Lightfoot and the Gospel of John
Editors’ Introduction
J. B. Lightfoot as Biblical Commentator
No one could match Lightfoot for “exactness of scholarship, width of erudition, scientific method, sobriety of judgment and lucidity of style.”
William Sanday
“No one ever loitered so late in the Great Court that he did not see Lightfoot’s lamp burning in his study window, though not many either was so regularly present in morning Chapel at seven o’clock that he did not find Lightfoot always there with him.”
Bishop Handley C. G. Moule
Joseph Barber Lightfoot (1828–1889) was in many ways ideally suited to be a commentator on the New Testament. He had mastery of at least seven ancient and modern languages (German, French, Spanish, Italian, Latin, Classical Greek, Koine Greek, and the Greek of the church fathers) and a good working knowledge of many others, including Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopic and Coptic. Some of these languages he taught himself. It was clear enough from early on that Lightfoot had a gift for languages. He once asked a friend whether he did not find it to be the case that one forgets what language one is reading when one becomes absorbed in a text! There have been precious few biblical scholars over time that could have candidly made such a remark about so many different languages.
Lightfoot also had a keen interest in history and understood its importance for the study of a historical religion such as Christianity. He was a critical and perspicuous thinker and writer with few peers in any age of Christian history. Furthermore, Lightfoot was able to devote himself to the study of the New Testament in ways and to a degree that few scholars before or since his time have been able to do, not least because he never married and had no family for whom to care. Yet when we look at the list of his publications, we may be somewhat surprised that there are not more works of biblical exegesis. Here is a list of his works that were first published in the nineteenth century.
Compare this to the inventory created by B. N. Kaye after inspecting everything the Durham Cathedral Library had in handwritten script by Lightfoot:
From even a cursory comparison of these two lists, several things become apparent: (1) There is a good deal of material on Acts, John, Paul and 1 Peter that never saw the light of day; and (2) Lightfoot wrote as much, and as often, for the sake of the church and its ministry and about the church and its ministry as he did on subjects of historical or exegetical interest. But where had Lightfoot gained all his knowledge and erudition? What sort of education and what teachers produced such a scholar and churchman?
The Grooming of a Scholar
C. K. Barrett reminds us that Lightfoot in the first instance gained his skills as a commentator on the Bible from studying at King Edward’s School in Birmingham under James Lee Prince. Such study gave him a thoroughgoing training in both Greek and Latin, with wide reading in classical literature and history. When Lightfoot went to study at Trinity College, Cambridge, he worked with B. F. Westcott, who was three years his senior. In 1851 he took the Classical Tripos and came out as a Senior Classic. Barrett relates the well-known story that Lightfoot wrote his tripos exam without a single mistake, which Barrett thinks refers to his work on the language parts of the exam. Afterward, Lightfoot was elected to a fellowship at Trinity and went on to teach languages to other students at Trinity. In his “spare” time he was learning theology and reading the Apostolic Fathers.
At the tender age of thirty-three, Lightfoot was named Hulsean Professor of Divinity and was the mainstay of the faculty there, even with the addition of Westcott and Hort. Of his lectures in Cambridge, F. J. A. Hort reports,
They consisted chiefly, if not wholly, of expositions of parts of books of the New Testament, and especially of St. Paul’s Epistles, with discussions and leading topics usually included in “Introductions” to these books. Their value and interest were soon widely recognized in the university, and before long no lecture-room then available sufficed to contain the hearers, both candidates for holy orders and older residents; so that leave had to be obtained for the use of the hall of Trinity.
His commentaries on what we now call the later Pauline letters (Philippians, Colossians and Philemon) as well as on Galatians began to come out in the 1860s, but it is clear that already in the 1850s, based on his Cambridge lecture notes, which we can now inspect, that Lightfoot had already sorted out his view of Acts and its relationship to the Pauline corpus as well as Pauline chronology. He had also done extensive work on the Gospel of John and 1 Peter. Indeed, we find some of his Galatians commentary in the same notebook as his lecture notes on Acts. In other words, Lightfoot’s previously unpublished work on Acts, John, 1 Peter and some of Paul’s letters was produced when he was at the height of his powers and commentary-writing ability. These heretofore unpublished are often as detailed as the published commentaries and are from the same period of Lightfoot’s life.
