The language in which the Gospel is written, as we have already mentioned, is much less Hebraic than that of the other Gospels, with the exception of parts of the Gospel according to Luke, and its Hebraisms are not on the whole greater than was almost invariably the case with Hellenistic Greek, but its composition is distinguished by peculiar smoothness, grace, and beauty, and in this respect it is assigned the first rank amongst the Gospels. It may be remarked that the connection which Credner finds between the language and the Apostle John arises out of the supposition, that long residence in Ephesus had enabled him to acquire that fecility of composition in the Greek language which is one of its characteristics. Ewald, who exaggerates the Hebraism of the work, resorts nevertheless to the conjecture, which we shall hereafter more fully consider, that the Gospel was written from dictation by young friends of John in Ephesus, who put the aged Apostle's thoughts, in many places, into purer Greek as they
wrote them down.(1) The arbitrary nature of such an explanation, adopted in one shape or another by many apologists, requires no remark, but we shall at every turn meet with similar assumptions advanced to overcome difficulties. Now, although there is no certain information as to the time when, if ever, the Apostle removed into Asia Minor, it is at least pretty certain that he did not leave Palestine before a.d. 60.(2) We find him still at Jerusalem about a.d. 50--53, when Paul went thither, and he had not at that time any intention of leaving, but, on the contrary, his dedication of himself to the ministry of the circumcision is distinctly mentioned by the Apostle.(3) The "unlettered and ignorant" fisherman of Galilee, therefore, had obviously attained an age when habits of thought and expression have become fixed, and when a new language cannot without great difficulty be acquired. If we consider the Apocalypse to be his work, we find positive evidence of such markedly different thought and language actually existing when the Apostle must have been between sixty and seventy years of age, that it is quite impossible to conceive that he could have subsequently acquired the language and mental characteristics of the fourth Gospel.(4) It would be perfectly absurd, so far as language goes, to find in the fourth Gospel the slightest indication of the Apostle John, of whose language we have no information whatever except from the Apocalypse, a composition