[28] A late chronicler, George the Sinful, devoid of ability or critical faculty or insight, and utterly valueless except that he preserves some older statements in an unintelligent and even erroneous form, quotes Papias and Origen as proving by their conjoined evidence that the Apostle John lived at Ephesus at least as late as Nerva, A.D. 96 - 98, at which time he was the sole survivor of the Twelve, and that he died a martyr. Dr. Moffatt takes this brief and vague reference to Papias, transforms it by his imaginative historical criticism, and it becomes thorough and trustworthy evidence that Papias recorded the death of John in Jerusalem along with James 1 [29] at the very beginning of the history of the Church. From this, of course, it follows that the Apostle John never was at Ephesus, and never wrote either the letters of John, or the Gospel, or the Revelation.

That is the true, literal and simple statement of the quick-change process through which the Papias of history is transformed into the Papias whom Dr. Moffatt admires so much and knows so well. In the whole range of criticism I know nothing more extraordinary than this. I do not mean that Dr. Moffatt originated the transformation. It is all chronicled in' German magazines and German treatises, which are mentioned by the Author with admirable care. The first champions, who feel themselves discoverers, of such a theory may be pardoned for unconsciously overrating and overstating the evidence in its favour; but a subsequent writer whose declared purpose it is to weigh opinions against one another, shows a distinct lack of the [30] sense for historical evidence, when he conveys to the unwary reader such a mistaken impression of George the Sinful's intention in quoting Papias; and leaves it to the student to verify the reference and discover for himself that the ancient authorities say the opposite of what they are represented as implying. That is all in " the fearless old fashion" of the Tübingen school and of the later nineteenth century critics in dealing with inconvenient historical evidence. It was customary with them; but it is not permitted in the twentieth century.

We cannot here acquit Dr. Moffatt of misrepresenting evidence (unintentionally, and only through his defective historical sense), when he persistently talks of "the Papias-tradition" This so-called "Papias-tradition" is an invention of wild and undisciplined hypothesis, rejected not only by Lightfoot, but also by Harnack, Zahn, etc. Would Eusebius have been so confident, if Papias had been dead against him? Would the unvarying tradition of that period have been so unvarying, if Papias had recorded the early death of John? In all [31] probability, we must conclude, the real Papias agreed with Eusebius and the rest. Dr. Moffatt on page 614 declares that the tradition so unhesitatingly declared in the fourth century by Eusebius, who knew and valued Papias, is contrary to Papias's testimony and is the invention of a later age, beginning with Irenaeus in the later second century. Eusebius is simply and plainly our best historical authority; he states clearly in almost every dubious case the grounds on which his statements rest; and he has a sound conception of the difference between what is probable, what is possible, and what is reasonably certain-a conception in which some of our great modern scholars are greatly lacking. John XXI. 22 implies a very early belief. Irenaeus represents the faith and testimony of Polycarp, who died 155 - 166 A.D., at the age of 86.

All this, however, is as nought in Dr. Moffatt's eyes compared with the silence of Clemens Romanus, Ignatius and Hegesippus: their silence cannot fairly be called accidental”.

The argument from silence can be used to [32] prove almost anything that the wild theorist about history imagines. It is almost too futile to detain us; yet one must give a few words to this aspect of the matter.

On page 614, Dr. Moffatt lays much stress on the silence of Clemens; yet on page 613 he says: "the silence of Clemens Romanus . . . is of minor importance; there was no particular occasion for him to mention the Apostle, and his evidence hardly tells either way". Then in a footnote he draws back in some degree from what he has said in the text. Why will writers who state one view in the text express doubt about it in a footnote? This is an abuse of the too convenient purpose of notes, and is peculiarly unsuitable in an "Introduction". Clemens was not writing a history; he was warning the Corinthians about a matter on which the residence of John in Asia had no bearing. Why should he or Ignatius be interpreted as bound to satisfy our historical doubts? They had enough to do with the pressing questions of the moment. The text of page 613 is right.

