PROBLEMS OF NEW TESTAMENT STUDY 603 



of the fourth gospel as from John the son of Zebedee, seem to estab- 

 lish an unbroken chain of ancient testimony to the Ephesian resi- 

 dence of John and his authorship of the Gospel; on the other, we are 

 compelled to recognize that the silence of the Fathers of the first half 

 of the second century, and especially of those who belonged to Asia 

 Minor, the perplexing character of the testimony of Papias concern- 

 ing two disciples of Jesus both bearing the name of John, and the 

 great difficulty of accepting as conclusive the testimony of men who 

 ascribe to the same author both the Apocalypse and the Gospel, 

 create a situation which is by no means clear or easy of interpretation. 

 The question is one in which sentiment and a prejudice not to be 

 wondered at, hardly to be condemned, enter in to complicate a pro- 

 blem difficult enough in itself. The church will not readily consent 

 to surrender the apostolic authorship of that Gospel which has ever 

 been to very many the most precious of the four. Yet it cannot be 

 doubted that in the end a solution will be found which will do justice 

 to all the evidence, and that this view will find general acceptance 

 among scholars, whatever their previous prejudices or predilections. 



The problem of the Johannine epistles is inseparably connected 

 with that of the Gospel. For the similarity of style and spirit is so 

 great as to compel the ascription of them to the same period and 

 group of writers; probably, indeed, to the same author. 



The Apocalypse. Perhaps in respect to no other book of the New 

 Testament has so rapid and real progress been made in recent years 

 toward the obtaining of the key to the understanding of it as in 

 respect to the Apocalypse. The value of the historical method is here 

 conspicuously evident. That the book belongs to that series of 

 apocalypses of which the first and adjacent centuries produced so 

 many, and the several numbers of which were not so much successive, 

 independent works, together constituting a class of literature, as 

 successive portions of a stream from which each author in turn drew 

 and into which he poured his contribution this now generally 

 recognized fact is fundamental for the understanding of the book, 

 and determinative for the method of its interpretation. It deals the 

 deathblow to all those schemes of interpretation which are controlled 

 by the assumption that the key to the meaning of the prediction in the 

 book is to be found in what in the first century or subsequently actu- 

 ally took place in fulfillment of these predictions. Add to this recog- 

 nition of the apocalyptic character of the book, and its consequent 

 relationship to other apocalypses, that other fact, which by no means 

 contradicts or detracts from the first one, namely, that the book had 

 its place and its function in the life and experience of the early church, 

 and was in this way related to the period in which it arose; and the 

 further fact that its date is fixed with approximate certainty for the 

 last decade of the first century, and a long step has been taken 



