Of John the Presbyter very little indeed is known. Papias, about A.D. 130, says that he was, like Aristion, "a disciple" of the Lord, and that he had himself made oral inquiries as to his teaching. He seems to have been an elder contemporary of Papias. Dionysius of Alexandria, about A.D. 250, mentions that there were two monuments in Ephesus bearing the name of John, and we may reasonably suppose that one of these was in memory of the presbyter mentioned by Papias. But a little reflection will soon convince us that nothing has been gained by the conjecture that this John wrote the Gospel. If John {84} the Presbyter was personally acquainted with our Lord, as some writers understand Papias to mean, then the sceptics are forced to admit that one who personally knew Jesus, describes Jesus as a more than human Being--as, in fact, the Divine Creator. This is the precise fact which keeps these writers from admitting that an apostle wrote the Gospel. If, on the other hand, they suppose, as some do, that John the Presbyter was very much younger than the apostles, the sceptics are confronted with the following difficulties:-- (a) There is the important external evidence which shows how widely the Gospel was regarded in the early Church as the work of St. John. (b) There is the minute knowledge displayed of the topography, customs, and opinions of Jerusalem and the Holy Land as they existed in the time of Christ. (c) There is the impossibility of supposing that Irenaeus, who was probably not born a year later than A.D. 130, would not have known that the Gospel was written by John the Presbyter. (d) There is the fact that the evidence for St. John having lived in Ephesus is better than the evidence for a renowned presbyter of the same name having lived in Ephesus. This has been wisely pointed out by Jülicher, even though he himself denies that the apostle wrote St. John's Gospel. And the justice of this argument proves that it is sheer paradox to maintain, as some now maintain, that the _only_ John who lived in Ephesus was the Presbyter.