[64] It would be an interesting task, and one not devoid of usefulness, to take a modern romance and go through it carefully, noting the marks of ignorance or carelessness and the signs of accuracy in the narrative whose scene lies in an age and a country not personally known to the writer, and trying to trace the reasons for the varying accuracy and inaccuracy. Space does not permit this here: but every critic of every school and kind, who is going to talk about "imaginative historical reconstruction" in regard to the Fourth Gospel, ought to begin by making for himself a thorough study of this kind from first-hand knowledge, and not to content himself with borrowed dicta, imperfectly under-stood.

Scott's "Count Robert" is an instructive ex- [65] ample: one can trace varying degrees of accuracy in parts, and see the reasons in most cases. The Prison-of-Anemas scene is well done, whereas the Crusaders crossing the tide-less Bosphorus are said to go upstream first in order to take advantage of the turn of the tide. Here one sees the process of truth and of error. One can detect the way in which Scott was misled by a reference in one of his authorities to the varying strength and course of the currents in the Bosphorus. 1 He hastily applies his own experience of tidal seas and rivers, and thus invents a tide for the timeless salt-water river that flows from the Black Sea past Constantinople and Scatter. Where he closely follows a literary model he is best: where he trusts to his imagination he is worst.

Another example can be found in Marion Crawford's "Via Crucis". The description of [66] the march of the Crusaders in 1146, headed by Louis of France, is founded on an excellent narrative written by an eye-witness, perhaps on more than one narrative; but the writer of the romance is concerned much more with the imaginary career of his hero than with local details, and these are almost wholly omitted, except in the great scene of the Turkish assault on the French army in the pass towards Pisidia. More than twenty years ago, when first I read the account of the assault, as written down by one of the Crusaders, I immediately recognized the exact locality, a little way south-east from Denizli in a long pass which I have several times traversed; but recently, when I read the modern novelist's account of the same incident, I could gather from it nothing local except that his description of the place bore no resemblance to any pass that I had ever seen. Yet it is quite possible that some Western scholar may hereafter quote the whole episode of that march in "Via Crucis" as an admirable "imaginative reconstruction of history"; and indeed it deserves in some respects to be called so; but still [67] the topography is vague, or when not vague is inaccurate.

The novelist also omits that most striking episode when the Crusaders crossed the deep Maeander in the face of a Turkish army and scattered the opposing forces on the other bank. As I read, I wondered why he omits that episode, which is so pertinent to his main purpose of glorifying "the Guide of Aquitaine" (the Guide might have been described as finding the solitary point on that difficult river where this most gallant feat of arms was possible), if Marion Crawford had known by experience the nature of the country, and had not perhaps got confused between the two Maeanders, which the French Crusaders crossed successively -- the Maeander (ancient Caystros) at Fphesus, and the true Maeander where the feat was performed. Still the novelist bad to select and omit, and he cannot be blamed for making his own choice. The criticism of "John Inglesant" by Lord Acton 2 may be mentioned in illustration. It [68] fills fifteen pages of his "Letters". The writer prefaces it with the statement that " I have read nothing more thoughtful and suggestive since 'Middlemarch,' and I could fill with honest praise the pages I am going to blacken with complaint. . . . Not having (access to the author), I submit my questionings to yourself." "John Inglesant" was generally lauded as a marvel of "imaginative historical reconstruction"; yet to a master like Lord Acton it seems on a single rapid reading to be full of historical errors in details, or at least of matters that roused his suspicion. I am not qualified to express an opinion, but have been accustomed to regard the critic as a master of historical knowledge; and no one would question a dictum of his without very careful investigation. Jn respect of historical details he finds several scores of faults. As to geographical matters he mentions that "the steps of the Trinita were hardly built then," and again "there are no spires in Rome. I hear that the author has never been in Italy. That accounts for many topographical mistakes, and [69] leaves a margin to his credit." So difficult does Lord Acton consider it to attain accuracy in such details, when one has never visited the country about which one writes, that he pardons such instances of incorrectness as inevitable. But "these little (topographical) scruples by themselves do not build up a strong misgiving. The picture may be true in spite of slips in accessory detail. But is the picture true, I will not say controversially, but historically? There are glaring faults in it, not open to dispute or controversy."

There is no question, then, whether the author of "John Inglesant" preserved topographical truth. That was impossible for one who did not know Italy familiarly, however much he strove after it. The only question for Lord Acton is about the many historical errors, which the critic enumerates, finishing up with "I must stop somewhere ". 3

Now Dr. Moffatt admits that the Gospel of John contains many proofs of minute local knowledge of Palestine; but contends that [70] accurate "historical reconstruction" is quite a usual thing in literature. One must doubt whether he ever attained to the finer knowledge that would justify him in expressing an opinion about this aspect of either ancient or modern books. His knowledge, though astonishingly wide, is not of that order; but he picks out statements convenient for his purpose and his strong bias, wherever he finds them. He does not sift or criticize them; he simply quotes them, as if they were sufficient and final.

That the Author of the Fourth Gospel knew Palestine well is generally admitted. Many attempts have been made to convict him of slips even in the most minute details of topography (such as Lord Acton almost wholly omits from his criticism of "John Inglesant," because the writer could not be expected to avoid them); but according to Dr. Moffatt those attempts have failed, and the local accuracy is admitted. From this we are bound to infer that the writer of the Fourth Gospel knew Palestine quite intimately. This is not sufficient to prove that he was an Apostle; but it carries us along part [71] of the way, and proves that he was not an ordinary Asian Jew. We must not infer too much, mindful that in respect of local topography the legend of Judith and Holofernes is very accurate; but we can at least say that the writer of that legend knew well and familiarly one district of Palestine.

We may, however, at least ask whether Dr. Moffatt has proved, or even presented any moderate amount of evidence in favour of his very confident assertion.