"Much more significant," says Dr. Moffatt on [33] page 613 f., "is the silence of Ignatius, especially when it is admitted that he knew the Fourth Gospel." We turn, as he bids us, to page 577 f., and find that there in his larger type he states: "The conceptions of Ignatius have been held to imply rather an acquaintance with the general ideas which reappear in special guise in the Fourth Gospel and the First Epistle of John, than any literary relationship".

Here again the Author's remarks in small type express doubts about what he says in the larger text. Often you cannot tell when you have nailed down Dr. Moffatt to a definite statement. The distinction between the use of large and of small type, as I have always understood, lies in this, that the important and fundamental principles are printed in large type, the secondary in small; but Dr. Moffatt uses the two kinds to set against one another his expressions of different views; and on page 613 f. he refers us to page 577 f., as if the small type were the important. We must not here enter on the question whether Ignatius was, or was not, built up on the writings of John. He could hardly be a [34] disciple of that Gospel, without being built up on it. It is a Gospel that seizes hold of those to whom it appeals; it is the arresting and the final expression of the Christian truth.

One question alone is needed. Does Ignatius, in writing to the Ephesians, lay any stress on the long residence of Paul among them? He mentions that they "are associates in the mysteries with Paul ({summustai}) ". This could not necessarily be taken as proof of his residence among them; for it might be argued, not without some force, that it is the death of Paul in Rome which prompts the reference, and not the residence of Paul in Ephesus. Still I personally would take Symmystai in the strictest sense of those who partook along with Paul of the Eucharist. Though hardly any person was alive who had so partaken, yet the Church of Ephesus was still living and had been "initiated along with Paul". It was however the Roman death of Paul after being dragged from Asia that gives point to the mention of the Apostle, and not his Asian residence. The idea of [35] "sharers with Paul in the mystery of a bloody death" is not absent from Ignatius's mind.

Ignatius, like Avircius Marcellus in the following century, travelled "holding Paul in his hands": he followed, and Faith went in front guiding his steps and making ready for him everywhere the Divine food. To "Paul" and "the Apostles" Ignatius makes his appeal in addressing the Ephesians; that this is inconsistent with, or has any bearing on, a residence of John in Asia, I have yet to learn.

As to Hegesippus, the reasoning is too absurd. Eusebius quotes "the current account of the ancients among us" as authority for the long life of John the Apostle. That this excludes Hegesippus, the earliest Christian historian, is an inference of the wildest character. To expect, however, that Hegesippus with his known bent and interest should lay stress on the work of John in the Province Asia is to expect too much. The truth is, after all, that we know extremely little about Hegesippus, that he is hardly more than a name to us, except in so far as Eusebius preserves his memory, and to assume that [36] Eusebius tacitly ignores and contradicts the testimony (silent or expressed) of Hegesippus, is false to historic evaluation of authorities.

Here, as always, Dr. Moffatt's intention evidently is to be scrupulously accurate in stating evidence and opinions. He mentions that Lightfoot, Zahn, Harnack, and many others, differ from him and suggest a different form for the statement of Papias, the true content of which after all is unknown, a matter of conjecture and quite uncertain. What one feels is that the author lacks the modern spirit, which tends naturally to state the conditions accurately. So, for example, in discussing briefly the Saviour's prediction that the brothers James and John would drink the same cup and be baptized with the same baptism as Himself, he does not state quite fairly the view which has been held by some modern scholars. 2 As this is a matter that involves several important principles, it deserves careful consideration.

[37] When the mother of James and John came to Jesus with her two sons, "asking a certain thing of Him," viz., "that these my two sons may sit, one on Thy right hand, and one on Thy left hand, in Thy kingdom," the Saviour put the question to them: "Are ye able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?" 3 Then, on their replying that they were able, He gave them the promise, "The cup that I drink ye shall drink, and with the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye be baptized": more He could not promise.

