e to find a shred of the
anti-Jewish theories which the Gnostics taught. And though it is true
that some Gnostics were fond of using such words as "life" and "light"
in their religious phraseology, it is much more probable that they were
influenced by the fourth Gospel than that this Gospel was tinged with
Gnosticism.

We conclude, therefore, that the author was a Jew of Palestine, and
that he was not a Gentile or in any sense a Gnostic.

III. _The author was a contemporary and an eye-witness of the events
described._

His knowledge of Jerusalem and of the temple, which we have already
noticed, strongly suggests that he knew the city before its destruction
in A.D. 70. So far as can be tested, his treatment of the Messianic
ideas of the people is exactly accurate, and of a kind which it would
have been difficult for a later writer to exhibit. This Gospel
represents the people as pervaded by a nationalist notion of the
Messiah as of a king who would deliver them from foreign powers (vi.
15, xi. 48; xix. 12), a notion which was dispelled in A.D. 70, and
apparently did not revive until the rising of Bar Kocheba in A.D. 135,
a date which is now almost universally recognized as too late for this
Gospel to have been written. We also find the two contradictory ideas
as to the place of the Messiah's origin then current (vii. 27, 42), and
the writer distinguishes "the prophet" (i. 21, 25; vi. 14; vii. 40),
who was expected to precede Christ, from Christ Himself. At a very
early date the Christians identified "the prophet" with Christ, and it
is in the highest degree improbable that any but a contemporary of our
Lord would have been aware of this change of belief.

It is claimed that the author is an eye-witness in i. 14; xix. 35; and
xxi. 24. We may add 1 John i. 1, for the author of the Epistle was
obviously the author of the Gospel. Numerous details, especially the
frequent notes of time, suggest the hand {92} of an eye-witness. And
the delicate descriptions of the inner life of the disciples and of
Christ Himself point to the same conclusion. The description of the
Last Supper and the words spoken at it suggest with overwhelming force
that the writer knew the peculiar manner of seating employed at this
ceremony. Another Jew would have known where the celebrant sat, but he
would scarcely have been able to make the actions of our Lord and
Judas, St. John and St. Peter, fit their places at the table with such
per