Note 20 — Chapter VII · DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL.

Tholuck (Glaubwürdigkeit, s. 335) adduces as examples of a similar unobserved fusion of a discourse quoted from a foreign source, with the writer’s own matter, Gal. ii. 14 ff. Euseb., H. E. iii. 1, 39. Hieron. Comm. in Jes. 53. But such instances in an epistle, a commentary or an historical work interspersed with reasoning and criticism are not parallel with those in an historical narrative of the nature of our fourth gospel. In works of the former kind, the reader expects the author to reason, and hence, when the discourse of another party has been introduced, he is prepared at the slightest pause to see the author again take up the argument. It is quite different with a work like our fourth gospel. The introduction, it is true, is put forth as the author’s own reasoning, and it is there quite natural that after a brief quotation from the discourse of another, v. 15, he should, at v. 16, resume the character of speaker without any express intimation. But when once he has entered on his narrative, which is strictly a recital of what has been done, and what has been said, all that he annexes without any mark of distinction (as e.g. xii. 37) to a discourse explicitly ascribed to another, must be considered as a continuation of that discourse. ↑