The Johannine Writings/Part I, Chapter II

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The Johannine Writings
by Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel, translated by Maurice Arthur Canney
611107The Johannine WritingsMaurice Arthur CanneyPaul Wilhelm Schmiedel

CHAPTER II.

  ATTEMPTS TO RECONCILE THE FIRST THREE GOSPELS WITH THE FOURTH.

   WE might have shown many other differences between the Synoptics and
   Jn. But it will be better to notice them at a later stage. We shall
   therefore pause here to deal with a question which must have occurred
   to many of our readers long before this: Are the accounts in the four
   Gospels really so fundamentally different? Is there no way of
   reconciling them?
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  1. EARLIER ATTEMPTS TO RECONCILE THEM COMPLETELY.

   This question was quite urgent in the days when people felt obliged to
   cherish the belief that every letter in Holy Scripture was dictated by
   the Holy Spirit. In those days it had to be answered in the affirmative
   at any cost. And, as a matter of fact, the cost was not light--it did
   not involve merely effort and ingenuity, but meant giving up what seems
   obvious when the Bible is understood in a natural and unsophisticated
   way. And yet the attempt to establish complete harmony between the four
   Gospels (or, as was thought, simply the art of exhibiting this
   harmony), the nature of which suggested the name "Harmonics," was for
   many centuries one of the chief pursuits of theological science.

   Strictly speaking, there are only two courses open to us, If one and
   the same event seems to be reported in more Gospels than one, but in a
   more or less different way, we must either show that the difference in
   the statement is only apparent, or we must say that each account treats
   of a distinct event. The more seriously we regard the language, the
   more frequently will the second course be the one we shall have to
   take. Strict Harmonics, too, with quite special frequency arrives at
   this result by starting with the presupposition that each Evangelist
   not only tells us a story correct in every word, but also gives each
   particular event and utterance in the life of Jesus in its right order,
   though--and this could not be denied under any circumstances--he omits
   many things which are preserved in the other Gospels.

   Thus, for example, it was necessary to show in each of the first three
   Gospels at what point each of those journeys of Jesus to a feast
   reported only in Jn. could be fitted in. In Jesus' walking on the sea,
   Jn. (vi. 16-21), we are told, has not in mind the same event as the
   Synoptists have, for in the Synoptics Jesus is taken into the boat in
   the middle of the Lake (Mk. vi. 51), but in Jn. is not (see above, p.
   19 f .). Again, the Feeding of the Five Thousand reported by Jn. (vi.
   1-13) must be a different event from the Feeding spoken of by the
   Synoptics (Mk. vi. 35-44) for in all the Gospels we are told that such
   a feeding took place on the day preceding the night on which Jesus
   walked on the sea (with the exception of Lk. who does not report the
   walking on the sea). But how? It is not permissible even to regard the
   Feeding reported in all three Synoptics as one and the same event; for
   in Mt. (xiv. 21) those who are fed are more numerous--besides the 5000
   men there are women and children the number of whom is not given.
   Consequently, there are three Feedings instead of one, in which the
   number 5000 figures: one in Mk. = Lk., another in Mt., a third in Jn.
   On each occasion there are only five loaves and two fishes ^ on each
   occasion twelve baskets full of fragments are gathered up; each event
   is followed by a night-journey across the sea; yet each Evangelist
   relates only one of these three events, and Mk. and Mt., though each
   knows of another Feeding, do not report more than one of these three;
   but the two between them tell of a fourth and a fifth--one according to
   Mk. (viii. 1-9) in which 4000 men, and another according to Mt. (xv.
   32-38) in which 4000 men besides an indefinite number of women and
   children, were satisfied; but on both occasions this happens after the
   people have wandered about with Jesus for three days, on both occasions
   there are seven loaves and a few fishes, and on both occasions seven
   baskets full of fragments are gathered up afterwards.

   But enough! The perseverance with which people have pursued all these
   suggestions--which from the outset are such as we cannot accept--to
   their utmost limit, and have put faith in them out of respect for the
   Holy Spirit, who is supposed to have inspired every letter of the
   Bible, certainly deserves to be fully recognised. Only one question is
   forbidden. How often may Jesus be supposed to have been born, baptized,
   crucified, and raised from the dead?
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  2. MODERN ATTEMPTS TO RECONCILE THEM APPROXIMATELY.

