to the highest conception of God as an omnipresent spirit, and his true worship in spirit and in
truth.^1082- The writer represents himself expressly as an eye-witness of the life of Christ. He differs
from the Synoptists, who never use the first person nor mix their subjective feelings with the narrative.
"We beheld his glory," he says, in the name of all the apostles and primitive disciples, in stating
the general impression made upon them by the incarnate Logos dwelling.^1083 And in the parallel
passage of the first Epistle, which is an inseparable companion of the fourth Gospel, he asserts with
solemn emphasis his personal knowledge of the incarnate Word of life whom he heard with his
ears and saw with his eyes and handled with his hands (1 John 1:1–3). This assertion is general,
and covers the whole public life of our Lord. But he makes it also in particular a case of special
interest for the realness of Christ’s humanity; in recording the flow of blood and water from the
wounded side, he adds emphatically: "He that hath seen hath borne witness, and his witness is true:
and he knoweth that he saith things that are true, that ye also may believe" (John 19:35). Here we
are driven to the alternative: either the writer was a true witness of what he relates, or he was a
false witness who wrote down a deliberate lie. - Finally, the writer intimates that he is one of the Twelve, that he is one of the favorite
three, that he is not Peter, nor James, that he is none other than the beloved John who leaned on
the Master’s bosom. He never names himself, nor his brother James, nor his mother Salome, but
he has a very modest, delicate, and altogether unique way of indirect self-designation. He stands
behind his Gospel like a mysterious figure with a thin veil over his face without ever lifting the
veil. He leaves the reader to infer the name by combination. He is undoubtedly that unnamed disciple
who, with Andrew, was led to Jesus by the testimony of the Baptist on the banks of the Jordan
(1:35–40), the disciple who at the last Supper "was reclining at the table in Jesus’ bosom" (13:23–25),
that "other disciple" who, with Peter, followed Jesus into the court of the high-priest (18:15, 16),
who stood by the cross and was intrusted by the dying Lord with the care of His mother (19:26,
27), and that "other disciple whom Jesus loved," who went with Peter to the empty sepulchre on
the resurrection morning and was convinced of the great fact by the sight of the grave-cloths, and
the head-cover rolled up in a place by itself (20:2–8). All these narratives are interwoven with
autobiographic details. He calls himself "the disciple whom Jesus loved," not from vanity (as has
been most strangely asserted by some critics), but in blessed and thankful remembrance of the
infinite mercy of his divine Master who thus fulfilled the prophecy of his name Johanan, i.e.,
Jehovah is gracious. In that peculiar love of his all-beloved Lord was summed up for him the whole
significance of his life.
With this mode of self-designation corresponds the designation of members of his family:
his mother is probably meant by the unnamed "sister of the mother" of Jesus, who stood by the
cross (John 19:25), for Salome was there, according to the Synoptists, and John would hardly omit
(^1082) "How often has this fourth chapter been read since by Christian pilgrims on the very spot where the Saviour rested, with
the irresistible impression that every word is true and adapted to the time and place, yet applicable to all times and places. Jacob’s
well is now in ruins and no more used, but the living spring of water which the Saviour first opened there to a poor, sinful, yet
penitent woman is as deep and fresh as ever, and will quench the thirst of souls to the end of time." So I wrote in 1871 for the
English edition of Lange’s Com. on John, p. 151. Six years afterward I fully realized my anticipations, when with a company
of friends I sat down on Jacob’s well and read John 4 as I never read it before. Palestine, even in "the imploring beauty of decay,"
is indeed a "fifth Gospel" which sheds more light on the four than many a commentary brimful of learning and critical conjectures.
(^1083) John 1:14: ἐθεασάμεθα τὴν δόξαν. θεάομαι is richer than ὁράω, and means to behold or contemplate with admiration and
delight. The plural adds force to the statement, as in 21:24; 1 John 1:1; 2 Pet. 1:16.
A.D. 1-100.