Again, the legend of the Periodoi of Barnabas gives a most elaborate and minutely accurate list of places and times on the Apostle's voyage from Syria to Cyprus. 4 What are we [72] to infer from this? Certainly not that the legend is historical, but only that the voyage is described according to the real experience and knowledge of the Author. He was therefore either a writer of a pure romance, intended to interest and amuse a Cypriote public by the description of places and circumstances known to them, and naturally describing correctly those geographical features that he was familiar with, or a deliberate forger who used his personal familiarity with localities to obtain credence for a story designed to gain some end, whether hortatory or otherwise. The further fact that he shows ignorance in geography outside of Cyprus and the Syrian voyage proves that he belonged to this part of the world. There is, at any rate, practical certainty that personal knowledge of the ports (some so obscure that their names are known only in the very minute [73] study of that coast, 5 one having been re-discovered recently by Bent and Bishop Hicks through comparison between an inscription and Stephanus Byzantinus) is involved in this legend, and that "imaginative reconstruction of history" by a native of a remote country has here played no part. Personal knowledge alone gives the power to tell a story involving many local details without betraying ignorance to one who knows the localities.

The Fourth Gospel shows great accuracy in local details, as Dr. Moffatt acknowledges freely on the testimony of many persons who have known the country, and who have investigated and scrutinized most minutely and critically this feature of the book. Therefore all analogy known to me tends to prove that the Fourth Gospel cannot have been written at a [74] later time by a Jewish native of the province Asia, who restored by an effort of "imaginative reconstruction of history" the features and surroundings of an unknown past, for the purpose of elaborating an imaginary figure of the Saviour as it was gradually evolved in the growing "consciousness of the Church". That, I think, is a fair statement of Dr. Moffatt's theory; and the theory seems, as we have said, to be impossible.

There are only three hypotheses which analogy and literary possibilities leave open. (1) The Fourth Gospel was written by some person who knew the events and the localities so intimately that he naturally and without conscious effort described everything correctly in its actual surroundings. ('2) The Fourth Gospel is the composition of some person who, belonging to Palestine by birth and upbringing, composed a romance to interest and please the later Christian public without intending it to be taken as more than a fictitious romance, and who naturally and unconsciously described correctly the local conditions: the conscious straining after local [75] verisimilitude in such a romance by a foreigner was unknown to that age and undreamed of then, and not required by the literary standards of the period. (3) The Fourth Gospel was composed at a later time with the intention of moving and affecting the contemporary Church in the situation in which it was placed: the composer was profoundly sensible of the grave needs of the time, and he tried to put things right by a work in which he described the life of the Saviour as it had come to be conceived by the "growing consciousness of the Church": in order to give effectiveness and authority to his work he pretended that it had been written by an eye-witness who had seen and known what he described -- that process Dr. Moffatt defends on the ground that it was considered entirely justifiable and right by this "growing consciousness of the Church": this composer must have been so determined to gain unmerited credence for his composition that (somewhat after the fashion of the Asian Presbyter who composed the Acts of Paul and Thekla) he took much trouble and studied deeply and travelled [76] in the land of Palestine in order to impart to his work a local verisimilitude that should impose on people who knew the country-a device hitherto unknown to ancient literature; but the general character of the book stamps it as a work of the Province Asia composed for the use of Christians primarily in that province. This whole elaborate process was done so skilfully and successfully that it was immediately accepted as authoritative, and soon mistaken for the work of the Apostle John. Dr. Moffatt does not make it quite clear whether he thinks that the earliest users of the book (who, as he holds, did not regard it as the work of the Apostle John) knew it to be a composition which falsely pretended to be written by an eye-witness, and which was really the work of a later Asian composer, or whether he considers that those earliest users fancied it to be the work of some other eyewitness; but he strongly suggests by his general treatment that those first readers were in no respect deceived, and that they even approved of this falseness as a right and praiseworthy device.

[77] The second of these hypotheses is not, and would not for a moment be, entertained by Dr. Moffatt. I doubt if he is prepared to accept the third, although he goes a very long way in that direction; but he wavers between the theory of growth or successive editing by different writers whose work cannot be disentangled, and a theory which approximates to this. The theory of growth and re-editing far from Palestine fails utterly to account for local accuracy in a Palestinian history. The theory which we have stated as (3) needs only to be stated in order to be rejected. I see no rational theory except the first.

FOOTNOTES:

1 One can see any day boats, and even small steamers, doing what the Crusaders did, starting off upstream and at a particular point turning outwards into the current, which carries them towards the Asiatic side. I have had the experience in a boat, unintentionally testing the truth of the account.

2 "Letters to Mary Gladstone," pp.135 - 49. I am indebted for this and the previous quotation from Lord Acton to the Rev. W. Fiddian Moulton.

3 The quotations are from pp. 137 and 147.

4 Lipsius in his work on the New Testament Apocrypha draws, on the whole, the correct inferences as to this legend from geographical data; yet he is extraordinarily far from the real facts about the route of the voyage. He judges, therefore, simply from the minuteness and carefulness of the local detail, assuming that it is all right, though his attempt to place it is for the most part wrong. I wrote a long study of the geographical part of this legend many years ago, but the time needed to print it has never fallen to my lot. It is worthy of note that Lipsius might have been deceived by invented details about this obscure coast, if there had been a series of false names in the legend. The critic needs knowledge. Lipsius practically assumes topographical honesty and knowledge on the part of the writer of that legend; and through this assumption he is led aright.

5 It is through his want of such minute knowledge that Lipsias went so far wrong in his account of the voyage; he looked into the subject only for the purpose of criticizing the legend, and not for the sake of knowing the topography thoroughly (the same procedure that is usual with New Testament scholars in talking about Pauline journeys).