   Present-day defenders of the trustworthiness of all the four Gospels
   are far more modest in the claims which they make. They quietly assume
   that one and the same event is meant, even where the accounts differ
   from one another rather widely; only they would rather not concede too
   much, and so they try as far as possible to represent the differences
   as being only slight. Naturally it is right for us always to test
   whether these are really as great as they seem at first sight to be.
   Where, however, this attempt is vain unless we seriously misinterpret
   the language, it is not only unfair, but is also nothing better than
   illogical. For if we are obliged to admit, and actually do admit, that
   there are many contradictions in the Bible, there is no point in
   insisting in the case of a limited number of these, that they are not
   really contradictions. If we admit--since Jesus was taken captive only
   on one occasion--that according to the Synoptics Judas betrayed him by
   a kiss, and according to Jn. did not betray him in this way (xviii.
   4-6), what is the use, when we turn to the expulsion of the dealers
   from the fore-court of the Temple, of denying that either the
   Synoptists or Jn. must have made a mistake, and of preferring to
   suppose that there were two such acts, one at the beginning of his
   ministry (Jn. ii. 13-22), the other at the end of it (Mk. xi. 15-18)?
   If this were so, why did Jesus omit to drive the dealers and
   money-changers from the temple court on his other visits to Jerusalem
   as well? Are we to suppose that they were not stationed there on these
   occasions? And why on the first occasion did he escape scot free,
   whereas on the second he suffered death in consequence?
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  3. USE OF THE SYNOPTICS BY JN.

   We may set aside such palpably impossible attempts to deny that there
   are contradictions between the Synoptics and Jn., and give attention to
   such as are really worth discussing. But before we do this, it should
   be said that it is almost universally agreed that the author of the
   Fourth Gospel had the other three before him when he wrote.

   To prove this we are not of course at liberty to cite at our pleasure
   all kinds of things in which Jn. agrees with them, for these he might
   himself have noted as an eye witness. We must specify passages which he
   would not certainly have written, if he had not derived them from the
   Synoptics. Thus, for example, it is very remarkable that Jesus ascends
   the mountain before the Feeding of the Five Thousand (Jn. vi. 3) and
   ascends the mountain after it (vi. 15), though we have not been told in
   the meantime that he came down, or been given any clue that would lead
   us to conjecture that he did so. The matter admits of a simple
   explanation: when the author was about to relate the beginning of the
   Feeding, he had before him the beginning of the second Feeding in Mt.
   (xv. 29), "and he went up into the mountain and sat there." He tells us
   almost word for word: "And Jesus went up into the mountain, and there
   he sat with his disciples." At the second place, however, when he was
   about to pass from the Feeding to Jesus' walking on the sea (vi. 15) he
   remembered that Mk. and Mt., in their first story of the Feeding, said
   that between the two acts Jesus ascended the mountain (his language
   agrees very closely with Mt. xiv. 23), and so he added this and
   overlooked the fact that he had said nothing about Jesus coming down.
   For another example see xx. 2 (chap. iii., 26). In i. 15, in the words,
   "This was he of whom I said, `He that cometh after me is become before
   me,'" the Baptist actually recalls something he has said about Jesus at
   an earlier date, but which is not found in the Fourth Gospel but only
   in the Synoptics Mt. iii. 11), though there the language and meaning
   are different.
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  4. Is JN.'S PURPOSE SIMPLY TO SUPPLEMENT AND CORRECT?

   But why does Jn. differ so often from the Synoptics, if he was
   acquainted with their books? The most important attempt to explain this
   consists in saying that his purpose throughout his book is to
   supplement the story of his predecessors and, where in small matters
   this was inexact, to correct it. This theory therefore presupposes
   further that he was himself present at the events described, and was
   entitled to think that wherever he made additions and corrections he
   was justified in doing so. Whether this is confirmed is a question we
   shall soon have to investigate more closely. We leave it for the
   present and simply ask, Can this double purpose, which is ascribed to
   him, be discovered at all in his book? As regards this intention to
   make corrections, it is certainly not easy to recognise it, for the
   author nowhere says: the matter was not thus, but thus. If then he made
   corrections, he must have made them quite quietly out of respect for
   his predecessors.

