GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1066, 2 September 1930, Page 14

GOSPEL OF ST. JOHN

NEW SPECULATIONS AS TO AUTHORSHIP An interesting discovery concerning the authorship of the Fourth Gospel has recently been made by Dr. A. Mingana, Keeper of Oriental Manuscripts at the John Rylands Library, Manchester. Although the authorship of the Fourth Gospel has been generally attributed to John the Apostle, there has never been any certainty on the point. According to the documentary evidence which Dr. Mingana brings forward in the current issue of the Library Bulletin, the author was John the younger, a disciple of John the Apostle. These statements are found in a Syriac manuscript which contains the Peshita New Testament of the East Syrian or Nestorian Church. The manuscript, says Dr. Ivlingana, is relatively modern, as it is dated Saturday, September 23, of the year 2060 of the Greeks (A.D. 1749), but it is a faithful copy of a much older original which may be ascribed to about A.D. 750. He has arrived at this conclusion from the nature and character of the Massoretic signs that the copyist reproduces in his transcription.

The tradition that the Fourth Gospel was written at Ephesus, or perhaps Patmos, the island of the Apostle’s banishment, on the eve of his return to Ephesus, is also challenged by this manuscript, and the possibility that it was written at Bithynia has to be considered. The following statement occurs early in the manuscript; “The holy Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the preaching of John the younger.” and at the end of the Gospel itself appears the colophon: “Here ends the writing of the holy Gospel according to the preaching of John who spoke in Greek in Bithynia.” Dr. Mingana adds that to his knowledge the above statements are not found in any other Syriac manuscript of the Gospels preserved in the British Museum, in Cambridge, in the Vatican, in Paris, and among those of his own collection which have so far been catalogued. He feels confident that they will repay further investigation, and may have far-reaching results, as they appear to represent a relic of an ancient tradition.