Now, so far as our limited knowledge enables us to judge, John’s life and character remarkably correspond with these indications of the Gospel which was so long unanimously attributed to his pen. His parents were well-to-do Galileans, and he probably received a fair education in his childhood; his early education as a Galilean would have given him familiarity with Jewish customs, and yet would prejudice him against rather than in favor of the inhabitants of Judea; his later and prolonged residence in Ephesus, of all Greek cities the most Oriental, would have made him familiar with the best Greek culture, and with the mystic philosophy of the Greco-Oriental school; that he possessed a vehement nature is evident from his original title of Son of Thunder; his receptive disposition and his intense love for Jesus might have been expected to tame that nature, without eradicating from his writings all indications of its existence; of all the disciples the most courageous and the most sympathetically intimate with the subject of his biography, he was of them all the one to adhere to Jesus in his dangerous ministry in Jerusalem, and the one therefore to record what all the others have omitted; he was also the one to interpret Christ’s actions by his own suggestion of Christ’s unuttered thoughts; writing after the other Gospels had been written and were already being widely circulated, his omission of events and teachings which they had recorded is not only explicable, but natural and to be anticipated; finally, writing after the destruction of Jerusalem, after the dispersion of the Jews had begun, after the descent of the Holy Spirit had interpreted the mystical promises of another Comforter, after churches had been organized as far west as Rome in which Gentile and Jew met on equal terms, after, in a word, the history of the church had interpreted the prophecies and instructions of its Lord, it would have been strange indeed if he had not given a deeper, truer, and more catholic exposition of Christ’s Gospel than could have been written during the first half-century in Palestine, by those whose comprehension of Christ’s, teaching had not been broadened by residence in a foreign land and an observation of Christ’s redeeming work in a pagan community. =Other hypotheses.= The conclusion to which a consideration of the external and internal evidence brings the candid student is confirmed by a consideration of the alternative hypotheses presented to him. These are many in form; for it is a significant fact that while those who believe in the authenticity of the Fourth Gospel are entirely agreed in respect to its authorship, and the time and place of its composition, those who disbelieve in its authenticity are not agreed among themselves respecting either. But in general their various opinions may be reduced to two classes.