Note 69 — Chapter VII · DISCOURSES OF JESUS IN THE FOURTH GOSPEL.

We therefore hold it to be established, that the discourses of Jesus in John’s gospel are mainly free compositions of the Evangelist; but we have admitted that he has culled several sayings of Jesus from an authentic tradition, and hence we do not extend this proposition to those passages which are countenanced by parallels in the synoptical gospels. In these compilations we have an example of the vicissitudes which befal discourses, that are preserved only in the memory of a second party. Severed from their original connexion, and broken up into smaller and smaller fragments, they present when reassembled the appearance of a mosaic, in which the connexion of the parts is a purely external one, and every transition an artificial juncture. The discourses of Jesus in John present just the opposite appearance. Their gradual transitions, only rendered occasionally obscure by the mystical depths of meaning in which they lie,—transitions in which one thought develops itself out of another, and a succeeding proposition is frequently but an explanatory amplification of the preceding,69—are indicative of a pliable, unresisting mass, such as is never presented to a writer by the traditional sayings of another, but such as proceeds from the stores of his own thought, which he moulds according to his will. For this reason the contributions of tradition to these stores of thought (apart from the sayings which are also found in the earlier gospels) were not so likely to have been particular, independent dicta of Jesus, as rather certain ideas which formed the basis of many of his discourses, and which were modified and developed according to the bent of a mind of Alexandrian or Greek culture. Such are the correlative ideas of πατὴρ and υἱὸς (father and son), φῶς and σκότος (light and darkness), ζωὴ and θάνατος (life and death), ἄνω and κάτω (above and beneath), σὰρξ and πνεῦμα (flesh and spirit); also some symbolical expressions, as ἄρτος τῆς ζωῆς (bread of life), ὕδωρ ζῶη (water of life). These and a few other ideas, variously combined by an ingenious author, compose the bulk of the discourses attributed to Jesus by John; a certain uniformity necessarily attending this elemental simplicity.