Note 31 — Chapter VII · DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL.

The discourses of Jesus at the Feast of Tabernacles extend to x. 18. From v. 25, the Evangelist professes to record sayings which were uttered by Jesus three months later, at the Feast of Dedication. When, on this occasion, the Jews desire from him a distinct declaration whether he be the Messiah, his immediate reply is, that he has already told them this sufficiently, and he repeats his appeal to the testimony of the Father, as given in the works, ἔργα, done by Jesus in his name (as in v. 36). Hereupon he observes that his unbelieving interrogators are not of his sheep, whence he reverts to the allegory of the shepherd, which he had abandoned, and repeats part of it word for word.31 But Jesus had not recently abandoned this allegory; for since its delivery three months are supposed to have elapsed, and it is certain that in the interim much must have been spoken, done, and experienced by Jesus, that would thrust this figurative discourse into the background of his memory, so that he would be very unlikely to recur to it, and in no case would he be able to repeat it, word for word. He who had just quitted the allegory was the Evangelist, to whom three months had not intervened between the inditing of the first half of this chapter, and that of the second. He wrote at once what, according to his statement, was chronologically separated by a wide interval; and hence the allegory of the shepherd might well leave so distinct an echo in his memory, though not in that of Jesus. If any think that they can solve this difficulty by putting only the verbal similarity of the later discourse to the earlier one to the account of the Evangelist, such an opinion cannot be interdicted to them. For others, this instance, in connexion with the rest, will be a positive proof that the discourses of Jesus in the fourth gospel are to a great extent the free compositions of the Evangelist.