   We prefer, therefore, in the first instance, to consider the question:
   Does he wish merely to give facts which are supplementary? In the case
   of the narratives which are peculiar to him, this would be conceivable,
   as well as in the case of the expulsion of the dealers from the
   fore-court of the Temple, if such an event really took place at the
   beginning of Jesus' ministry. But in Jn. we find again a number of
   stories given by the Synoptics, in which the idea cannot possibly be
   that the events happened a second time, and not merely on one occasion
   as the Synoptics state. We need only mention the Feeding of the Five
   Thousand, the walking on the sea and the entrance into Jerusalem (vi.
   1-15, 16-21; xii. 12-16). It might really be thought in the case of the
   second of these stories that the idea of correcting was the ruling
   purpose; Jn., in opposition to the story of the Synoptics which says
   that Jesus was taken into the boat in the middle of the sea, wishes, as
   an eye witness, to insist that this was not so, since Jesus crossed the
   lake from one shore to the other. But it is really hard to discover
   what correction he means to make in his description of the entry into
   Jerusalem, or, in particular, in that of the Feeding of the Five
   Thousand; and this is sufficient to show that the whole idea that Jn.'s
   purpose is always either to supplement or correct is untenable. If, on
   the other hand, certain concessions are made, and it is claimed that he
   only meant to do this now arid then, the whole explanation of the
   passages in which he differs from the Synoptics would have no value;
   for in the case of a considerable number of sections in his book the
   question why he introduced them would still be left unexplained.
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  5. JN.'S PURPOSE NOT MERELY TO SUPPLEMENT AND CORRECT.

   But let us see rather more exactly how in detail people think of the
   author as carrying out his purpose of supplementing and correcting the
   Synoptics. Here special importance may be attached to his statement
   that some time after Jesus' public appearance John the Baptist was
   still baptizing and that Jesus was doing so too, and to the addition,
   "for John was not yet imprisoned" (iii. 22-24). In the Synoptics (Mk.
   i. 14), Jesus does not come forward publicly until after the
   imprisonment of the Baptist. Consequently the remark in Jn. which
   contradicts this might easily be due in this instance to his purpose of
   making a correction. If this were so, Jn. is aware, as the Synoptics
   are not, that Jesus started a public mission while the Baptist was
   still at work. And here we should have the explanation of the fact that
   he adds so much which these omit: all this really happened before the
   arrest of the Baptist, with which in the Synoptics the story of Jesus
   work begins.

   All? Strictly speaking, as a matter of fact, everything that Jn.
   reports; for he never mentions a point at which the Baptist was
   imprisoned. But this view of the matter would be quite impossible; for
   in the expression "not yet taken" Jn. betrays the fact that he knew
   very well of the arrest of the Baptist, and thinks of it as happening
   during the public ministry of Jesus. But when? Before v. 35 ("he was
   the lamp") and certainly before the Feeding of the Five Thousand and
   Jesus' walking on the sea (Jn. vi. 1-21), of which the Synoptics do not
   speak until long after the imprisonment of the Baptist--unless we were
   to adopt the quite untenable assumption (see p. 48) that Jn. in these
   two stories is thinking of two events quite different from those the
   Synoptics have in mind. But we find afterwards in Jn. (chap. vii.-xi.)
   Jesus appearing in Jerusalem at the Feast of Tabernacles, the cure of
   the man born blind, Jesus appearing at the Feast of the Dedication of
   the Temple, and the raising of Lazarus--all things about which the
   Synoptics say nothing, and which, nevertheless, are so extremely
   important, that their silence about them is quite inexplicable. In all
   these cases it does not help us at all to be told that Jn. merely
   wished to supply facts as to what happened before the imprisonment of
   the Baptist.

   At the best, therefore, the assumption could be used for the events
   which Jn. narrates in chapters ii.-v. But before we adopt it, we shall
   do well once more to examine closely the passage on which it is based.
   "Jesus baptized," we are told in Jn. iii. 22 (26; iv. 1). And in iv. 2
   we read "and yet Jesus himself baptized not, but his disciples." What
   would a writer, who was anxious to report nothing false, have done when
   he noticed afterwards that this had happened? We may be sure that he
   would afterwards have deleted the error in the earlier passage, instead
   of allowing it to stand and appending the confession that he had made a
   mistake. Here we can see the peculiar character of the Fourth
   Evangelist. He is not an author who is anxious to report nothing false;
   where it suits his purpose, he reports it.

