Note 39 — Chapter VII · DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL.

The declaration xiii. 20, He that receiveth you receiveth me, and he that receiveth me receiveth him that sent me, has an almost verbal parallel in Matt. x. 40. In John, it is preceded by the prediction of the betrayal of Jesus, and his explanation to his disciples that he had told them this before it came to pass, in order that when his prediction was fulfilled, they might believe in him as the Messiah. What is the connexion between these subjects and the above declaration, or between the latter and its ensuing context, where Jesus recurs to his betrayer? It is said that Jesus wished to impress on his disciples the high dignity of a messianic missionary, a dignity which the betrayer thought lightly of losing;39 but the negative idea of loss, on which this supposition turns, is not intimated in the text. Others are of opinion that Jesus, observing the disciples to be disheartened by the mention of the betrayer, sought to inspire them with new courage by representing to them their high value;40 but in that case he would hardly have reverted immediately after to the traitor. Others, again, conjecture that some intermediate sentences have been omitted by the writer;41 but this expedient is not much happier than that of Kuinöl, who supposes the passage to be a gloss taken from Matt. x. 40, united originally to v. 16 of chap. xiii. of John, but by some chance transposed to the end of the paragraph. Nevertheless, the indication of v. 16 is an useful way-mark. This verse, as well as v. 20, has a parallel in the discourse of instructions in Matthew (x. 24); if a few fragments of this discourse had reached the author of the fourth gospel through the medium of tradition, it is very probable that one of them would bring the others to his recollection. In v. 16 there is mention of the sent, ἀπόστολος, and of him who sent him, πέμψας αὐτὸν; so in v. 20, of those whom Jesus will send, and of Him who sent Jesus. It is true, that the one passage has a humiliating, the other an encouraging tendency, and their affinity lies, therefore, not in the sense, but in the words; so that as soon as the fourth Evangelist puts down, from memory, traditional sayings of Jesus, we see him subject to the same law of association as the synoptists. It would have been the most natural arrangement to place v. 20 immediately after v. 16; but the thought of the traitor was uppermost in the mind of the writer, and he could easily postpone the insertion of an apophthegm that had only a verbal connexion with his previous matter.