bears his name, was admitted more intimately than any other into the confidence of Jesus, how came he to clothe his Master in this foreign garb of Hellenistic speculation, and to attribute to Him this alien manner of speech? But, however difficult the explanation may be, whatever extreme of improbability may seem to us to be involved in the assumption of the Johannine authorship of the Epistle and of these essential elements of the Gospel, it is better to assent to the improbability, to submit to the burden of being forced to explain the inexplicable, than to set ourselves obstinately against the weight of testimony, against the authority of the whole Christian Church from the second century to the present day."
There could be no better argument against the genuineness of the Fourth Gospel than just such a defence of its genuineness as this. In this form the hypothesis may well be destined to lead a harmless and never-ending life. What matters for the historical study of the Life of Jesus is simply that the Fourth Gospel should be ruled out. And that Weisse does so thoroughly that it is impossible to imagine its being done more thoroughly. The speeches, in spite of their apostolic authority, are unhistorical, and need not be taken into account in describing Jesus' system of thought. As for the unhappy redactor, who by adding the narrative pictures created the Gospel, all possibility of his reports being accurate is roundly denied, and as if that was not enough, he must put up with being called a bungler into the bargain. "I have, to tell the truth, no very high opinion of the literary art of the editor of the Johannine Gospel-document," says Weisse in his "Problem of the Gospels" of 1856, which is the best commentary upon his earlier work.
His treatment of the Fourth Gospel reminds us of the story that Frederic the Great once appointed an importunate office-seeker to the post of "Privy Councillor for War," on condition that he would never presume to offer a syllable of advice!
The hypothesis which was brought forward about the same time by Alexander Schweizer,[1] with the intention of saving the genuineness of the Gospel of John, did not make any real contribution to the subject. The reading of the facts which form his starting-point is almost the exact converse of that of Weisse, since he regards, not the speeches, but certain parts of the narrative as Johannine. That which it is possible, in his opinion, to refer
- ↑ Alexander Schweizer, Das Evangelium Johannis nach seinem inneren Werte md seiner Bedeutung fiir das Leben Jesu kritisch untersucht. 1841. (A Critical Examination of the Intrinsic Value of the Gospel of John and of its Importance as a Source for the Life of Jesus.) Alexander Schweizer was born in 1808 at Murten, was appointed Professor of Pastoral Theology at Zurich in 1835, and continued to lecture there until his death in 1888, remaining loyal to the ideas of his teacher Schleiennacher, though handling them with a certain freedom. His best-known work is his Glaabenslehre (System of Doctrine), 2 vols., 1863-1872; 2nd ed,, 1877.
