After this warning, do you—a Roman with Greek training, a reader of Homer and Thucydides—do you still desire to see this little volume that is neither a true poem nor a true history, a biography that hardly professes to draw the life of Jesus as He was, but only to make us feel that it must be felt, if at all, through ‘a disciple whom Jesus loved’?” I assured him that I greatly desired to read it and thanked him with all my heart for the loan, and for the frankness of his warning. “Farewell,” said he, placing the book in my hand, “my friend, my brother—brother in the search after truth, farewell!” “Your help,” said I, as he turned away from me, “has been more like that of a father.” He stopped and looked round at me for a moment. “Would indeed,” said he, “that it might prove so! Farewell!”
The sun had set, and the moon was well above the sea, when, after parting from Clemens, I turned towards Nicopolis, with the new gospel in my hand. Unrolling it, I found twilight enough to read the first few lines while I walked slowly for some two or three hundred paces. Then I stood still to read better in the fading light. When it had quite faded, I sat down repeating what I had read.
“In the beginning was the Logos.” Never shall I forget the unexpectedness of those words. I had supposed that the Christians altogether rejected the Logos except as meaning “utterance” or “doctrine.” “In the beginning” was, in some senses, familiar. I had read in Mark, “Thebeginningof the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Luke, too, had spoken of “those who were from thebeginningeyewitnesses and ministers of the Logos.” But how different was Luke’s “Logos” and Luke’s “beginning” from this!
I read on: “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God.” What did “with” mean? Was the Logos “at home with God”? Or “conversing with God”? Or “in union with God”? Or did “with” include all these meanings? And what was this Logos? The next words gave the answer: “The Logos was God.”
These words alone, contrasted with Luke’s preface, sufficed to indicate a difference between Luke and John, just such as Clemens had suggested. Luke began with a reference to manyinadequate “attempts” to draw up a relation about what he called “thefacts”—meaning “facts” as distinct fromfancies—“consummated among us.” Then, like a careful compiler, he distinguished his authorities, giving the first place to “eyewitnesses,” the second to accessories, or “ministers.” These were eyewitnesses, he said, “from the beginning”; and he declared that he had followed and traced their evidence from the fountain head. John, like a prophet, went back to a “beginning” of which there could be no “eyewitnesses.” He did not say, as Luke did, “it seemed good to me” to write. He said—as though he had himself been with Him who was from the beginning—“The Logos was God.”
Glancing down the column before folding up the scroll, I could barely read in the fast expiring twilight the words, “And the Logos became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father.” Clemens had prepared me for such words. As I understood them, the “glory” did not mean any splendour of material light or fire, such as is mentioned sometimes in the theophanies of Greek, Roman, and Hebrew writers, but the glory of God’s constraining love. But I greatly desired to study the words in their context. Repeating them over and over again, as I rolled up the book, I hurried homeward. Star after star came out in the darkness; and with each new star a new suggestion of invisible “glory” shone on me more clearly. “This gospel,” I said, “will grow on me like these visible glories. Night by night, and day by day, its words will become less strange and more wonderful.”
On my arrival, I lit my lamp, and sat down at once, preparing to continue my reading, when my servant entered with a letter. Not recognising the superscription, I put it on one side. The boy waited about in the room, doing nothing that needed doing. I was on the point of dismissing him, when he said, “Sir, I think it is from Tusculum; but the superscription is not in my lord’s handwriting.” Looking again, I saw that it was in the handwriting of Marullus, Scaurus’s secretary. Scaurus usually superscribed his letters to me with his own hand. In alarm about his health, I torethe letter open, and throwing the cover hastily aside, glanced at the beginning. This reassured me. It was from Scaurus, and in his handwriting.
