There is a correspondence between the four possible attitudes on both aspects of the
Johannean question, and the parties advocating them.
The result of the conflict will be the substantial triumph of the faith of the church which
accepts, on new grounds of evidence, all the four Gospels as genuine and historical, and the
Apocalypse and the fourth Gospel as the works of John.
The Assaults on the Fourth Gospel.
Criticism has completely shifted its attitude on both parts of the problem. The change is
very remarkable. When the first serious assault was made upon the genuineness of the fourth Gospel
by the learned General Superintendent Bretschneider (in 1820), he was met with such overwhelming
opposition, not only from evangelical divines like Olshausen and Tholuck, but also from
Schleiermacher, Lücke, Credner, and Schott, that he honestly confessed his defeat a few years
afterward (1824 and 1828).^1085 And when Dr. Strauss, in his Leben Jesu (1835), renewed the denial,
a host of old and new defenders arose with such powerful arguments that he himself (as he confessed
in the third edition of 1838) was shaken in his doubt, especially by the weight and candor of Neander,
although he felt compelled, in self-defence, to reaffirm his doubt as essential to the mythical
hypothesis (in the fourth edition, 1840, and afterward in his popular Leben Jesu, 1864).
But in the meantime his teacher, Dr. Baur, the coryphaeus of the Tübingen school, was
preparing his heavy ammunition, and led the second, the boldest, the most vigorous and effective
assault upon the Johannean fort (since 1844).^1086 He was followed in the main question, though
with considerable modifications in detail, by a number of able and acute critics in Germany and
other countries. He represented the fourth Gospel as a purely ideal work which grew out of the
Gnostic, Montanistic, and paschal controversies after the middle of the second century, and adjusted
the various elements of the Catholic faith with consummate skill and art. It was not intended to be
a history, but a system of theology in the garb of history. This "tendency" hypothesis was virtually
a death-blow to the mythical theory of Strauss, which excludes conscious design.
The third great assault inspired by Baur, yet with independent learning and judgment, was
made by Dr. Keim (in his Geschichte Jesu von Nazara, 1867). He went beyond Baur in one point:
he denied the whole tradition of John’s sojourn in Ephesus as a mistake of Irenaeus; he thus removed
even the foundation for the defence of the Apocalypse as a Johannean production, and neutralized
the force of the Tübingen assault derived from that book. On the other hand, he approached the
traditional view by tracing the composition back from 170 (Baur) to the reign of Trajan, i.e., to
within a few years after the death of the apostle. In his denial of the Ephesus tradition he met with
little favor,^1087 but strong opposition from the Tübingen critics, who see the fatal bearing of this(^1085) Before him Edward Evanson, an ex-clergyman of the Church of England, had attacked John and all other Gospels except
Luke, in The Dissonance of the Four generally received Evangelists, 1792. He was refuted by the Unitarian, Dr. Priestley, who
came to the conclusion that the Gospel of John "bears more internal and unequivocal marks of being written by an eye-witness
than any other writings whatever, sacred or profane." See his Letters to a Young Man (Works, vol. XX. 430).
(^1086) Ueber die Composition und den Charakter des joh. Evangeliums, an essay in the "Theol. Jahrücher" of Zeller, Tübingen,
1844; again in his Krit. Untersuchungen über die kanon. Evang., Tüb., 1847, and in his Kirchengesch., 1853(vol. I., pp. 146
sqq., 166 sqq., third ed.). Godet (I. 17) calls the first dissertation of Baur justly "one of the most ingenious and brilliant compositions
which theological science ever produced."
(^1087) From Wittichen and Scholten.
A.D. 1-100.