The Identity of the Beloved Disciple
Which John Wrote the Gospel of John? Below is a preview of a new PDF resource related to the authorship and historical reliability of the Fourth Gospel.
This 32-page investigation surveys both internal and external evidence related to the authorship of the Fourth Gospel and includes an archaeological discovery that may shed light on this question. If you’re a PAID subscriber or supporter, you’ll find a link to download this new PDF resource at the bottom of this page. If you’re not yet a supporter or subscriber, we’ll make it available for a gift of any size to help support the work of this podcast. You can make your donation via PayPal, or through any of the support options listed here.
“Absolutely Fascinating!” — David Rohl
Throughout most of my Christian life, I never questioned the authorship of the Fourth Gospel but assumed with everyone else that it had been written by the Apostle John. Though this is a common assumption, as I began to study this Gospel closely over the past decade, I discovered that John, the son of Zebedee, is nowhere identified as the author of this text, and that a good deal of internal and external evidence actually points in other directions. It’s important to note up front that this is not merely an academic question, particularly since the author of this Gospel claims to have been a key witness to events in the life of Jesus. In fact, he provides us with important details related to Jesus’ crucifixion that were not recorded in the Synoptic Gospels.1 Therefore, if this author’s testimony is to be recognized and treated as authentic, we need to provide a general account of his identity and background in order to assess the credibility of his claims.
INTERNAL EVIDENCE
The Beloved Disciple
Throughout the Fourth Gospel, one of Jesus’ disciples is specifically identified as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (Jn 13:23, 19:26, 20:2, 21:7, 20). In all these passages, it’s important to notice that this particular individual is never named. More importantly, we also need to realize that this disciple unmistakably identifies himself as the author of this Gospel. In Jn 21:24 he writes, “This is the disciple who is bearing witness about these things, and who has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.”
Alan Culpepper wisely observes that, “The Beloved Disciple emerges in the Fourth Gospel as the disciple closest to Jesus—the one who reclined on the breast of Jesus at the Last Supper, the one to whom Jesus gave his mother at his death, the first of the disciples to reach the empty tomb, the first to believe in the resurrection, and the first of the disciples to recognize the risen Lord at the miraculous catch of fish in Galilee.”2 This is a good summary of the beloved disciple’s privileged position, but the fact that he was especially loved by Jesus, or that he reclined at his breast during the Last Supper, sometimes strikes modern readers as more than a little odd.3 So what’s really going on here?
In the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus (Lk 16:19-31), Jesus tells the story of a poor man who died and who “was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side” (κόλπος). In its first-century context, sitting at the side of a person of higher rank or nobility was indicative of one’s elevated status. Jesus uses similar language in John 1:18 when he says, “No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side (κόλπος), he has made him known.” In previous generations, the word κόλπος (kolpos) was often rendered “bosom” which is why the KJV spoke of “Abraham’s bosom,” along with the fact that the Son is “in the bosom of the Father.” Jesus is, therefore, not only the Father’s “beloved son” (Mt 3:17, Mk 9:7, Lk 20:13), but numerous texts depict him as being seated at God’s right hand (Ps 110:1, Mk 14:62, Acts 2:33, Rom 8:34, Eph 1:20-22).
What’s remarkable about the Fourth Gospel, is that the language used to describe Jesus’ privileged position with the Father, is also used by the author of this text to convey his unique relationship with Jesus. According to John 13:23, “One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus’ side” (κόλπος). Therefore, just as Jesus is especially loved by the Father (Jn 3:35, 5:20, 10:17, 15:9, 17:23-26), so too, this disciple is especially loved by Jesus (Jn 13:23, 19:26, 20:2, 21:7, 20), and just as Jesus is at the father’s side, and makes him known (Jn 1:18), so too, the beloved disciple is at Jesus’ side (Jn 13:23), and makes him known in the pages of his Gospel (Jn 21:20, 24).