My apprehensions were soon banished. He had been ill, he said, but had now recovered after a somewhat severe attack. Then the old war-horse passed on to his favourite battle-field—criticism of Christian gospels. I was in the act of putting the letter down—for I had had enough, for the present, of criticizing the old gospels, and was longing to study the new one—when I caught sight of the words “fourth gospel,” and discovered that he had recently procured the very book I was beginning to read, and that his letter contained a discussion of it. This was not quite welcome—not, at least, at the moment. I wished to read the gospel first, for myself, before looking at Scaurus’s criticism, which (I felt sure) would be destructive. “Yet,” thought I, “I have heard Clemens on the one side; ought I not to hear Scaurus on the other? If Scaurus goes wrong, ought I not to be able to find it out?” Scaurus was always fair and honest, and had helped me hitherto, even when I had not agreed with him. These considerations made me finally decide to read the letter and the gospel together, comparing each criticism with the passage or subject criticized, as I went on.
“Let me begin,” wrote Scaurus, “with the point that will most interest you. I have accused Epictetus of borrowing from the Christians. I now assert that this writer—Flaccus tells me that the Christians say it was John the son of Zebedee; I am sure they are wrong, but for convenience I will call him John—this man John deliberately contradicts Epictetus, using our friend’s language but in a different or opposite sense, or with opposite conclusions.
“For example, Epictetus mocks at Agamemnon for calling himself a shepherd of the people. He dislikes the Homeric language and says ‘Shepherd you are in truth; for you weep,as the shepherds do, when a wolf snatches away one of their sheep.’ John makes Christ distinguish between the good shepherd and the hireling. It is only the hireling thatflees and lets the wolf snatch away the sheep. In John, Christ says,‘I am the good shepherd,’ and ‘The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.’
“Again, Epictetus declares that a good man never weeps. He blames Ulysses in particular for weeping at his separation from Penelope. John represents Christ as shedding tears in sympathy with a woman weeping for her dead brother.
“Epictetus constantly says that self-knowledge is everything—herein (I must admit) going with other philosophers. John represents Christ as saying, ‘This is eternal life, to know thee, the only true God and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.’ It is impossible that Christ could have uttered the last part of this sentence exactly as it stands. But that does not weaken my argument, which is, that John (alone of the evangelists) insists on other-knowledge, not on self-knowledge, as being the essential thing. And this he does throughout his gospel.”
Then Scaurus came to that cardinal doctrine of Epictetus which had caused Glaucus and me so many searchings of heart. “You know,” he said, “that Epictetus teaches that no good man is ever troubled. It is not John’s custom to contradict what he deems errors in a formal and direct way. But if he had resorted for once to direct methods, he could hardly have contradicted this Epictetian doctrine more effectively than he does in his indirect dramatic fashion. He represents Christ as thrice ‘troubled.’ First—on the same occasion on which he lets fall tears in sympathy with the woman above mentioned—he is said to have ‘troubled himself.’ Secondly, on an occasion when he is (as I take it) preparing for some act of self-sacrifice, he says, ‘Now is my soul troubled.’ On a third occasion, when announcing that he is to be betrayed by one of the Twelve, he is said to have been ‘troubled in spirit.’ I cannot doubt that this description of threefold ‘trouble’ is intended to attack the Stoic doctrine that the wise and good man is to shrink from ‘trouble’.” This convinced me, and it convinces me still.
Scaurus proceeded to say, “Some innocent readers of this gospel might say, ‘Well at all events John agrees with Epictetus in his use of the term Logos.’ And (no doubt) the first three lines of the gospel might suggest this. Butread on, and you will find the two are in absolute opposition. The Logos, in John, instead of being the philosophic Logos or reason, is really an unreasonable and hyperbolical sort of love, regarded by him as born from God, and as part of God’s personality, and as constituting unity in God’s nature. This Logos he regards as incarnate as a man for the purpose of uniting mankind to God! This doctrine Epictetus would absolutely reject.
“Later on, in this gospel, you will find Christ saying to the disciples, ‘Ye are clean on account of the Logos that I have spoken to you.’ Now Epictetus also connects cleanness with the Logos. ‘It is impossible,’ he says, ‘that man’s nature should be altogether clean, but the Logos being received into it, as far as possible attempts to make it cleanly.’ Verbally, there is an appearance of agreement. Read the two contexts, however, and you will find that, whereas Epictetus makes ‘cleanness’ consist in right convictions, John makes it consist in a mystical doctrine of sacrifice, or service, typified by the Master’s washing the feet of the disciples.
