detect it when invented. The age which could not expose a coarse forgery was incapable of constructing a subtle historical romance. This one thing I hope to make clear in the short time that is allowed me this afternoon. The Fourth Gospel, if a forgery, shows the most consummate skill on the part of the forger; it is (as we should say in modern phrase) thoroughly in keeping. It is replete with historical and geographical details; it is interpenetrated with the Judaic spirit of the times; its delineations of character are remarkably subtle; it is perfectly natural in the progress of the events; the allusions to incidents or localities or modes of thought are introduced in an artless and unconscious way, being closely interwoven with the texture of the narrative; while throughout, the author has exercised a silence and a self-restraint about his assumed personality which is without a parallel in ancient forgeries, and which deprives his work of the only motive that, on the supposition of its spuriousness, would account for his undertaking it at all.

In all these respects it forms a direct contrast to the known. forgeries of the apostolic or succeeding ages. I will only ask my hearers who are acquainted with early apocryphal literature to compare St John's Gospel with two very different and yet equally characteristic products of the first and second centuries of the Christian era-with the Protevangelium, or Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus, on the one hand, and with the Clementine Homilies, on the other: the former, a vulgar daub dashed in by a coarse hand in bright and startling colours; the other, a subtle philosophical romance, elaborately drawn by an able and skilful artist. But both the one and the other are obviously artificial in all their traits, and utterly alien to the tone of genuine history.

Such productions as these show what we might expect to find in a gospel written at the middle or after the middle of the second century.

If then my description of the Fourth Gospel is not overcharged (and I will endeavour to substantiate it immediately), the supposition that this gospel was written at this late epoch

by a resident at Alexandria or at Ephesus will appear in the highest degree incredible; and, whatever difficulties the traditional belief may involve, they are small indeed compared with the improbabilities created by the only alternative hypothesis.

I have already proved that the absence of certain topics in this gospel seems fatal to its late authorship. I shall now proceed to investigate those phenomena of its actual contents which force us to the conclusion that it was written by a Jew contemporary with and cognisant of the facts which he relates, and more especially those indications which fix the authorship on the Apostle St John. It is necessary however to premise by way of caution, that exhaustive treatment is impossible in a single lecture, and that I can only hope to indicate a line of investigation which any one may follow out for himself.

First of all then, the writer was a Jew. This might be inferred with a very high degree of probability from his Greek style alone. It is not ungrammatical Greek, but it is distinctly Greek of one long accustomed to think and speak through the medium of another language. The Greek language is singularly rich in its capabilities of syntactic construction, and it is also well furnished with various connecting particles. The two languages with which a Jew of Palestine would be most familiar the Hebrew, which was the language of the sacred Scriptures, and the Aramaic, which was the medium of communication in daily life-being closely allied to each other, stand in direct contrast to the Greek in this respect. There is comparative poverty of inflexions, and there is an extreme paucity of connecting and relative particles. Hence in Hebrew and Aramaic there is little or no syntax, properly so called.

Tested by his style then, the writer was a Jew. Of all the New Testament writings the Fourth Gospel is the most distinctly Hebraic in this respect. The Hebrew simplicity of diction will at once strike the reader. There is an entire absence of periods, for which the Greek language affords such facility. The sentences are co-ordinated, not subordinated.

The clauses are strung together, like beads on a string. The very monotony of arrangement, though singularly impressive, is wholly unlike the Greek style of the age.

More especially does the influence of the Hebrew appear in the connecting particles. In this language the single connecting particle is used equally, whether co-ordination or opposition is implied; in other words, it represents 'but' as well as 'and.' The Authorized Version does not adequately represent this fact, for our translators have exercised considerable license in varying the renderings: 'then,' 'moreover,' 'and,' 'but,' etc. Now it is a noticeable fact, that in St John's Gospel the capabilities of the Greek language in this respect are most commonly neglected; the writer falls back on the simple 'and' of Hebrew diction, using it even where we should expect to find an adversative particle. Thus v. 39, 40, 'Ye search the Scriptures, for in them ye think that ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of Me: and ye will not come to Me'; vii. 19, ‘Did not Moses give you the law, and none of you keepeth the law?' where our English version has inserted an adversative particle to assist the sense, 'and yet'; vii. 30, 'Then they sought to take Him: and no man laid hands on Him,' where the English version substitutes 'but no man'; vii. 33, 'Then said Jesus unto them, Yet a little while am I with you, and I go to Him that sent Me,' where again our translators attempt to improve the sense by reading ‘and then.' And instances might be multiplied.

