The Johannean Problem Author:George William Gilmore Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. The Antiquity Of The Fourth Gospel External Testimony, 180-200 A.D. From the time of Irenaeus, bishop External Evidence. of L we are Qn th... more »oroughl firm Irenseus, fl. / J 174-189 A.d. footing so far as external testimony to our gospel is concerned. This bishop, in the third book of his treatise, Against Heresies, quotes abundantly from the fourth gospel. He shows, by quotations which are exact in their agreement with the gospel text, that he had that text before him, and in about the shape, so far as his quotations go, in which we now have it. For instance, in Chap, xi, he says: "John the disciple of the Lord .... thus commenced his teaching in the gospel: ' In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him, and without him was nothing made. What was made was life in him, and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not.' " This is a clear and unmistakable quotation from the prologue of John's gospel. Again, in Chap, xiv, we find: " And again, the Lord replied to Philip, who wished tobehold the Father, 'Have I been so long a time with you, and yet thou hast not known me, Philip ? He that sees me, sees also the Father; and how sayest thou then, Show us the Father? For I am in the Father and the Father in me; and henceforth ye know him and have seen him.' " This is clearly a quotation, with a change of tense, from John xiv. 7, 9, 10. Not to multiply quotations, we need mention only that Tischendorf says that Irenaeus quotes John's gospel eighty times. But not only does Irenaeus show by quoting that he Ireneeus four ..... . , ' , , Gog j was familiar with our gospel; he also goes on to gi...« less