“I could give you other instances of the way in which John uses other language of philosophers in a non-philosophic sense. But his use of Logos suffices for my purpose. It gives the clue to the whole gospel. This writer adds one more to my list of Christianretiarii. The innocent reader, unrolling the book and reading its first words, prepares himself for a Platonic treatise in which he is to ‘follow the Logos’ in accordance with Socratic precept. Then, step by step, he is lured on into regions of non-logic and sentiment, till the net suddenly descends on him, and he finds himself repeating, ‘the Logos became flesh’.”
What Scaurus said interested me but did not convince me as to John’s motive. Nor did Scaurus himself adhere to it. He did not always use the epithet “retiarian” in a bad sense. As I have said above, I had come to believe that right “feeling,” rather than right “reason,” may be regarded as revealing the nature of God. So I did not feel that John was beguiling his readers. But Scaurus’s criticism helped me to recognise the extreme skill and tact—as wellas the terseness, beauty, and solemnity—with which the evangelist introduces the doctrine of the incarnation. And I could not help agreeing with my friend’s next remark, “The man that wrote the Apocalypse—though he, too, was a prophet and a poet in his line—could no more have written this prologue than Ennius could have written the Æneid.”
After some more observations on the difference of style in the Apocalypse and the Gospel, he returned to the criticism of the latter. “Compare,” he said, “the prologue and the conclusion with the rest of this book, and you will see that there is some mystery about its authorship. Under one style it conveys two currents of thought. Sometimes it repeats itself like an old man. Sometimes it is as brief and dark as an oracle. Moreover, some events—such as the expulsion of the tradespeople from the temple—which ought to come at the end—this writer places at the beginning. It has occurred to me that he must have started with the intention of describing nothing but Christ’s acts in Judæa and then changed his mind. Or is it possible that documents arranged Hebrew-fashion—last, first—have been interpreted Greek-fashion and consequently reversed? Allegory is most strangely mixed with fact. There is a wedding in which water is changed into wine. This is allegory. The Bride is the Church. The water of the law is changed into the wine of the gospel. After that, comes a statement that Christ spoke about destroying the temple and building it in three days. This is, according to Mark and Matthew, history. Luke took it as not history and left it out. John took it as history and allegory and put it in. But how differently from Mark and Matthew! Look at the passages. John often does this. I mean, that where Luke differs from Mark, John (who prefers Mark) intervenes to support the latter.”
This general remark (about John’s “preferring Mark”) agreed with what Clemens had said. As for the particular instance, I found that Scaurus was right. Mark and Matthew had mentioned a project to “destroy the temple” as having been imputed to Christ by false witnesses. Luke omitted it. John declared that Christ said to the Jews, “Destroy thistemple!” and that Christ “spoke about the temple of his body.”
“If I could believe,” continued Scaurus, “that John the son of Zebedee, the author of the Apocalypse, had any part in the production of this gospel, I should be disposed to say that he must have contributed to it, not as a scribe, but as a prophet or seer. Take, for example, the description, recorded in this gospel alone, of a flow of blood and water from the side of Christ on the cross. I do not believe for a moment that this was invented, any more than Luke’s description of the sweat of blood on the night before the crucifixion. But I should explain the two as resulting from two quite different causes, differing as the authors differ. Luke was not a seer, but a man of literature, a student of documents. He found some narrative based on the expression that it was ‘a night of watching and sweat’—which you know very well means in Greek ‘watching and anxious toil.’ The narrator took this literally. This literal interpretation commended itself to Luke, who desired to connect the death of Christ with the Jewish sacrificial ‘blood of sprinkling’.” I had not noticed in Luke any tradition about “sweat.” But on referring to my copy I found that, though not in the text, words of this kind were written in the margin.
