Note 240 — TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Preliminary Note.—All modern critics agree in regarding this chapter as in the nature of a supplement, the original Gospel having been brought to a close in the last verses of the preceding chapter. This opinion is based chiefly upon the formal close afforded by those verses. That this supplemental chapter was written at a very early period, and probably before the Gospel itself was given to the public, is indicated by the fact that it is found in all the manuscripts. Whether it was written by John himself or by some disciple or friend is not altogether clear, and certainly not very important; but the evangelical critics generally agree, from a careful consideration of its internal characteristics, in attributing it to John himself. Thus Alford: “The reader will have perceived in the foregoing comment on the chapter a manifest leaning to the belief that it was written by John himself. Of this I am fully convinced. In every part of it his hand is plain and unmistakable; in every part of it his character and spirit is manifested in a way which none but the most biassed can fail to recognize. I believe it to have been added some years probably after the completion of the Gospel; partly, perhaps, to record the important miracle of the second draught of fishes, so full of spiritual instruction, and the interesting account of the sayings of the Lord to Peter; but principally to meet the error which was becoming prevalent concerning himself.” To the same effect Meyer: “In accordance with all that has been advanced, the view is justified that John, by way of authentic historical explanation of the legend in ver. 23, some time after finishing his Gospel, which he had closed with 20:31, wrote ch. 21:1-24 as a complement of the book, and that this appendix, simply because its Johannean character was immediately certain and recognized, already at a very early period, whilst the Gospel had not yet issued forth from the narrower circle of its first readers, had become an inseparable part of the Gospel.” Similarly, though somewhat more doubtfully, Luthardt and Godet. See also Ezra Abbot, in Smith’s Bib. Dict., Vol. 2, p. 1430, note b.