If we ask why some of this material was not published during Lightfoot’s lifetime, the answer is ready to hand—it is incomplete. None of these unpublished manuscripts were full commentaries on the books in question. But there are further reasons why Lightfoot did not publish his voluminous materials on Acts and John. As Barrett notes, Lightfoot, Westcott and Hort had agreed to divide up the New Testament among them and to write commentaries on each book. Lightfoot was tasked with treating the Pauline corpus, not the Gospels, Acts or 1 Peter. Furthermore, the last of his published commentaries (on Colossians and Philemon) came out less than four years before Lightfoot became bishop of Durham in 1879, a work in which he became almost totally absorbed for the rest of his life, which proved to be ten years. Regarding Lightfoot’s commentary work, Hort remarks:
Technical language is as far as possible avoided and exposition, essentially scientific, is clothed in simple and transparent language. The natural meaning of each verse is set forth without polemical matter. The prevailing characteristic is . . . good sense unaccompanied by either the insight or delusion of subtlety. Introductions, which precede the commentaries, handle the subject-matter with freshness and reality, almost every section being in effect a bright little historical essay. To each commentary is appended a dissertation, which includes some of Lightfoot’s most careful and thorough work.
There was one gargantuan academic project Lightfoot continued to work on even after he became bishop—his monumental and groundbreaking studies on the apostolic fathers, though he mostly only found time to work on this project during holidays and while traveling.
There are vivid descriptions of Lightfoot being found in a boat or railway carriage with an Armenian or Coptic grammar in hand or calmly correcting proofs while being driven down precipitous paths in Norway. . . . But above all the secret lay in his ability to switch off, giving himself totally to what was before him. As his chaplain [J. R. Harmer] put it . . . “His power of detachment and concentration was extraordinary. I have seen him break off from an incomplete sentence for a momentous interview with one of his clergy, give him his undivided and sympathetic attention followed by the wisest counsel and final decision, and almost before the door was closed upon his visitor become once more absorbed in his literary work.”
Lest we worry that in later life Lightfoot went off the boil as he labored away on the apostolic fathers, Stephen Neill assuages such concern. “If I had my way,” Neill maintains, “at least five hundred pages of Lightfoot’s Apostolic Fathers would be required reading for every theological student in his first year. I cannot imagine any better introduction to critical method, or a better preparation for facing some of the difficult problems of New Testament interpretation that yet remain unsolved.”
There was probably, however, another reason why Lightfoot never published his work on John and Acts. His friend, colleague and original Cambridge mentor B. F. Westcott was producing a commentary on John. Lightfoot would likely have regarded it as bad form to publish something that competed with his colleague’s work, especially when they had already agreed regarding the division of labor when it came to the New Testament. Furthermore, his other colleague F. J. A. Hort was scheduled to do Acts.
Turning to another academic matter, we learn early on what kind of man Lightfoot was when it came to collegiality. Having become Hulsean Professor of Divinity at Cambridge at the remarkably young age of thirty-three, when the Regius Professorship of Divinity became open in 1870, it was assumed that he would take it. But when Lightfoot learned that Westcott would be returning to Cambridge after fulfilling an ecclesiastical assignment, he turned down the post so that it might be given to Westcott.
Lightfoot used all his influence to induce his friend Westcott to become a candidate and resolutely declined to stand himself. After Lightfoot’s death, Dr. Westcott wrote, “He called me to Cambridge to occupy a place which was his own by right; and having done this he spared no pains to secure for his colleague favorable opportunities for action, while he himself withdrew from the position which he had so long virtually occupied.”
This speaks volumes about the character of the man.
Instead of becoming Regius Professor, five years later Lightfoot accepted the Lady Margaret’s chair. As such, Lightfoot focused on his exegetical work, work that went into his lectures. These labors remained largely unknown after he died, since they were mostly unpublished. In fact, Lightfoot never fully revised any non-Pauline materials into commentary form since there was neither time nor opportunity to do so once he became bishop of Durham. Then, he died prematurely.
So it was that these invaluable Cambridge New Testament notes of Lightfoot remained unpublished. They were presumably first moved to Bishop Auckland Palace (the residence of the bishop of Durham) when Lightfoot moved to Durham. Following his death, they were transported to the Durham Cathedral Library. There, they have barely seen the light of day since 1889, with only a handful of scholars and clerics even reading a small part of these materials over the last 150 years. We trust that these Lightfoot volumes will remedy this regrettable neglect.
Lightfoot’s Method
Lightfoot learned early on about the value of writing out one’s thoughts about the Scriptures. He once advised: “Begin to write as soon as you possibly can. That was what Prince Lee [his headmaster at King Edward’s, Birmingham] always said to us. This is the way to learn. Almost all I have learnt has come from writing books. If you write a book on a subject, you have to read everything that has been written about it.”
