Upon no hypothesis which supposes the Apostle John the author of the fourth Gospel is such an explanation credible. That the Apostle himself could have written of himself the words in xix. 35 is impossible. After {441} having stated so much that is much more surprising and contradictory to all experience without reference to any witness, it would indeed have been strange had he here appealed to himself as to a separate individual, and on the other hand it is quite inadmissible to assume that a Mend to whom he is dictating should interrupt the narrative to introduce a passage so inappropriate to the work, and so unnecessary for any circle acquainted with the Apostolic author. If, as Ewald argues, the peculiarities of his style of composition were so well known that it was unnecessary for the writer more clearly to designate himself either for the first readers or for the Christian world, the passages we are discussing are all the more inappropriate. That any guarantee of the truth of the Gospel should have been thought desirable for readers who knew the work is to be composed by the Apostle John, and who believed him to be "the disciple whom Jesus loved," is inconceivable, and that any anonymous and quite indirect testimony to its genuineness should either have been considered necessary or of any value is still more incredible. It is impossible that nameless Presbyters of Ephesus could venture to accredit a Gospel written by the Apostle John; and any intended attestation must have taken the simple and direct course of stating that the work had been composed by the Apostle. The peculiarities we are discussing seem to us explicable only upon the supposition that the unknown writer of the Gospel desired that it should be understood to be written by a certain disciple whom Jesus loved, but did not choose distinctly to name him or directly to make such an affirmation. It is, we assert, impossible that an Apostle who composed a history of the life and teaching of Jesus could {412}