History of the Christian Church, Volume I: Apostolic Christianity. A.D. 1-100.

Henceforth the heathen could no longer look upon Christianity as a mere sect of Judaism, but must

regard and treat it as a new, peculiar religion. The destruction of Jerusalem, therefore, marks that

momentous crisis at which the Christian church as a whole burst forth forever from the chrysalis

of Judaism, awoke to a sense of its maturity, and in government and worship at once took its

independent stand before the world.^559

This breaking away from hardened Judaism and its religious forms, however, involved no

departure from the spirit of the Old Testament revelation. The church, on the contrary, entered into

the inheritance of Israel. The Christians appeared as genuine Jews, as spiritual children of Abraham,

who, following the inward current of the Mosaic religion, had found Him, who was the fulfilment

of the law and the prophets; the perfect fruit of the old covenant and the living germ of the new;

the beginning and the principle of a new moral creation.

It now only remained to complete the consolidation of the church in this altered state of

things; to combine the premises in their results; to take up the conservative tendency of Peter and

the progressive tendency of Paul, as embodied respectively in the Jewish-Christian and the

Gentile-Christian churches, and to fuse them into a third and higher tendency in a permanent

organism; to set forth alike the unity of the two Testaments in diversity, and their diversity in unity;

and in this way to wind up the history of the apostolic church.

This was the work of John, the apostle of completion.

CHAPTER VII.

ST. JOHN, AND THE LAST STADIUM OF THE APOSTOLIC PERIOD.

THE CONSOLIDATION OF JEWISH AND GENTILE CHRISTIANITY.

Καὶ ὁ λόγος σὰρξ ἐγένετο καὶ ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ημῖν, καὶ εθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν αυτοῦ.—John

1:14.

§ 40. The Johannean Literature.

I. Sources.

1. The Gospel, Epistles, and Revelation ofJohn. The notices of John in the Synoptical Gospels, in
   the Acts, and in Gal. 2:9. (See the passages in Young’s Analytical Concordance.)


2. Patristic traditions. Irenaeus: Adv. Haer. II. 22, 5 (John lived to the age of Trajan); III. 1, 1 (John
   at Ephesus); III. 3, 4 (John and Cerinthus); V. 30, 3 (John and the Apocalypse). Clemens Alex.:
   Quis dives salvus, c. 42 (John and the young robber). Polycrates of Ephesus in Eus. Hist. Eccl.,
   III. 31; V. 24 (John, one of the μέγαλα στοιχεῖα, ανδ α ἱερεὺς τὸ πέταλον πεφορηκώς). Tertullian:
   De praescr. haer., c. 36 (the legend of John’s martyrdom in Rome by being steeped in oil, and
   his miraculous preservation). Eusebius: Hist. Eccl, III. chs. 18, 23, 31; IV. 14; V. 24 (the paschal
   controversy). Jerome: Ad Gal. 6:10 (the last words of John); De vir. ill., c. 9. Augustin: Tract.
   124 in Evang. Joann. (Opera III. 1970, ed. Migne). Nicephorus Cal.: Hist. Eccl., II. 42.
   II. Apocryphal Traditions.

(^559) Dr. Richard Rothe (Die Anfänge der Christl. Kirche, p. 341 sqq.). Thiersch (p. 225), Ewald (VII. 26), Renan (L’Antechr.,
p. 545), and Lightfoot (Gal., p. 301) ascribe the same significance to the destruction of Jerusalem. Ewald says: "As by one great
irrevocable stroke the Christian congregation was separated from the Jewish, to which it had heretofore clung as a new, vigorous
offshoot to the root of the old tree and as the daughter to the mother." He also quotes the newly discovered letter of Serapion,
written about 75, as showing the effect which the destruction of Jerusalem exerted on thoughtful minds. See above, p. 171.
A.D. 1-100.