Who, then, is the author of the fourth Gospel? Let us ask the book itself. It replies clearly that he draws very immediately from St. John, but is not St. John. When he speaks of the "beloved disciple,' he speaks in the third person. Of course this might be only a literary form. Antiquity affords us a well-known example. The Commentaries of Julius Cæsar were written by Cæsar himself, and nowhere does he designate himself by the pronoun of the first person. But the system adopted by the writer of the fourth Gospel is very

Judas goes out from the upper chamber after receiving the sop, etc. The Gospel clears up many seeming improbabilities in the Synoptic account. John states that Jesus died on the very day when the paschal lamb was eaten; so does the Talmud ("the eve of Pasca," Babyl. Sanh. 43a, 67a). He says nothing of the payment of money to Judas. With regard to the six months before the Passion, John alone is well informed. He shows the death of Jesus as already resolved upon in the month of February or March (xi. 53, 54); at that time Jesus retires to Ephraim, the order for his arrest is given (xi. 55, 56). The Synoptics know nothing of all this. Finally and especially the fact that immediately after his arrest Jesus was led to Annas (xviii. 13), who, as we know, had a house on the Mount of Olives, is the strongest possible proof of the historic value of the fourth Gospel (cf. Renan, Vie de Jésus, 1st edition, p. 394.)

different, for not simply does he never speak of John except in the third person, he is careful to distinguish himself from him; he speaks of John without ever naming him, and always in terms of eulogy; he designates him with veiled expressions and in terms of invariable admiration: it is evident that he is tenderly attached to him. He brings out John's superiority, and the peculiar affection of Jesus for him. The apostle John, writing for himself, would not thus have written about himself; and yet all that we have said of the Johannine origin of the fourth Gospel remains. solution alone is possible, — this book was written by a disciple of St. John who drew his inspiration from his master. We may almost say that the fourth Gospel was composed in collaboration by the apostle John and one of his disciples who acted as penman; and just as he has nowhere written his master's name, he has nowhere made an error, and this book has nothing in common with what is called a pseudepigraph.

One

We have one proof of this assertion in a fact which it is impossible to contest. It is universally admitted that chapter xxi.

was added to the Gospel after its completion and even after St. John's death. Now, the style of this appendix — which in any case is not that of St. John, since it was written after his death is precisely the same as that of the Gospel. It is by the same writer; then this writer not being John for the twenty-first chapter is also not John for the first twenty chapters. The appendix was added by the disciple who, a little while before, had written the Gospel under the direction of the apostle. This appears to us incon

testable.

It is to be remarked also that the Gospel of John was thought in Hebrew, that the construction of the sentences is entirely Hebraic. We may therefore admit that we have an almost literal translation, made by him who held the pen while the apostle spoke to him in Aramaic. There was a duality of authorship, a duality which is indeed betrayed by the pronoun in the first person plural, here and there employed.

More than this, the writer-secretary from time to time introduces his own reflections. For example he says: "He that hath seen

hath borne witness, and his witness is true; and he knoweth that he saith true, that ye also may believe."1 That is to say, "John attested what he saw when he related to me the death upon the cross, and now he knows that his attestation is true; I hear him saying so at the moment when I am writing these lines." This is evidently a personal reflection of the writer, a writer who is not "he that hath seen."

This literary method of a book written by two people appears at first strange. It is not in the least so, if we put ourselves back in the time of the apostles. They, especially Peter and John, must have been very ill versed in Greek, if indeed they so much as knew a word of it. But if they wrote epistles or gospels, they could publish them only in Greek. If they had written them in their mother tongue, their books would not have been widely scattered, and they would have been lost, as Matthew's collection of the sayings of Jesus was lost. They therefore took collaborators, aids, secretaries. Peter, who had John Mark for interpreter, had also Silas, and caused Silas to write his epistle. 1 John xix. 35.

He says it in so many words.1 In the same way John, having to write a gospel, acquitted himself of his task as he could, giving the facts to a secretary who assuredly was not chosen at hap-hazard, and who made admirable use of what the apostle related to him.

To return now to the question which we have put to ourselves: How may we reconstruct the outline of the ministry of Jesus Christ? Three Paschal feasts were celebrated in the course of it,2 and it must therefore have occupied two and a half years. If next we attempt to put the events in their proper dates and to show a progress, a development, in the ministry of Jesus Christ, we must still address ourselves to the fourth Gospel.

The first three group the facts without the slightest hint of progress or development; but, on the other hand, we find in them, especially in the Gospel of Mark, notes of time which grow out of the nature of the events, and these indications of time impress themselves upon the reader all the more strongly because the Evan

1 1 Pet. v. 12.

2 John ii. 23; vi. 4; xiii. 1.