Another strenuous defender of the authenticity of the fourth Gospel wrote of it as follows: "Nevertheless, everything is reconcilable," says Gfrörer, "if one accepts that testimony of the elders as true. For as John must have written the Gospel as an old man, that is to say not before the year 90--95 of our era, there is an interval of more than half a century between the time {469} when the events which he relates really happened, and the time of the composition of his book,--space enough certainly to make a few mistakes conceivable, even presupposing a good memory and unshaken love of truth. Let us imagine, for instance, that to-day (in 1841) an old man of eighty to ninety years of age should write down from mere memory the occurrences of the American War (of Independence), in which he himself in his early youth played a part. Certainly in his narrative, even though it might otherwise be true, many traits would be found which would not agree with the original event. Moreover, another particular circumstance must be added in connection with the fourth Gospel. Two-thirds of it consist of discourses, which John places in the mouth of Jesus Christ. Now every day's experience proves that oral impressions are much more fleeting than those of sight. The happiest memory scarcely retains long orations after three or four years: how, then, could John with verbal accuracy report the discourses of Jesus after fifty or sixty years! We must be content if he truly render the chief contents and spirit of them, and that he does this, as a rule, can be proved. It has been shown above that already, before Christ, a very peculiar philosophy of religion had been formed among the Egyptian Jews, which found its way into Palestine through the Essenes, and also numbered numerous adherents amongst the Jews of the adjacent countries of Syria and Asia Minor. The Apostle Paul professed this: not less the Evangelist John. Undoubtedly, the latter allowed this Theosophy to exercise a strong influence upon his representation of the life-history of Jesus,"(1) &c. {470}