CHAPTER X.

A CRUCIAL QUESTION,

OR

THE UNNAMED FEAST OF S. JOHN v. 1.

“After this there was a feast of the Jews. What feast? Methinks that of Pentecost."

Thus shortly does Chrysostom dismiss a question which modern writers have ever discussed at such great length, and which is obviously of the last importance for the right understanding of the Gospel narrative.

Now, as Chrysostom devotes no fewer than five lengthy Homilies to this single chapter of S. John, and as throughout his Homilies he deals in detail with every point which he deems to be one of doubt or difficulty, we may reasonably assume that this brief dismissal of the subject is tantamount to an affirmation that when he wrote, about A.D. 398, the opinion he expressed was the generally, if not the universally, accepted view of the Church; or, in other words, that he not only gives his own individual opinion on the subject, but assumes that no other opinion was then regarded as either tenable, or required by the context of the passage in question.

In support of this conclusion we have the fact that the

same view was expressed shortly before by Cyril and Epiphanius, whilst we have the testimony of Calvin and Bengel that it was still generally held in the 16th and 17th

centuries.

In modern times, though there has been an almost universal recognition of the fact that the events recorded seem in many ways to point very strongly to the Feast of Pentecost, at the same time a still stronger and more general opinion has prevailed that the wording of S. John's narrative critically examined is inconsistent with this view.

Under these circumstances the almost unanimous, though often very doubtful verdict, of modern critics has been given in favour of the Feast of Purim, a verdict arrived at, not so much on any evidence of identification, as on the purely negative grounds that, as the Feast cannot be that of Pentecost, the Feast of Purim is the only other one which from the time of year at which it took place (March) can at all satisfy the requirements both of the narrative of S. John and of the other Evangelists.

In view of this conflict between ancient and modern opinion, it will be necessary in the first place to consider the reasons alleged for supposing that the Feast of Pentecost cannot be intended by S. John.

The main reason is found in the terms in which our Lord refers to John the Baptist, "He was a burning and a shining light, and ye were willing for a season to rejoice in his light" (S. John v. 35).

The construction put upon these words we find again and again expressed by different writers to the following effect: "The words of John v. 35 imply that the ministry

of the Baptist belonged to the past, and they may have been spoken after his death, although the only necessary inference is that he had ceased his public labours'."

But the inference here affirmed to be necessary is directly opposed to other words of Christ spoken at the same time.

"If," he says, “I bear witness of myself, my witness is not true. There is another that beareth witness of me, and I know that the witness which he witnesseth of me is true. Ye sent unto John and he bare witness of the truth, but I receive not testimony from man."

Unless the words printed in italics are to be understood as referring to John's testimony, they not only become unintelligible, or as it is more euphemistically expressed 'mysterious,' but the connecting link of thought and argument between the words which precede and those which follow them is entirely lost.

But, it is argued, it is impossible to suppose Christ to be here speaking of John's ministry, for if so, he speaks of it as present and continuous, whereas just afterwards, he speaks of John in terms from which we 'necessarily' infer that, if he was not already dead, his ministry was at any rate a thing of the past.

Why, we may first ask, should such an one as S. Chrysostom not have perceived any such impossibility, and have seen no reason against applying the words as he does to John the Baptist?

Simply because, believing that S. John's manifest intention was to represent these words to be spoken at the Feast of Pentecost, and believing that the notice of John's

1 Neander's Life of Christ. Bohn's Eng. ed. p. 238.

'not being yet cast into prison' must cover at the very least a period which would embrace that Feast, he did not for a moment imagine that there was any such contradiction as modern criticism suggests. He simply takes the words in their plain obvious sense, fully recognising that in speaking of John's testimony as a matter both of the present and of the past, our Lord was as historically correct as He was when He spoke of all that was implied in the expression “a burning light" as belonging to the earlier, and so far, past ministry of John.

For, if we assume with Chrysostom that John was still at liberty and continuing his ministry, not now of preparation, but of witness, which expression would our Lord have been most likely under all the known circumstances to have made use of, "John was a bright and shining light," or "John is a bright and shining light"?

Surely the former. For already, as the Pharisees well knew, John's light had been eclipsed by that of Christ Himself. All the enthusiasm of the welcome given to John, which is implied in the expressions 'a burning light,' and their 'rejoicing in that light,' was essentially a matter of the past. Though his sun had not yet set, abundant evidence was already forthcoming that it was now fast sinking below the horizon. Nor can we forget that this view of the case is in exact accordance with the reason which S. John gives for Christ going into Galilee very shortly before the Feast of Pentecost, a journey which he expressly distinguishes as taken before John's imprisonment, and which may very well have been made for the purpose of joining the Galilæan company going up to that Feast. The reason given by S. John for this journey was that Christ had then

received information that the Pharisees were duly certified of the fact that the Baptist was publicly declaring that his own ministry was superseded by that of Christ, and that already more persons were baptized by Christ's Disciples than by John himself. Ignore the connexion between this statement and Christ's discourse recorded in the 5th chapter of S. John, and both the statement and the discourse become alike unintelligible; recognize it, as Chrysostom evidently does, and the meaning of both is perfectly plain.

On the whole then we can see no ground whatever for the supposed 'necessary inference' on which the whole argument has been made to hinge, nor any contradiction whatever in Christ speaking of John as still alive, and yet immediately afterwards speaking of the acknowledged grandeur of his ministry as a thing of the past.

But, it may be asked, can the remarkable consensus of modern opinion, which has led to the general rejection of Chrysostom's opinion, be due solely to the above "necessary inference," the fallacy of which we have thus tried to establish?

Certainly not. Examining the history of the whole discussion on the subject, we find that this inference has only been so readily accepted because it fell in with and supported an assumption, the history of which in turn it is not difficult to trace, the assumption, namely, that the second journey into Galilee recorded by S. John is identical with the journey referred to by the other evangelists as the date of the commencement of Christ's Galilæan ministry.

This assumption owes its origin to Mr Greswell, unquestionably the most distinguished of all modern