Note 43 — Chapter VII · DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL.

It is alleged by the friends of the fourth gospel that its discourses are distinguished by a peculiar stamp of truth and credibility; that the conversations which it represents Jesus as holding with men of the most diverse disposition and capacity, are faithful delineations of character, satisfying the strictest demands of psychological criticism.43 In opposition to this, it is maintained to be in the highest degree improbable, that Jesus should have adopted precisely the same style of teaching to persons differing widely in their degrees of cultivation; that he should have spoken to the Galileans in the synagogue at Capernaum not more intelligibly than to a master of Israel; that the matter of his discourses should have turned almost entirely on one doctrine—the dignity of his person; and that their form should have been such as to seem selected with a view to perplex and repel his hearers. Neither, it is further urged, do the interlocutors express themselves in conformity with their position and character. The most educated Pharisee has no advantage in intelligence over a Samaritan woman of the lowest grade; the one, as well as the other, can only put a carnal interpretation on the discourse which Jesus intends spiritually; their misconstructions, too, are frequently so glaring, as to transcend all belief, and so uniform that they seem to belong to a standing set of features with which the author of the fourth gospel has chosen, for the sake of contrast, to depict those whom he brings into conversation with Jesus.44 Hence, I confess, I understand not what is the meaning of verisimilitude in the mind of those who ascribe it to the discourses of Jesus in the Gospel of John.