knew the fourth Gospel. There is some reason to suppose that the disputed section on the woman
taken in adultery was recorded by him in illustration of John 8:15; for, according to Eusebius, he
mentioned a similar story in his lost work.^1068 These facts combined, make it at least extremely
probable that Papias was familiar with John.^1069 The joint testimony of Polycarp and Papias represents
the school of John in the very field of his later labors, and the succession was continued through
Polycrates at Ephesus, through Melito at Sardis, through Claudius Apollinaris at Hieropolis, and
Pothinus and Irenaeus in Southern Gaul. It is simply incredible that a spurious Gospel should have
been smuggled into the churches under the name of their revered spiritual father and grandfather.
Finally, the concluding verse of the appendix, John 21:24, is a still older testimony of a
number of personal friends and pupils of John, perhaps the very persons who, according to ancient
tradition, urged him to write the Gospel. The book probably closed with the sentence: "This is the
disciple who beareth witness of these things, and wrote these things." To this the elders add their
attestation in the plural: "And we know that his witness is true." A literary fiction would not have
been benefited by an anonymous postscript. The words as they, stand are either a false testimony
of the pseudo-John, or the true testimony of the friends of the real John who first received his book
and published it before or after his death.
The voice of the whole Catholic church, so far as it is heard, on the subject at all, is in favor
of the authorship of John. There is not a shadow of proof to the contrary opinion except one, and
that is purely negative and inconclusive. Baur to the very last laid the greatest stress on the entangled
paschal controversy of the second century as a proof that John could not have written the fourth
Gospel because he was quoted as an authority for the celebration of the Lord’s Supper on the 14th
of Nisan; while the fourth Gospel, in flat contradiction to the Synoptists, puts the crucifixion on
that day (instead of the 15th), and represents Christ as the true paschal lamb slain at the very time
when the typical Jewish passover was slain. But, in the first place, some of the ablest scholars know
how to reconcile John with the Synoptic date of the crucifixion on the 15th of Nisan; and, secondly,
there is no evidence at all that the apostle John celebrated Easter with the Quartodecimans on the
14th of Nisan in commemoration of the day of the Lord’s Supper. The controversy was between
conforming the celebration of the Christian Passover to the day of the month, that is to Jewish
chronology, or to the day of the week on which Christ died. The former would have made Easter,
more conveniently, a fixed festival like the Jewish Passover, the latter or Roman practice made it
a movable feast, and this practice triumphed at the Council of Nicaea.^1070(^1068) Eusebius, H. E., III. 39, closes his account of Papias with the notice: "He has likewise set forth another narrative [in his
Exposition of the Lord’s Oracles] concerning a woman who was maliciously accused before the Lord touching many sins, which
is contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews."
(^1069) In a tradition too late (ninth century) to be of any critical weight, Papias is even made the amanuensis of John in the
preparation of his Gospel. A Vatican Codex (of Queen Christina of Sweden) has this marginal gloss: "Evangelium Johannis
manifestatum et datum est ecclesiis ab Johanne adhuc in corpore constituto; sicut Papiss, nomine Hieropolitanus discipulus
Johannis carus, in exotericis [exegeticis],id est in extremis, quinque libris retulit [referring no doubt to the five books of Λογίων
Κυριακῶν ἐξηγήσεις].Descripsit vero evangelium dictante Johanne recte." This was hailed as a direct testimony of Papias for
John by Prof. Aberle (Rom. Cath.) in the " Tübing. Quartalschrift," 1864, No. 1, but set aside by Hilgenfeld versus Aberle, in
his " Zeitschrift," 1865, pp. 77 sqq., and Hase, l.c, p. 35. If Eusebius had found this notice in the work of Papias, he would have
probably mentioned it in connection with his testimonies on the Gospels of Matthew and Mark. But see Westcott, Canon, 5th
ed., p. 77, note 1.
(^1070) See Schürer’s Latin dissertation De controversiis paschalibus, etc., Leipz., 1869, and the German translation in the "Zeitschrift
für Hist. Theol." for 1970, pp. 182-284.
A.D. 1-100.