   And here in fact it suits his purpose very well. It is only the
   statement, that Jesus baptized, and did so while John was still at
   work, that enables him to represent the interesting situation in which
   the number of the followers of the Baptist is becoming smaller and
   smaller, and that of the followers of Jesus growing larger and larger.
   And this is one of Jn.'s chief aims. "He must increase, but I must
   decrease" (iii. 30): with these words the Baptist himself is made to
   write the legend to this little picture, which is really sketched very
   gracefully. In order to do so, the author adds a touch which, in
   reality, as he himself knows, does not at all harmonise with the truth.

   Only one? Of course the picture includes that other feature we have
   mentioned; John the Baptist is still at large. Must we see in this a
   correct addition, a correction made by an eye-witness when the same
   "eye-witness" in another verse not far off has told us with equal
   precision something which on his own admission is not true? Must we
   base upon this our idea of the purpose of correction which he followed
   throughout his book? A different idea of his purpose has resulted, with
   an incomparably greater amount of probability, from this very example;
   he wishes to be not a reporter who is to be taken at his word, but a
   painter; a painter of vivid scenes designed to make clear and
   impressive a higher truth--in the present instance the truth that John
   was only the forerunner of Jesus, and had to take an entirely
   subordinate place, in fact does so of his own free will. And if we now
   ask again, how long the Evangelist imagines the Baptist to be still at
   large while Jesus is at work, the only answer can be: merely for this
   particular scene, and not for those that follow. Once his retirement
   before Jesus has been described, the Baptist is so unimportant to Jn.
   that he does not think his arrest worth reporting. Indeed, even in the
   case of preceding events (the marriage at Cana, the expulsion of the
   dealers from the fore-court of the Temple, the conversation with
   Nicodemus), he seems to have hardly thought that they occurred while
   the Baptist was still at large.

   But the theory that Jn. wishes to supplement the Synoptics by giving
   the earliest events in the public life of Jesus is overthrown by what
   we are told as regards the discourses of Jesus, when it is presupposed
   that these also served the purpose of supplementing the Synoptics. If
   Jesus be supposed to have spoken in both ways--as he is represented as
   doing in the Synoptics and as Jn. makes him do--it cannot be imagined
   that the style met with in Jn. was the earlier. We are told on the
   contrary that Jn. preserves the manner of speech in which Jesus
   addressed his disciples in his last days, after he had finished his
   ministry amongst the people, which latter is reflected in his
   discourses in the Synoptics. This statement might seem worth
   considering if the discourses of Jesus preserved to us in Jn. were
   solely farewell ad dresses to his disciples during his last days, like
   those in chapters xiii.-xvii. But, as a matter of fact, Jn. represents
   Jesus as speaking from the very beginning in the same style as in these
   farewell discourses. To sum up, in the events which he describes, Jn.
   is supposed to take us back to the earliest days, and in the discourses
   which Jesus delivered at these, the earliest events in his public
   career, this same author Jn. is supposed to preserve the tone in which
   Jesus spoke during the last weeks of his life. Both assumptions are
   necessary if we are to insist that Jn. wishes to supplement and correct
   the Synoptics. And yet one of the two assumptions annuls the other.
     __________________________________________________________________

  6. ARE SEVERAL JOURNEYS OF JESUS TO JERUSALEM PRESUPPOSED IN MT. xxiii. 37?

   But an attempt is made in another way to show that Jn. could not really
   be in conflict with his predecessors. Those who make it find in the
   Synoptics themselves passages here and there which confirm, as they
   think, the story of Jn. In particular, several journeys of Jesus to
   Jerusalem, connected with a public appearance there, are, they say,
   presupposed when Jesus says in Mt. (xxiii. 37): "Jerusalem, Jerusalem,
   that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee,
   how often would I have gathered thy children together, even as a hen
   gathereth her chickens under her wings, and ye would not." The
   inference really appears to be unavoidable. The only remarkable thing
   is that the Synoptists themselves have not drawn it. If they themselves
   really suggest that Jesus came forward so often in Jerusalem, why do
   they not only tell us nothing about this, but represent things as if
   when he made this utterance he had come to Jerusalem for the first time
   to counsel and admonish. Thus those who refer to this utterance as a
   corroboration of the story of Jn. are producing a greater puzzle as
   regards the Synoptists, who likewise claim that their story has a right
   to be regarded as correct. So that before we attach such great
   importance to the utterance in question, we prefer to examine it again
   more closely.

