Note 13 — Chapter V · THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS.

Thus in the narrative of John we stumble at every step on difficulties, in some instances greater than those with which the synoptical accounts are encumbered: hence we learn as little from the one as the other, concerning the manner in which the first disciples attached themselves to Jesus. I cannot agree with the author of the Probabilia,13 in deriving the divergency of the fourth Evangelist from his predecessors, from the wish to avoid mentioning the derided fishing trade of the most distinguished apostles; since in chap. xxi., which Bretschneider allows to be by the same hand as the rest of the gospel, he unhesitatingly introduces the obnoxious employment. I rather surmise that the idea of their having received their decisive apostolic call while actually engaged with their fishing-nets, was not afloat in the tradition from which the fourth Evangelist drew; and that this writer formed his scenes, partly on the probably historical report that some disciples of Jesus had belonged to the school of the Baptist, and partly from the wish to represent in the most favourable light the relation between Jesus and the Baptist, and the supernatural gifts of the former.