‘The multitude answered, Thou hast a devil: who seeketh to kill thee? Jesus answered and said unto them, I did one work, and ye all marvel. For this cause hath Moses given you circumcision (not that it is of Moses, but of the fathers); and on the sabbath ye circumcise a man. If a man receiveth circumcision on the sabbath, that the law of Moses may not be broken; are ye wroth with me, because I made a man every whit whole on the sabbath?’ (vers. 20-3). I do not think it can be doubted that arguments like this were just what would be constantly heard at the first beginnings of Christianity. But they belong to the time when it was just in the act of differentiating itself from Judaism; and I cannot easily imagine that they would be so clearly realized and so appropriately introduced later. Of the same kind is much of the discussion in ch. viii. I do not undertake to say that this discussion, or other discussions in the Fourth Gospel, are given exactly as they really happened. I am quite prepared to believe that especially the part in them taken by our Lord Himself was a little different from that which He is represented as taking. But, if I think this, it is because the narrative seems to me (if it is not too much of a paradox to say so) even too true to the time and circumstances in which the discussion took place. No doubt our Lord is represented as holding Himself apart from and above the Jewish controversialists. I feel sure that He did this; but, with the Synoptic Gospels before me, I suspect that He did it in a slightly different, i. e. in a more reserved and—if I may be forgiven the expression—delicate way. With thus much of preface I will just give a specimen of what I mean by truth to the time and circumstances. ‘The Jews answered and said unto Him, Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil? Jesus answered, I have not a devil; but I honour my Father, and ye dishonour me.... The Jews said unto him, Now we know that thou hast a devil. Abraham is dead, and the prophets; and thou sayest, if a man keep my word, he shall never taste of death. Art thou greater than our father Abraham, which is dead? and the prophets are dead: whom makest thou thyself?’ (vers. 48, 49, 52, 53). ‘Thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil’; ‘Abraham is dead, and the prophets.’ These are exactly the things that would be said, and that we may be sure were said. But I am not satisfied with the hypothesis that the author who wrote them was a Jew of Palestine. I believe that he was, and must have been, an actual contemporary and eye-witness of what he is recording.