   When we do this, it is clear in the very first instance that it does
   not read as people think it does, and in the way in which we have
   rendered it above, intentionally following the general practice, in
   order to show what mistakes one is liable to make when one follows a
   popular custom. In reality--and in Lk. (xiii. 34) exactly as in Mt.--it
   reads: "Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that kills the prophets and stones them
   that are sent unto her, how often would I have gathered thy children,"
   &c. Jerusalem is therefore apostrophised only in the second half of the
   sentence; in the first something is said about the city without the
   city itself being addressed. No one who has a thought clearly in his
   mind, and intends to write it down in an equally simple sentence, would
   express himself in this way.

   On the other hand, the remarkable form of the sentence would be quite
   intelligible if our Evangelists, Mt. and Lk., or rather the earlier
   writer from whom they both draw, [3] used a book in which the sentence
   about Jerusalem appeared without any apostrophe; and if they or he
   proceeded to introduce the apostrophe without noticing that, having
   made this alteration, the sentence should have been made to read
   differently at the beginning. And this is not a mere conjecture; we
   have, in addition, a clue which indicates the kind of book it may have
   been. In Mt., that is to say, the utterance immediately follows another
   (xxiii. 34-36) to this effect: "Therefore, behold, I send unto you
   prophets, and wise men, and scribes; some of them shall ye kill and
   crucify, and some of them shall ye scourge in your synagogues, and
   persecute from city to city," &c. Lk. gives this utterance in xi.
   49-51, keeping the continuation about Jerusalem--quoted above--for
   chap. xiii. of his book. But this earlier utterance in Lk. not only
   dispenses with the apostrophe, as the beginning of the continuation
   about Jerusalem does--"I will send unto them prophets and apostles, and
   some of them they shall kill and persecute," &c.--but--and this is the
   chief point it is preceded by the introductory words: u There fore also
   said the wisdom of God."

   The Wisdom of God is represented in several books of the Old Testament
   as a person who takes up the word (Prov. viii. f., Ecclus. xxiv.), or
   is found as the title of a book (Wisdom of Solomon; Wisdom of Jesus,
   son of Sirach). The saying under consideration is not found in any of
   these books. But it is clear that it cannot have been framed for the
   first time by Jesus. In what precedes Jesus is addressing the
   Pharisees. He could not, therefore, as he does in Lk., suddenly
   continue, "therefore also said the wisdom of God," unless what now
   follows is a saying which was already well known. But this is clear
   from the version in Mt. as well, though here the introductory formula
   is wanting. Jesus cannot have said of himself, as Mt. makes him say, "I
   send to you prophets and wise men and Scribes," for he never did this,
   and at least would never have sent Scribes, whose attitude towards him
   was so unfriendly. Lk. knew very well what he was doing, when he
   substituted "Prophets and Apostles"; for Jesus could really send
   Apostles and (New Testament) Prophets. In this description of the
   persons sent, Mt. therefore has, we may be sure, preserved the more
   original version, but in the introductory formula it is Lk. who has
   done so. In Mt. the only remaining clue to the fact that his
   predecessor had before him a book in which this introductory formula
   stood is the word "therefore."

   But what kind of book was it? If the Scribes were mentioned amongst
   those men who were sent by God to the people, it was the work of a
   pious Jew who reproached his people for being stiff-necked, and was
   anxious to induce them to repent. Whether it had the title
   "Wisdom"--perhaps with some addition--or whether Wisdom was simply
   represented as speaking in it, we do not know. From this book,
   according to the story of the predecessor of our Mt. and Lk., Jesus
   quoted a passage in support of his own words in which he warned the
   Pharisees that they would be punished. In this way it is still used in
   Lk. Mt., on the other hand, has wrongly understood it and introduced it
   in such a way that Jesus uses the words as his own, and Lk. also, as
   regards the utterance about Jerusalem, shares the misunderstanding.
   Thus it was the Wisdom of God which said that it had often wished to
   gather together Jerusalem's children, as a hen gathers her chickens.
   This it had actually done by sending prophets and wise men and Scribes.
   It is not Jesus who says he has done this. Thus the whole confirmation
   of Jn.'s story of many visits of Jesus to Jerusalem rests solely on the
   fact that an utterance put into the mouth of the Wisdom of God by a
   Jewish author has been wrongly regarded as a saying of Jesus. And now
   we understand also why the Synoptics, in spite of this "saying of
   Jesus" in which he says how often he has concerned himself about
   Jerusalem, had no information about these labours.
     __________________________________________________________________