The Hebrew character of the diction moreover shows itself in other ways: by the parallelism of the sentences, by the repetition of the same words in different clauses, by the order of the words, by the syntactical constructions, and by individual expressions. Indeed so completely is this character maintained throughout, that there is hardly a sentence which might not be translated literally into Hebrew or Aramaic, without any violence to the language or to the sense.

I might point also to the interpretation of Aramaic words, as Cephas, Gabbatha, Golgotha, Messias, Rabboni, Siloam,

L. E.

2

Thomas, as indicating knowledge of this language. On such isolated phenomena however no great stress can fairly be laid, because such interpretations do not necessarily require an extensive acquaintance with the language; and when the whole cast and colouring of the diction can be put in evidence, an individual word here and there is valueless in comparison.

There are however two examples of proper names in this Gospel on which it may be worth while to remark; because the original is obscured in our English Bibles by a false reading in the Greek text used by our translators, and because they afford incidentally somewhat strong testimony to the writer's knowledge both of the language and of contemporary facts.

The first of these is Iscariot. In the other three gospels this name is attributed to the traitor apostle Judas alone. In St John's Gospel also, as represented in the received text and in our English version, this is the case. But if the more correct readings be substituted, on the authority of the ancient copies, we find it sometimes applied to Judas himself (xii. 4, xiii. 2, xiv. 22), and sometimes to Judas' father Simon (e.g. vi. 71, 'He spake of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot'; xiii. 26, 'He giveth it to Judas the son of Simon Iscariot'). Now this shows that the evangelist knew this not to be a proper name strictly so called, but to describe the native place of the person, 'the man of Kerioth,' and hence to be applicable to the father and the son alike.

The other instance which I shall give, at first sight presents a difficulty; but when further investigated it only adds fresh testimony to the exact knowledge of the Fourth Evangelist. In St Matthew, Simon Peter is called Bar-Jona (Matt. xvi. 17); i.e. son of Jona (or Jonan or Jonas). Accordingly in the received text of St John also he appears in not less than four passages (i. 42, xxi. 15-17) as Simon son of Jona (or Jonan or Jonas). But there can be no reasonable doubt that the correct reading in all these four passages is 'Simon son of Joannes'— the Hebrew and Aramaic Johanan, the English John-and

that later transcribers have altered it to make it accord with the form adopted by St Matthew. Here there is an apparent discrepancy, which however disappears on examination; for we find that Jona or Jonan or Jonas is more than once used in the LXX version of the Old Testament as a contracted form of the name Johanan, Johannes, or John. Thus the statements of the two evangelists are reconciled; and we owe it to the special knowledge derived from the Fourth Gospel that the full and correct form is preserved. For, when we have once got this key to the fact, we can no longer question that John was the real name of Peter's father, since it throws great light on our Lord's words in St Matthew. The ordinary name Jonah, which was borne by the prophet, and which is generally supposed to be the name of Simon's father, signifies a dove'; but the name Johanan or John is 'the grace of God.' Hence the Baptist is called not Zechariah, as his relatives thought natural, but John, in accordance with the heavenly message (Luke i. 13), because he was specially given to his parents by God's grace. So too the call of St Peter (John i. 42) becomes full of meaning: "Thou art Simon the son of the grace of God; thou shalt be called Cephas'; and the final commission given to the same apostle is doubly significant, when we interpret the thrice repeated appeal as 'Simon son of God's grace, lovest thou Me?' for without this interpretation the studied repetition of his patronymic seems somewhat meaningless. Bearing this fact in mind, we turn to the passage of St Matthew (xvi. 17, 18): 'Jesus answered and said unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jona (son of the grace of God): for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven. And I say unto thee, That thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church.' His name and his surname alike are symbols and foreshadowings of God's special favour to him in his call and commission. This is only one of many instances in which the authenticity of the statements of the Fourth Gospel is confirmed by the fact that they incidentally explain what is otherwise unexplained in the narrative of the synoptic evangelists.