Scaurus went on to shew in detail that John’s tradition was quite different in origin. It was supported by an asseveration, “He that hath seen hath borne witness, and his witness is true; andhe knoweththat he saith true that ye also may believe.” As to this, Scaurus said, “Only a little child, a baby Gaius, would use such an asseveration as ‘Gaius knowsthat Gaius is telling the truth.’ ‘He knoweth’ means ‘HE knoweth,’i.e.‘The Lord knoweth.’ HE is often thus used in the epistle that forms a sort of epilogue to this gospel. The prophet, or seer, is appealing to his Lord about the truth of the vision of blood and water, which the Lord has revealed to him. In the Bible ‘he that seeth’ is a common phrase for ‘the seer,’ a man habitually seeing visions. When John came back from Patmos and wrote the Apocalypse, he might naturally be called by preeminence, ‘he that hath seen.’ Or the phrase might apply to this special vision: ‘The seer (hethat hath seen) hath borne witness to the vision of the stream of blood and water, and HE (i.e.the Lord) knoweth that his witness is true.’
“I do not deny that the vision is a fulfilment of a prophecy—which you may have read in the book of Zechariah—concerning a certain ‘fountain to cleanse sin and defilement.’ But still I say that it is an honest, genuine, vision, not an invention. That it is not a fact could be proved, if needful. According to the other evangelists, some women were present near the cross, but no men are mentioned. It is extremely doubtful whether two streams of water and blood could issue from the side. If they had issued, and if John had been present, the soldiers would not have let him stand near enough to distinguish them. My copy of Matthew, in a marginal note, has a similar tradition, butbefore the death, and without any order from Pilate to kill the crucified criminals—as if a soldier would dare to do this at his own pleasure! A book called Acts of John (only recently circulated, Flaccus tells me) contains other visions of John, and, among them, some revealed during the crucifixion. The Acts is not written by the author of this new gospel, and it is very wild and fanciful; but it suggests that visions may have been falsely ascribed to John because he was known to have really seen visions (like laws falsely assigned to Numa because he was supposed to have really made laws). I take it that John the son of Zebedee may have had a vision of this kind about a ‘fountain’ of blood and water. This may have been current among the Christians for some time. My annotator in Matthew seems to have found it in a wildly improbable form. The new gospel gives it less improbably.”
Scaurus then commented on the contrast between what he called the “soaring” thought of the book and its occasionally “pedestrian” or vernacular language, as when John preserves the old traditional “crib” for “bed”—a word abominated by Atticists and avoided by Luke. He also commented on his ambiguities, his subtle plays on words, his variations in the forms of words, and his veiled allusions—utterly unlike anything that might be expected from a fisherman of Galilee—declaringthat the writer must have been conversant with the works of Philo as well as with the teaching of the Cynics.
Then he pointed out how Christ in this gospel never uses the word “cross” but always speaks of being “lifted up”—a phrase, he said, current among Jews as well as Roman slaves, to mean “hanged” or “crucified”: and he gave it as an instance of the writer’s irony—and of his recognition that things low in man’s eyes are high in God’s eyes—that a criminal’s death is called by this writer “being exalted,” or “being glorified.” “Have you not”—he said—“heard your servants ever say that Geta has been ‘lifted up,’ or that Syrus has been a rich man and has ‘fed multitudes’—meaning that the poor wretch has been crucified and has fed multitudes of crows with his flesh on the cross?” I had often heard it; and I was astonished that such a phrase could be used in this gospel. Scaurus continued, “He uses this vernacular talk, this unfeeling slavish jest, to represent the very highest truth of Christian doctrine, that the Redeemer is to be ‘exalted’ by suffering on the cross so as to give his flesh and blood to be the food of all the world!”
According to Scaurus, although the style was very different indeed from that of Philo, and although the writer knew (what Philo did not) that the Septuagint was often erroneous, yet there was a great likeness between John and Philo in respect of their symbolism. Of this he gave a great number of instances. And he also quoted allusions to Jewish proverbs or sayings, one of which I will set down here, because it has given rise to an error among some of the brethren at the present day.
John represents the Jews as saying to Jesus, “Thou art not yet fifty years old.” Now, according to Scaurus, this referred to an enactment in the Law that the Levites must serve with laborious service “up to fifty years of age,” after which they are exempt, so that the saying, “Thou art not yet fifty” meant, “Thou art but a junior Levite,” used as a term of reproach. “This enactment,” said Scaurus, “was applied by Philo to inferior spiritual attainment, and, I have no doubt, was used allusively by John. But it might easily give the impressionthat Christ was about fifty years old and that the Jews meant the saying literally.”