   [3] The truth of the theory that they had the work of an earlier writer
   before them has been fully demonstrated. Cp. Wernle, Die Quellen des
   Lelens Jesu, pp. 70-7-4 (in the Religionsgeschichtlichen Volksbuecher;
   Engl. trans, pp. 131-139).
     __________________________________________________________________

  7. IS JESUS' RELATIONSHIP TO GOD IN MT. xi. 27 THE SAME AS IN JN.?

   It would be still more important if we could find a second passage in
   the Synoptics fitted to confirm the story of Jn. We mean such
   confirmation as would relate not merely to one particular point, such
   as the journeys of Jesus to Jerusalem, but to the whole character of
   Jesus' discourses. We have in mind Mt. xi. 27: "All things have been
   delivered unto me of my Father, and no one knoweth the Son, save the
   Father; neither (doth any know) the Father, save the Son, and he to
   whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him." These words seem certainly
   to be spoken quite in the spirit of the Fourth Gospel, which in x. 14
   f., for instance, says ("I am the good shepherd; and I know mine own,
   and mine own know me), even as the Father knoweth me, and I know the
   Father." In Jn. this mutual knowledge must be understood in the sense
   that Jesus had from eternity existed with God in heaven before he came
   down to earth.

   Now it is certainly remarkable that in the Synoptics only this one
   saying can be found which gives expression to this thought, and might
   be compared to the discourses of Jesus in Jn. If, as is claimed, it
   really implies confirmation of these, again all that we get is a new
   puzzle as regards the Synoptics: why in these does Jesus not speak in
   this way more often, instead of talking everywhere else in such an
   entirely different way? This consideration obliges us to re-examine the
   utterance more closely.

   This also originally read quite differently. All ecclesiastical and
   heretical writers of the second century, who give us any information
   about this passage, entirely or in part support the following version:
   "All things have been delivered unto me of my Father, and no one hath
   known the Father, save the Son, neither the Son save the Father, and he
   to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him."

   Even the Church Father, Irenaeus, about A.D. 185, who warmly upbraids a
   Christian sect for making use of this version, follows it several times
   in his writings; it must therefore have really been found in his own
   Bible. As compared with it, the version which we now have in the Bible
   cannot under any circumstances claim the preference. It is true that
   our oldest copies of the Bible contain it, but they are about two
   centuries later than the authorities we have mentioned. And no
   plausible reason can be given why the version current in the second
   century should be due to a deliberate change on the part of a Christian
   sect; on the other hand, since the one form must have arisen through an
   alteration of the other, it is very conceivable that it is the text in
   our present Bible which has resulted from a change, because, we may
   suppose, the writer was anxious to make the language resemble more
   closely Jesus style of preaching in Jn.

   Is the difference so great then? At first sight it might seem slight.
   But that is a very wrong impression. While we read, "No one knoweth the
   Son . . . the Father," a mutual knowledge from eternity may be meant,
   and, as we said just now, this is one of the ideas of the Fourth
   Gospel. When, however, we read, "no one hath known," a definite point
   of time is fixed at which the knowledge first began; and when Jesus
   goes on to say of himself, "no one has known the Father but the Son,"
   it is clear that the knowledge of the Father cannot have commenced
   before some definite date in his earthly life, since the Synoptics are
   not aware that Jesus existed in heaven before he lived on earth.
   Nevertheless, if the words in the first place were, "no one hath known
   the Son save the Father," it would still be possible that at any rate
   the knowledge on the part of God was present from eternity, and this
   would be in agreement with the style of thought in the Fourth Gospel.
   But a second important peculiarity in the oldest version is found in
   this very fact that the first place is assigned to the clause, "No one
   hath known the Father save the Son," and that the other clause follows,
   "No one hath known the Son, save the Father." And since the knowledge
   spoken of first was not gained earlier than during the earthly life of
   Jesus, we cannot suppose that the knowledge referred to in the second
   clause belongs to an earlier date.

