Dean Alford believes that in the early ages of the church there existed what he terms a "common substratum of apostolic teachings," "oral or partially documentary." This, he says, "I believe to have been the original source of the common part of our three Gospels." Canon Westcott admits that "their substance is evidently much older than their form." Professor Ladd, of Yale College, says: "In some respects each of the first three Gospels must be regarded as a compilation; it consists of material which the others have in common with it, and which was of a traditional kind more or less prepared before the author of the particular Gospel took it in hand to modify and rearrange it" (What Is the Bible? p. 295). Bishop Marsh, in his Michaelis, says: "The notion of an absolute independence, in respect to the composition of our three first Gospels, is no longer tenable" (Vol. III, part 2, p. 170). Prof. Robertson Smith, of Scotland, pronounces them "unapostolic digests of the second century." Evanson goes further and declares them to be "spurious fictions of the second century." The Encyclopedia Britannica concedes the fact that Protestant scholarship in Europe has virtually abandoned the popular orthodox position regarding the origin of these books. It says: "It is certain that the Synoptic Gospels took their present form only by degrees, and that while they have their root in the apostolic age, they are fashioned by later influences and adapted to special wants in the early church. They are the deposits, in short, of Christian traditions handed down first of all in an oral form, before being committed to writing in such a form as we have them; and this is now an accepted conclusion of every historical school of theologians in England no less than in Germany, conservative no less than radical." John. In addition to what has already been adduced against the Johannine authorship of the Fourth Gospel, I submit the following: 1. John, the disciple of Jesus, was an unlettered fisherman. The author of the Fourth Gospel was an accomplished scholar and a polished writer. His book is one of the classics of Christian literature. 2. The Apostle John was born at Bethsaida. The author of John says that Bethsaida was in Galilee (xii, 21). Bethsaida was not in Galilee, but in Perea, and to assert that John wrote this Gospel is to assert that he was ignorant of the location of his own town. 3. "In Bethany beyond Jordan" (New Ver. i, 28). "In Enon near to Salim" (iii, 23). "A city of Samaria, called Sychar" (iv, 5). These passages were written by one little acquainted with the geography of Palestine and unfamiliar with the scenes he attempts to describe. 4. John, the son of Zebedee, was a Jew. The manner in which the author of the Fourth Gospel always refers to the Jews is conclusive evidence that he was not a Jew.