As Robinson stresses, “One turns back with relief to his patient, inductive method after so many of the pre-judgments and unexamined assumptions of form- and redaction-criticism. . . . Lightfoot would have been horrified to think that serious scholarship could by-pass the historical questions or suppose they could be settled a priori by the theological.” This is because Lightfoot believed wholeheartedly that nothing could be theologically true that was historically false when it comes to matters involving a historical religion such as Christianity.
If we ask about Lightfoot’s particular modus operandi with respect to commentary writing, his approach is basically the same inductive method: (1) Establish the text by dealing with the text-critical issues, including the textual variants. (2) Offer necessary grammatical and syntactical notes and discussions. (3) Proceed with exegesis proper. For Lightfoot, this sometimes entailed long excursi on special topics and more exegetically problematic matters as well as translations of key phrases into English. (4) Deal with theological issues and larger topics that might involve several New Testament documents.
Lightfoot assumed that his audience would know enough Greek and scholia to be able to figure out his elliptical references to parallels in other Greek texts and the like as well as his brief (and sometimes infrequent) footnotes referencing the work of other scholars. “The permanent value of Lightfoot’s historical work depends on his sagacity in dealing with the materials out of which history has to be constructed. He was invariably faithful to a rigorous philological discipline, and was preserved by native candor from distorting influences.”
It may be asked at this juncture, What is the value of this material today, since many good commentaries on Acts, John, 2 Corinthians and 1 Peter have been written since the time of Lightfoot? The answer to this question is twofold. First, there is Lightfoot’s encyclopedic knowledge of early Greek literature, a knowledge that is probably unequaled to this day by any subsequent commentator on the New Testament. As Barrett points out, Lightfoot did not have, nor did he need, a lexicon to find parallels to New Testament Greek usage. As a close look at his Galatians commentary shows: “He knows Origen, Ephraem Syrus, Eusebius of Emesa, Chrysostom, Severianus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret, Euthalius, Gennadius, Photius, Victorinus, Hilary, Jerome, Augustine, Pelagius, Cassiodorus, John of Damascus,” not to mention all the pagan Greek literature and later catenae of Greek and Latin sources. Lightfoot was a walking lexicon of Greek literature of all sorts, and not infrequently he was able to cite definitive parallels to New Testament usage that decided the issue of the meaning of a word or a phrase.
Second, as Dunn notes, time and again Lightfoot “clearly demonstrates the importance of reading a historical text within its historical context, that the meaning of a text does not arise out of the text alone, but out of the text read in context and that the original context and intention of the author is a determinative and controlling factor in what may be read or heard from such a text. . . . Lightfoot would certainly have approved a referential theory of meaning: that that to which the language of the text refers determines and controls the meaning of the text.”
This approach is sorely needed today as commentators increasingly dismiss or ignore the importance of original-language study and of the original historical context of a document, or who try to do “theological interpretation” of the text without first having done their historical homework to determine the original contextual meaning of the text, whether theological in character or not. It may be hoped that this series of volumes will revive an interest in the full gamut of subjects relevant to the study of the New Testament, not least ancient history, including social history; the classics; a precise knowledge of Greek, including its grammar and syntax and rhetoric; and, of course, the theology and ethics of the material itself. Doubtless Lightfoot himself would be pleased if this were one outcome of the publication of his long-lost exegetical studies on the New Testament.
Finally, this commentary shows exactly the way Lightfoot approached his study of the New Testament—carefully, prayerfully and, in his own words, with “the highest reason and the fullest faith.” Not one or the other, but both. Time and again Lightfoot’s intellect and his piety shine through in these lost manuscripts. He shows us repeatedly that faith and reason need not be at odds with each other, especially if it is fides quaerens intellectum (“faith seeking understanding”). Honesty about early Christianity and its Lord need not be feared by a person of Christian faith, whether then or now. Taken for what it is, this commentary will not merely “tease the mind into active thought” (a phrase made famous by C. H. Dodd, a Cambridge man like Lightfoot) but also nourish the soul.
Lightfoot and the Gospel of John
If there was one commentary J. B. Lightfoot most wanted to write and publish, it was a commentary on the Gospel of John. There were many reasons for this hope and inclination. First of all, Lightfoot regularly lectured on this Gospel at Cambridge and knew the literature on it well. He loved teaching this material and thought it exceedingly important for understanding the real character of early Christian thought. He once remarked that while the Synoptics presented the facts about the Jesus of history, John’s Gospel presented the profound commentary.
Second, for much of his career Lightfoot was deeply concerned about the negative impact of the radical criticism of early Christianity, especially criticism of the historical trustworthiness of documents like the Gospel of John, emanating from the successors of F. C. Baur at Tübingen in his own day. Lightfoot was too much of a historian and too much of an apologete for Christian orthodoxy to be silent for long about the sort of cannonading that resounded all the way to the United Kingdom from the Tübingen school.