   The meaning is really quite simple: Jesus alone has acquired the
   knowledge that God is not a Lord who is jealous for his own honour, and
   cannot be approached by men, but is a loving Father. This of itself
   means that he can feel himself to be a son of God. It is a feeling of
   his own, however, which no one so far has realised--none of his
   hearers, but God alone. This second part of the thought is very well
   expressed in Lk. (x. 22) by the clause: "no one knows (more correctly,
   has known) who the son is," that is to say, that I am he. Finally, with
   this agrees very well the conclusion in Mt. and Lk., "and to whom the
   son will reveal it." In the usual version of the saying, the
   immediately preceding words are: "no one knows the Father, but the
   son." What the latter will reveal is thus the deeper nature of God,
   and, understood in the spirit of the Fourth Gospel, the meaning might
   be that Jesus acquired the knowledge during his pre-existence in
   heaven. But, according to the correct version, the immediately
   preceding words are, "no one has known the son, but the Father," and
   here the following words mean, "and he to whom I myself am willing to
   reveal that I am that son; you have all failed as yet to recognise
   this, I myself must tell you of it."

   Strictly speaking, when the knowledge that God is the Father dawns upon
   any man, he can feel that he himself is His son; this knowledge Jesus
   wished to bring to all, and said, "blessed are the peace-makers, for
   they shall be called the sons of God," "love your enemies, and pray for
   them that persecute you, that ye may be sons of your Father which is in
   heaven" (Mt. v. 9, 44 f.). He used the expression "sons of God," and so
   the same expression as he applied to himself. Instead of this, Jn.
   continually uses of men--and he is the first to do so--the phrase
   "children of God," reserving the expression "Son of God" for Jesus
   alone, and Luther, without any justification, has used it also in Mt.
   and in other places where the original has "sons." [4] It is quite
   clear that, in view of what we have said, Jesus cannot have called
   himself Son of God in a sense that only applies to himself, on the
   ground, for instance, that he proceeded from God in a manner different
   from that in which human beings come into existence at their birth; he
   can only have done so in a sense in which all men can become what he
   was, that is to say, sons of God who are equally ready to obey
   absolutely the Father in heaven, but at the same time rely upon His
   love, just as a human son relies upon the love of his human father. If
   we of to-day wish to express the sense in which Jesus called himself
   Son of God in a way that cannot be misunderstood, we must do the
   reverse of what Jn. has done--use the other expression and say that
   Jesus felt himself to be a child of God.

   Turning again to Mt. xi. 27, we must remember that at this time Jesus
   alone possessed the knowledge that God is a loving Father. This made
   him singular and raised him above other men. Thus the thought of being
   God's son made him feel in addition that he was sent by God to reveal
   this knowledge to his brethren. This is the meaning of the initial
   words of the saying: "all things have been delivered to me of my
   Father." It does not imply any super human power, as in the saying
   (which, it is almost generally agreed, was not spoken by Jesus), "all
   power is given to me in heaven and upon earth" (Mt. xxviii. 18). Here
   the word "power" does occur in the passage, but not in the text under
   consideration. What is delivered to Jesus, in our passage, we must
   gather simply from the context; on the evidence of the saying itself,
   it is the knowledge that we can regard God as our Father. In agreement
   with this is the fact that according to xi. 25 it must be something
   which was hidden from the wise and revealed to the simple, and
   according to xi. 28-30 something which was quite different from the
   yoke of the Jewish Law under which the weary and heavy-laden groaned,
   while Jesus yoke was easy and his burden light, and was able to refresh
   the soul because it consisted simply in doing the will of God gladly
   and in relying upon His love.