According to Dr. Moffatt and those scholars whom he follows in this place, these words constitute a definite and plain and absolute assertion or prophecy that James and John should die at the hand of the Jews in the same fashion as their Master died. Nothing that falls in any degree short of that perfect parallel will content these critics. Not that they all regard the words of Jesus as having been in every case [38] fulfilled, or that they all consider this particular saying to have been uttered by Him and faithfully recorded. They are, however, all agreed in thinking that these words must necessarily have been fulfilled in the most literal sense in which a captious critic can take them, because either, on the one hand, if Jesus really spoke the words and they had not been literally fulfilled, they would have been studiously obliterated from the record and from the memory of the Church; or, on the other hand, if, as some of the critics would maintain, they were not spoken by Jesus but only invented by the Church later, the sole motive for the invention lay in the occurrence of the facts and the desire to represent Jesus as foretelling what did actually happen.

In this narrow and hard way of reading the Gospels serious inferences would follow from those words: James and John must have been killed by the Jews after the same fashion as the Saviour, and (as some of the critics even think) both about the same time and in the same way as each other. It would also follow that neither the Revelation nor the Fourth Gospel nor the [39] Epistles could be written by John, for those works are confessedly later than the time when, according to these theorists, the two Apostles died.

With this method of understanding the Gospels and reasoning from them I find myself in absolute disagreement.

If the second and easier alternative be taken, and if the so-called prophecy of Jesus was simply invented by "the growing consciousness of the Church " for the purpose of being put in the mouth of Jesus, the case would be ended. The "prophecy" would then be merely the subsequent record of what had actually occurred before the" prophetic "announcement was composed. If the invention of legend had gone to such an extreme as this, involving such a tremendous falsification of history -- what Dr. Moffatt on page 603 calls "a tissue of historical difficulties " -- there would remain nothing worth contending for. Nothing would be left for the historian, as distinguished from the critic, except to consign the whole of these documents to the limbo of lies, to which belong the Alex- [40] ander-legends and the history of Virgil the magician. With these history has nothing to do.

I do not, however, understand that Dr. Moffatt goes so far as this, but believe that he is ready to treat the saying Mark x. 39, Matthew xx. 23, as one which Jesus' uttered, and which Luke did not record. I take it that the Author adopts the first of the only two alternatives, which are open from his point of view. We are then brought face to face with what appears to me to be the false and groundless idea that, after they had once found a place in the record, sayings of Jesus and of the Apostles would be erased from it and consigned to oblivion, merely because they did not find a literal fulfilment.

These sayings, however, were remembered simply because they were spoken and had deeply impressed some influential authority, and not because they were afterwards found to be prophetic. They were remembered on account of their force and weight and dignity, often without being fully comprehended by the audi- [41] ence or the readers. In many cases the disciples came to recognize in later years that they had misconceived, or understood in too narrow a sense, the Saviour's words. They did not sit in judgment on them, and decide that some had failed and must be eliminated from the record, while others bad proved trustworthy and should be kept in memory. That whole idea is grotesque.

Prophecy is a statement of great principles and eternal truths in their application to the world. We should have imagined that Dr. Moffatt would be one of the last people to assume that a saying like this ought ever to be taken as a literal, hard-and-fast prediction of details. We have always understood that he treated the writings of the prophets after a more spiritual fashion; but in this case the temptation to buttress a bad theory leads him astray, and makes him forget what I believe to be his own principles. The character of James and of John, as Jesus saw, would carry them far on the same road that He was taking. They would never shrink. They would persevere to the end. This was [42] the reward that Jesus could read in their mind, and guarantee to them. He that overcometh I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go out thence no more; 4 "but to sit on my right hand or on my left hand is not mine to give". Jesus was not foretelling times and seasons," nor portraying the literal facts of the life and death of two leading spiris among His disciples. It was not for the disciples to know such matters, nor to waste time on them. All such kind of thought, all such views of the world, are unworthy. "Not until a prophecy is fulfilled is its explanation found." 5 The development of character, and its outcome in the lives of James and John, were what Jesus expressed in the words, "the cup that I drink ye shall drink".

