Now that we have reviewed the internal evidence for the authenticity, we are able to return with renewed vigour to deal with the popular rationalistic hypothesis that the author was a Christian who had learned some genuine stories about Jesus current in the Church at Ephesus, and then wove them into a narrative of his own composing. We have observed that the marks of an eye-witness and contemporary of Jesus are {93} scattered over the whole surface of the Gospel. If the Gospel is not by St. John, only one other explanation is possible. It must be composed of three distinct elements: (a) some genuine traditions, (b) numerous fictions, (c) a conscious manipulation of the narrative contained in the Synoptists. But the internal evidence is absolutely opposed to any such theory. We can trace no manipulation of the Synoptic narrative. The writer seems to be aware of St. Mark's Gospel, and possibly the other two, but he evidently did not write with them actually before him. He plainly had a wholly independent plan and an independent source of information. And if we turn to the passages which tell us facts not recorded by the Synoptists, it is quite impossible to separate the supposed fictions from the supposed genuine traditions. Both style and matter proceed from one and the same individuality. One passage alone can be separated from the rest without interrupting the flow of the story, and that passage is absent in the best manuscripts. It is the story of the woman taken in adultery (vii. 53-viii. 11). It seems to have been originally placed after Luke xxi. 36, and was inserted into St. John's Gospel after it was completed. We cannot apply the same process to any other passage in the Gospel. It is an organic whole, as much as any play of Shakespeare or poem of Tennyson. And over the whole book we find the same morsels of history and geography. They are of a kind which tradition never hands down unimpaired, and which no Ephesian disciple of an apostle would be likely to commit to memory. In spite of all attempts to divide the Gospel into parts derived straight from an apostle and parts invented by later minds, the Gospel remains like the seamless coat which once clothed the form of the Son of man. [Sidenote: Date.] It is important to observe that even the most hostile criticism has tended to recede in its attempt to find a probable date for this Gospel. Baur fixed it about A.D. 160-170, Pfleiderer at 140, Hilgenfeld 130-140; Jülicher and Harnack will not date it later than 110, {94} and the latter grants that it may be as early as 80. The year 80 is as early a date as the most orthodox Christian need desire, and we can reasonably believe that it was written by the apostle at Ephesus between A.D. 80 and A.D. 90. We learn from Irenaeus that St. John survived until A.D. 98. [Sidenote: Literary Style.]