And besides, he read critically and took seriously German scholarly works to a degree seldom seen in nineteenth-century British biblical scholarship. He was the ideal person to attempt a deconstruction of the “new” edifice erected by Baur and others. It is clear that what radical critics were saying about Lightfoot’s favorite Gospel struck a nerve. You do not write two hundred or so pages defending the authenticity and genuineness of the Gospel of John if you are not exercised about the subject and motivated to present a different view—especially to the views then making inroads all across Europe.
In view of all this, why exactly did all those detailed Cambridge lectures notes on the background and text of the Gospel of John never see the light of day before now? One reason, already noted above, was that Lightfoot’s sometime mentor, colleague at Cambridge and friend B. F. Westcott was writing such a commentary.
Nevertheless, I can say now with some assurance that he continued to work on John throughout the period he was at Cambridge, beginning with the Michaelmas term in 1848, when he first began teaching the Gospel of John, and continuing until 1879, when he was “called up North.” I say this for three primary reasons: (1) Lightfoot’s notes on John are more fulsome than his notes on some of the material in the other two volumes of this series. (2) His notes on John are in several different inks and in some cases in pencil, signaling ongoing work. This is clear because although the original date at the beginning of the manuscript is 1848, we have, for example, a comment on John 7:35 with an article title and author penciled in from 1853. What is interesting is that only rarely is anything crossed out, indicating Lightfoot had later changed his mind on something. And (3) Lightfoot was convinced that the Gospel of John was the most important Gospel theologically, chronologically and historically for a whole host of reasons, not least its clarity on the doctrine of the incarnation. In times when the authenticity and veracity of the Gospel of John were being challenged both at home (by the author of Supernatural Religion and others) and abroad (by the successors of F. C. Baur), Lightfoot strongly felt that his Cambridge students, especially the divinity students, needed a hearty sampling of the Gospel meat served up by the Beloved Disciple, and he was going to be sure they did not miss that meal. The massive amount of work he did on authenticity and genuineness of John (see appendix A and appendix B below) reveals Lightfoot’s protracted commitment to vindicating the Gospel.
Thus Lightfoot continued to work on this Gospel time and again, revising his notes and updating his references. Perhaps he hoped for a day when all of his material on the Gospel might see the light of day, once Westcott’s commentary had “had a good innings,” as cricketers would say. These notes come from before and during the period Westcott was working on John, and unfortunately they were never published, until now. If Lightfoot did have a hope that one day this rich material would emerge into the light of day, we are delighted to be able to fulfill that hope, even if this commentary is born out of due season. As it turned out, the Cambridge commentary series did not get very far. No other volumes on the Gospels emerged other than the one by Westcott, and Lightfoot himself did not finish the work on the Pauline epistles. There were two other matters pressing in on him.
The first of these is that Lightfoot was convinced the big issue when critiquing the Tübingen approach to early Christianity was history. Baur developed, and his successors built on, a particular interpretation of the first four centuries of early Christianity according to which neither the New Testament nor the apostolic fathers could be taken at face value historically. These texts had to be read critically and with a certain degree of skepticism when it came to Geschichte as well as Historie.
While Lightfoot agreed that critical analysis was required, he did not think that the highest reason necessarily led to a radical deconstruction of the nature and character of Jesus, the New Testament and early Christianity. As a historian, Lightfoot became convinced that he needed to present a very different picture of early Christianity, which in turn led him to focus on providing a definitive critical edition and commentary on the apostolic fathers. To counter the influence of the Tübingen school, one needed to provide better readings not only of the New Testament but also of the earliest successors to the original apostles—the apostolic fathers. To this latter task Lightfoot devoted most of his time and academic attention in the 1870s and 1880s. Indeed, he was still working on revisions of a later edition of his Clement volume just before he died prematurely in 1889.
Lightfoot’s election as bishop of Durham in 1879 left him no time to write more biblical commentaries. He had previously turned down an offer to take up episcopal office elsewhere in Britain, but when the chance to “go up North” came, from where various of his ancestors and in particular his mother (who was from Newcastle) had come, he simply could not refuse it. With the exception of his work on the apostolic fathers, from 1879 on his time was consumed with ministerial duties. He even turned down opportunities to lecture (something he loved to do) at Durham. But there are ways for the dead to continue to address us. One way is by publishing their lost, misplaced, forgotten or long-out-of-print works that are still of enormous value. Lightfoot’s commentary on John is one such lost treasure.