independent of each other nor
in that sort of agreement which was formerly asserted. All biblical
scholars of any standing, even the most conservative, have come to admit
that all three took their rise in the same original sources, growing by
the accretions sure to come as time went on--accretions sometimes useful
and often beautiful, but in no inconsiderable degree ideas and even
narratives inherited from older religions: it is also fully acknowledged
that to this growth process are due certain contradictions which can not
otherwise be explained. As to the fourth Gospel, exquisitely beautiful
as large portions of it are, there has been growing steadily and
irresistibly the conviction, even among the most devout scholars, that
it has no right to the name, and does not really give the ideas of St.
John, but that it represents a mixture of Greek philosophy with Jewish
theology, and that its final form, which one of the most eminent among
recent Christian scholars has characterized as "an unhistorical product
of abstract reflection," is mainly due to some gifted representative or
representatives of the Alexandrian school. Bitter as the resistance
to this view has been, it has during the last years of the nineteenth
century won its way more and more to acknowledgment. A careful
examination made in 1893 by a competent Christian scholar showed facts
which are best given in his own words, as follows: "In the period of
thirty years ending in 1860, of the fifty great authorities in this
line, FOUR TO ONE were in favour of the Johannine authorship. Of
those who in that period had advocated this traditional position, one
quarter--and certainly the very greatest--finally changed their position
to the side of a late date and non-Johannine authorship."

Of those who have come into this field of scholarship since about 1860,
some forty men of the first class, two thirds reject the traditional
theory wholly or very largely. Of those who have contributed important
articles to the discussion from about 1880 to 1890, about TWO TO ONE
reject the Johannine authorship of the Gospel in its present shape--that
is to say, while forty years ago great scholars were FOUR TO ONE IN
FAVOUR OF, they are now TWO TO ONE AGAINST, the claim that the apostle
John wrote this Gospel as we have it. Again, one half of those on the
conservative side to-day--scholars like Weiss, Beyschlag, Sanday, and
Reynolds--admit the existence of a dogmatic intent and an ide