Throughout Dr. Moffatt's book there is nothing more soulless and external than his interpretation of these words.

[43] The author of the Revelation, whom I believe to be John, claimed to stand side by side with his Churches in enduring the extremest pains of persecution. As they were suffering at the hands of Domitian, so he was suffering. We are not left to infer this from a general argument or from mere subjective inference. John says this in so many words, Revelation 1.9; and I cannot but feel that in those words he has in mind the prediction of Jesus: he was drinking the cup of persecution to the full, though in a somewhat different form. He declares that he was the brother of his suffering Churches and sharer with them in persecution, and that he was in Patmos for the martyria of Jesus. Gutjahr, Godet, etc., consider that this suffering may be reckoned as a sufficient fulfilment of the Saviour's prediction. Dr. Moffett replies that "it is impossible to minimize the words of the ancient record, "into injury or exile". But the punishment which John suffered in Patmos 6 was much worse than [44] "injury or exile". The milder forms of exile were reserved for Roman citizens and persons of rank. An obscure Jew in an Asian town, treated as Christians regularly were treated, was not condemned to any such mild deportation as this.

John's penalty was hard labour of some kind; 7 it was preceded by severe beating, it was accompanied by perpetual fetters, scanty clothing, insufficient food, sleep on the bare ground in a dark prison, and work under the lash of military overseers. It was reckoned the severest penalty short of death. It was inflicted on criminals of the humbler classes, on provincials and on slaves. As it was almost equivalent to death, the infliction of it was reserved for the supreme Governor of the province, the Proconsul of Asia; even his legati were not authorized to condemn a criminal to death or the mines. 8

[45] Finally, this penalty was very frequently inflicted on Christians; and the quarries, such as Prokonessos, were full of Christians. When John says that he in Patmos was suffering along with his suffering churches, among whom the sword was raging, his words are to be taken in their fullest sense: they were all being treated with almost equally severe penalties. There is, therefore, no minimizing in the suggestion of Gutjahr and the others that John's penalty in Patmos was a full and sufficient fulfilment of the prediction in the sense in which with prophetic insight it was made.

As George says, John was released by Nerva the successor of Domitian; Domitian's acts were invalidated at his death, and a release of those Christians who had been sent to the mines under his tyranny is not improbable. This would fully explain why John, though condemned to life-long suffering of the most terrible kind, and therefore in the fullest sense sharer in [46] the same cup and baptized with the same baptism as Jesus, did after all escape death and return to Ephesus. lie had gone through the pains and conquered the terrors of death, and yet he lived again.

FOOTNOTES:

1 Not necessarily on the same occasion and day, as Dr. Moffatt allows with some lingering respect for the evidence of the Acts -- poor as that evidence, in his opinion, is. Fortunately Paul in Galatians II. mentions John as alive long after the death of James, so that with this buttress the evidence of the Acts stands firm in the Author's estimation.

2 P. 603, note, "It is impossible, with Godet, Gutjahr and others, to minimise {anêrethê}, here or in Georgios, into injury or exile".

3 I purposely unite the accounts given in Matthew xx. 20 if. and Mark x. 35 ff.

4 Rev. III. 12.

5 Dr. Johannes Lepsius in "Expositor," February, 1911, p. 167, and the present writer's remarks on the same subject, pp.160 - 163.

6 {upo Ioudaiôn anêrethê (anêrethêsan)} is the expression in which George and the epitomizer of Philippus Sidetes, the only two ancient authorities, agree. It is probable, but by no means certain, that they took the three words from Papias. What was the context in Papias remains utterly obscure.

7 I refer generally to Mommsen's chapter on this punishment in his "Römisches Strafrecht," p.949 f.

8 The proconsul had the power of life and death (ius gladii): even his three legati had not that right (Mommsen, loc. cit., p.949, note), though they otherwise exercised his full authority, as his representatives in districts of the Province of Asia.