fection.[4]

The Gospel claims that the disciple who "wrote these things" is the
disciple "whom Jesus loved," and who reclined "in Jesus' bosom" at the
Supper. It was not Peter, for Peter did not recline "in Jesus' bosom."
The presumption therefore is that it was either James or John, these
two being with Peter the closest friends of Jesus. It could hardly
have been James, who was martyred in A.D. 44, as the whole weight of
tradition and external evidence is against this. It must, then, have
been John, or a forger who wished to pass for that apostle. And to
suppose that an unknown forger, born two generations, or even one
generation, later than the apostles, could invent such sublime
doctrine, and insert it in so realistic a story, and completely deceive
the whole Christian world, including the district where St. John lived
and died, is to show a credulity which is without parallel in the
history of civilization.[5]

Now that we have reviewed the internal evidence for the authenticity,
we are able to return with renewed vigour to deal with the popular
rationalistic hypothesis that the author was a Christian who had
learned some genuine stories about Jesus current in the Church at
Ephesus, and then wove them into a narrative of his own composing. We
have observed that the marks of an eye-witness and contemporary of
Jesus are {93} scattered over the whole surface of the Gospel. If the
Gospel is not by St. John, only one other explanation is possible. It
must be composed of three distinct elements: (a) some genuine
traditions, (b) numerous fictions, (c) a conscious manipulation of the
narrative contained in the Synoptists. But the internal evidence is
absolutely opposed to any such theory. We can trace no manipulation of
the Synoptic narrative. The writer seems to be aware of St. Mark's
Gospel, and possibly the other two, but he evidently did not write with
them actually before him. He plainly had a wholly independent plan and
an independent source of information. And if we turn to the passages
which tell us facts not recorded by the Synoptists, it is quite
impossible to separate the supposed fictions from the supposed genuine
traditions. Both style and matter proceed from one and the same
individuality. One passage alone can be separated from the rest
without interrupting the flow of the story, and that passage is absent
in the best manuscripts. It is the story of the woman taken in
adultery (vii. 53-viii