This language is so striking, that it’s somewhat hard to believe. If one of Jesus’ disciples really had been privileged in this way, is it plausible that his name would be completely left out of the record? Perhaps therefore we should consider the possibility that this text is a work of fiction. The great nineteenth-century Cambridge scholar and chaplain to Queen Victoria, J.B. Lightfoot, faced this question head-on and concluded that the evidence actually points in the opposite direction. Responding to liberal critics of the Fourth Gospel, he writes, “Looking [carefully at this text], we find that an anonymous person appears and reappears in the narrative. He is the disciple whom Jesus loved, and sometimes simply, ‘the other disciple’...The fact that he is never named is the more remarkable considering that he is a very important and prominent character.” Lightfoot then concludes by saying that this approach “is wholly unlike that of a forger. The apocryphal gospels declare at their opening in the most explicit terms who was the author. This is not only unlike a forger, it is wholly unintelligible on such a supposition.”4
Lightfoot’s point is easily grasped when we consider the fact that the later fictional stories about Jesus, such as we find in the Gnostic Gospels,5 were claimed to have been written by a variety of Jesus’ known disciples, which is why they appear with titles such as The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Judas, or The Gospel of Mary. But why would anyone write a fictional story about Jesus by an anonymous disciple? “The very fact that the beloved disciple is anonymous,” argued twentieth-century German theologian, Oscar Cullmann, “does suggest that he was a historical figure.”6 But if the beloved disciple isn’t a fictional character, but a real person of history, then again we should ask, “Why was his name kept out of the record?” Keep this question in the back of your mind for the moment. First, there are a few things I need to bring to your attention.
A Witness From the Beginning
In John 15:27, those who were present with Jesus at the Last Supper were specifically appointed to be his witnesses, since according to Jesus, they were the ones who had been with him “from the beginning.”7 Notice the way Peter emphasizes his role as an eyewitness in the sermon he preached before a Gentile audience in Caesarea, “We are witnesses of all that he did...They put him to death by hanging him on a tree, but God raised him on the third day and made him to appear, not to all the people but to us who had been chosen by God as witnesses” (Acts 10:39-41). Similarly, the beloved disciple highlights his eyewitness role during the dark hour of Jesus’ crucifixion: “He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true” (Jn 19:35). As Richard Bauckham points out in his book Jesus & The Eyewitnesses:
The occasions where [the beloved disciple’s] presence is explicit certainly cannot be the sum total of his presence with Jesus during Jesus’ ministry...He could hardly be called [“the disciple Jesus loved”] in 13:23 if this were the first time he had been in company with Jesus since that momentous first day...Already in the Prologue the author speaks as one of the eyewitnesses (1:14), and so readers know from the beginning that this narrative comes with a strong eyewitness claim, but they cannot tell to which of the disciples in the narrative this claim is attached...They learn in 15:27 that the witnesses are disciples who have been with Jesus from the beginning and will assume that the author belongs to this category...[T]he carefully staged conclusion (20:30-31, 21:24-25) brings them finally to the revelation that the beloved disciple is the principal witness and author.8
When I had the opportunity to interview Richard Bauckam, he pointed out in our conversation that in the first chapter of John’s Gospel, we discover that Jesus’ earliest followers were Andrew and Peter, along with another unnamed disciple. “It’s a very odd fact if you notice it, [and] I think the first-time reader of the Gospel would not really know what to make of that, but by the time you get to the end of the Gospel and you’ve got used to this figure called ‘the disciple Jesus loved,’ and who is always anonymous, you can reasonably think that maybe this disciple there, right at the beginning, is that disciple.” Therefore, he argues, “This puts him there just before Peter...but interestingly, that pattern is replicated in the epilogue the other way around.” In the final chapter, “the beloved disciple remains in the narrative for just a fraction of time after Peter, so there’s a kind of correspondence.” At both ends, he says, “the beloved disciple claims to have a slight primacy over Peter as a witness,” which makes him an ideal witness to compose a written Gospel.9
• Listen to Humble Skeptic Episode #50: Which John Wrote John?
• For an additional preview of this topic, click here.
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