delicate in feeling, and does not in a single one of the writings really
emanating from him name himself as the author, or even proclaim his own
praise."(l) This is merely sentimental assumption of facts to which we
shall hereafter allude, but if the "incomparable modesty" of which he
speaks really existed, nothing could more conclusively separate the
author of the fourth Gospel from the son of Zebedee whom we know in the
Synoptics, or more support the claims of the Apocalypse. In the first
place, we must assert that, in writing a serious history of the life and
teaching of Jesus, full of marvellous events and astounding doctrines,
the omission of his name by an Apostle can not only not be recognized
as genuine modesty, but must be condemned as culpable neglect. It is
perfectly incredible that an Apostle could have written such a work
without attaching his name as the guarantee of his intimate acquaintance
with the events and statements he records. What would be thought of
a historian who published a history without a single reference to
recognized authorities, and yet who did not declare even his own name
as some evidence of his truth? The fact is, that the first two Synoptics
bear no author's name because they are not the work of any one man, but
the collected materials of many; the third Synoptic only pretends to
be a compilation for private use; and the fourth Gospel bears no simple
signature because it is neither the work of an Apostle, nor of an
eye-witness of the events and hearer of the teaching it records.
If it be considered incredible, however, that an Apostle could, even
in an Allegory, represent the names of the Twelve as written on the
foundation stones of the New Jerusalem, and the incomparable modesty and
delicacy
{399}
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