Tractates on the Gospel of John
PREFACE BY AN UNKNOWN AUTHOR'
HE GOSPELS EXCEL all the pages of divine Scripture; for the Law and the Prophets predicted what would be, but the gospel tells us that this did, in fact, come to completion. Now, among the writers of the Gospels, John stands out for his profundity in regard to the divine mysteries. For sixty-five years, from the time of our Lord's ascension down to the final days of Domitian, he preached the word of the Lord, orally, with no writing to assist him. But after the murder of Domitian, when, with Nerva's permission, he had returned to Ephesus from exile, at the insistent urging of the bishops of Asia, he wrote about the coeternal divinity of Christ with the Father in opposition to the heretics who, in his absence, had invaded his churches and were denying that Christ had existed before Mary. And for this reason he is rightly compared, in the figure of four animals,^ to a flying eagle; for the eagle flies higher than the other birds and gazes at the rays of the sun with unflinching eyes.
1. The Admonitio of the Maurist edition of these Tractates, quoted by Willems, CCL 36.xiii— xiv, states that this preface first appeared in the Louvain edition, published in Antwerp in 1662. It also indicates that it appears with a few words changed, ''paucis mutatis verbis,'" in the commentaries on John by Bede and Aicuin. Both in the preface and the first chapter of
Bede's In Sancti loannis Evangelium Expositio (PL 92.633—637) and in Alcuin's Commentaria in Sancti loannis Evangelium, in the Epistula ad Gislam et Richtrudam which with two other letters form a preface to this commentary, and in the opening sentences of the commentary itself (PL 100.740—745), some of the phrases, information, and ideas expressed are found in a form identical or very similar to this preface. Both Bede and Aicuin borrow freely, often exactly, from Augustine and other earlier commentators on John; consequently some of this material may come ultimately from Augustine himself. I include this preface with this translation because, by whomever it was composed whenever it was composed, it clearly reflects traditions concerning John that go back to the times of the Fathers; hence it may shed some light on Augustine's approach to John. 2. Cf. Tractates 15.1, 36.1 and 5, 40.1; Ez 1.5—10; and Rv 4.6—7.