It is constantly urged by the opponents of the authenticity of this Gospel that, as it was published at Ephesus at a late period, it cannot be the work of the apostle, because he never went to Ephesus, and "died early as a martyr." [2] This is a most unscrupulous use of an inexact quotation made by some later Greek writers from a lost book of Papias. It can be {85} traced to Philip of Side (5th century), and it is to the effect that "John the Divine and James his brother were killed by the Jews." Papias does not say that they died together, and his statement is compatible with the belief that St. John survived his brother very many years. We know from Gal. ii. 9 that he was alive some time after his brother's death, which was about A.D. 44. And George Hamartolus, one of the Greek writers who quote the above passage in Papias, expressly says that the Emperor Nerva (A.D. 96) recalled John from Patmos, and "dismissed him to live in Ephesus." [Sidenote: The External Evidence.] The external evidence for the authenticity of this Gospel is in some respects stronger than that which is to be found in the case of the other Gospels. Thus the Christian may recognize with gratitude that his Divine Master has especially added the witness of the Church to the work of His beloved disciple. All through the 2nd century we have the links of a chain of evidence, and after A.D. 200 the canon of the Gospels is known to have been so fixed that no defender of the faith is called upon to show what that canon was. The earliest traces of the phraseology of St. John are to be discovered in the _Didaché_, which was probably written in Eastern Palestine or Syria about A.D. 100. The prayers which are provided in this book for use at the Eucharist are plainly of a Johannine type, and are probably derived from oral teaching given by the apostle himself before he lived at Ephesus. In any case, the _Didaché_ seems sufficient to disprove the sceptical assertion that theological language of a Johannine character was unknown in the Christian Church about A.D. 100. The letters attributed to St. Ignatius, the martyr bishop of Antioch, are now universally admitted to be genuine by competent scholars. They may most reasonably be dated about A.D. 110, and they are deeply imbued with thought of a Johannine type. It has been lately suggested that this tendency of thought does not prove an actual acquaintance with the Gospel of St. John. But when we find Christ {86} called "the Word," and the devil called "the prince of this world," and read such a phrase as "the bread of God which is the flesh of Christ," it is almost impossible to deny that the letters of Ignatius contain actual reminiscences of St. John's language. Nor is there the least reason why Ignatius should not have been acquainted with this Gospel. His younger contemporary St. Polycarp, whose letter to the Philippians was also written about A.D. 110, quotes from the First Epistle of St. John. And Papias, who