accordance with the Scriptures." [3]

Now, it is perfectly certain that Irenaeus, like his contemporaries
Heracleon and Tatian, accepted the fourth Gospel as the work of the
Apostle John. And can we believe that he would have thus accepted it,
if it had not been acknowledged by his teacher Polycarp, who knew St.
John, and was nearly thirty years old at the time of St. John's death?

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[Sidenote: The Internal Evidence.]

The Gospel itself contains manifest tokens that it was written by a Jew
of Palestine, by one who held no Gnostic heresy, and by a contemporary
of our Lord.

I. _The author was a Jew and not a Gentile._

He makes frequent quotations from the Old Testament, and some of these
quotations imply an acquaintance with the Hebrew. This is especially
the case in the verse from the 41st Psalm (xiii. 18), and in that (xix.
37) from Zech. xii. 10, "They shall look on Him whom they pierced."
The Septuagint of Zech. xii. 10, translating from a different form of
the Hebrew, has, instead of the words "whom they pierced," "because
they mocked." It is, therefore, plain that John xiii. 18 is not
derived from the Septuagint. The Gospel is also Hebraic in style. The
sentences are broken up in a manner which is at variance with Greek
idiom. Whereas in St. Luke's two writings the style becomes more Greek
or more Hebraic in proportion to his writing independently or employing
the writings of Jewish Christians, the style of this Gospel is the same
throughout. We may particularly notice the Hebraic use of the word
"and" to signify both "and" and "but" (_e.g._ in v. 39, 40, where "and
ye will not come" means "but ye will not come"). We may also notice
the correct use of certain Hebrew proper names: _e.g._ Judas is called
"the son of Iscariot," showing that the writer did not regard the word
Iscariot as the fixed name of Judas only, but knew that it might be
applied to any man of Kerioth. In fact, the Greek of St. John is
exactly like the English of a Scottish Highlander who has only spoken
Gaelic in his earlier days, and, when he has acquired English, shows
his origin by the continued use of a few Gaelic idioms and his
knowledge of Highland proper names.

He shows a minute acquaintance with Jewish social and ceremonial
customs. We may notice iii. 25; iv. 9, 27; vii. 2, 23, 37; x. 22; xi.
44; xix. 7, 31; and especially the waterpots (ii. 6), the purification
previous to the Passover (xi. 55), the fear {89} of