   Are all these thoughts similar to those found in the Fourth Gospel? Far
   from it. On the contrary, no utterance harmonises with the spirit of
   Jesus' discourses in the Synoptics so well as the one we have been
   considering if we hold fast to its original language. In fact, it is
   precisely this that enables us for the first time to under stand fully
   how Jesus came to be what he was according to the Synoptics; at first
   he was quite simply a man who in the course of his mental development
   realised that he had a Father in heaven; next he became one who felt
   himself called by this Father of his to be a leader, sent to the
   people, because he found that he stood quite alone in having this
   knowledge, and yet could not be silent about it; and from this it was
   easy to take a further step and to feel obliged to regard himself as
   that highest messenger sent by God, whom his people and his age thought
   of as the one who had been long promised, as the Messiah.
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   [4] Paul interchanges "sons" and "children" without any distinction.
   Luther renders only the Singular by "son" (Heb. xii. 5-7; Rev. xxi. 7),
   the Plural by "sons" only in the phrase "sons and daughters" (2 Cor.
   vi. 18). In Gal. iv. 7 he arbitrarily changes the Singular into the
   Plural in order to be able to use the term "children." The Authorised
   English Version has, like Luther, son for the Singular, but also in
   Gal. iv. 7. For the Plural it has in half the cases sons (Rom. viii.
   14, 19; Gal. iv. 6; Heb. ii. 10, xii. 7 f.; besides 2 Cor. vi. 18), but
   in the other half, like Luther, children (Mt. v. 9, 45; Lk. vi. 35, xx.
   36; Rom. ix. 26; Gal. iii. 26; Heb. xii. 5). The Revised Version
   everywhere translates correctly son or sons.
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  8. INACCURATE RECOLLECTION ON THE PART OF THE APOSTLE JOHN?

   What remains, if we still wish to maintain that the Fourth Gospel is in
   agreement with the first three? If we disregard various other
   expedients, which are far less likely to be satisfactory than those we
   have already discussed, there is only one left. We are told by the
   Church Fathers that at the end of the first century the Apostle John
   was still living. This being so, it is eagerly assumed that he did not
   write his gospel until shortly before his death. And whereas his great
   age obscured his recollection of many matters in the life of Jesus, he
   remembered other things quite correctly. This explains, it is said, how
   it is that his book, apart from much that is incorrect, contains much
   that serves to correct the story of the Synoptics.

   In itself this assumption has nothing impossible about it; if indeed it
   could be accepted that the Gospel was composed by the apostle and in
   his old age, this theory might be deemed fairly probable. Since,
   however, we must first examine the two presuppositions on which it is
   based, let us at the outset put the simple question, What would the
   result be? At least not this--that Jn., as compared with the Synoptics,
   must always be regarded as everywhere right. This particular idea
   therefore is abandoned as being untenable. To what extent is he right
   then? To suit the real desire of those who put forward this theory, he
   is right on as many points as possible. For the main purpose of these
   people is to support the idea that we have in Jn. the work of an
   eye-witness of the life of Jesus. But when we examine the matter more
   closely, his trustworthiness is abandoned on one point after another,
   because, however much we may wish to believe in it, it cannot be
   maintained.

   In particular, as regards the discourses of Jesus, it is more and more
   generally conceded that it was the aged John who first conceived them
   in the style in which they appear in the Fourth Gospel. His conception
   of Jesus changed in the course of his long life, and as these new ideas
   took shape his recollection of the discourses of Jesus altered as well.
   If this were assumed to a moderate extent, it might seem conceivable;
   but people would never have jumped at so doubtful an expedient, unless
   the difference between Jn.'s style of discourse and the other style,
   which may really be accepted as original, were very marked indeed.

   Thus the result of emphasising the great age of John is really the
   opposite of what was intended. The desire was simply to defend the
   trustworthiness of the Fourth Gospel as against the Synoptics, and yet
   the would-be defenders are obliged in a clear, if rather veiled, manner
   to admit that on most points he is untrustworthy.

   We have now come to the end of the attempts to reconcile the accounts
   of the life of Jesus in the Synoptics and in Jn. In conclusion, we can
   only say that we sincerely pity any one who engages in this labour. If
   on many particular points his efforts seem to be really satisfactory to
   him, he can never rejoice at his success; for he has no sooner shown
   that it is not absolutely impossible to reconcile some new little
   circumstance in Jn. with the Synoptics than a whole series of others
   come to light which defy every attempt at reconciliation.
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The Johannine Writings
by Paul Wilhelm Schmiedel, translated by Maurice Arthur Canney
611107The Johannine WritingsMaurice Arthur CanneyPaul Wilhelm Schmiedel