may be said to be, in modern terms, a “homosexual” relationship. But the main emphasis falls simply on the relationship of being lovers, not on the gender of the lovers.
Nothing is made in the text of the specific form of sexuality that mediates this relationship, something that is quite normal in literature of this type. At stake here is simply that they were lovers. We are no more told whether or how they “had sex” than we are in other connections about the sexual practices, if any, of Peter and his wife, or those of Mary and Joseph. Whether lovers are of the same or of different genders, the specific practices that mediate and celebrate their personal and physical intimacy are strictly their own business, not a matter for literary display or scholarly curiosity.
That we are told nothing of this is thus not surprising. Nor does the homoerotic interpretation of this relationship entail anything one way or the other about the sexual practices that may have expressed the intimacy of these “lovers.” The text is more concerned that we see what the public—at least the public of Jesus’ intimate circle of friends and followers—would see: that Jesus was the lover of the beloved. In this way, this disciple is already distinguished from the many whom Jesus undoubtedly loved as followers and friends, the many for whom Jesus’ love was so pronounced that he would abase himself for them or die for them.
This relationship between Jesus and the disciple he loved is expressed in terms of physical or bodily intimacy at the supper. This factor is underlined in the account so as to leave no doubt about its importance and meaning. At the same time, this bodily intimacy, the intimacy of lovers, is clearly by no means an expression of the sort of intimacy on the basis of which the beloved might claim an official preeminence among the disciples. He is privy to no special teaching. He is theologically and ecclesially on a par with the rest. Indeed the only “leader” recognized here is Peter not the beloved. The beloved must be understood in the sense, then, not as friend nor as colleague (something shared with the others) but as “lovers.”
That Jesus goes to the extraordinary length of having his beloved and his mother adopt and care for one another further denotes the personal and “fleshly” character of the relationship. Jesus acknowledges his lover according to the flesh, before his mother according to the flesh, charging her to be mother to him and then charging the beloved to be son to her.
Jesus’ beloved (or, as we would say, “lover”) appears accepted in this role by Peter, by the other disciples, and finally by Jesus’ own family. For them to conclude that Jesus had decided that his lover should await him until his return was apparently quite natural. In this way, the permanence of their relationship was brought to striking expression.
This reading can only claim to make sense of the data provided by the Gospel of John and to do no violence to that data. To be sure we must exercise care not to read into the text the specific features of homosexuality that are characteristic of the modern construction of same-sex relationships. Our reading of the text does, however, depend on finding some point of contact between what we mean by gay or homosexual relationships and the relationship depicted in the text. If the text means to suggest that the relationship between Jesus and his beloved was a relationship of lovers, present-day readers should not conclude that the text supposes that Jesus and his beloved were “homosexual” in the modern sense. This category (of persons) was not operative in antiquity. But antiquity does know of relationships between persons of the same sex that were erotic and that may have been given expression through specific sexual practices. Our reading is meant to highlight this point of contact.
Unquestionably the suggestion that Jesus and the beloved were lovers in this sense could raise in the mind of the reader a number of questions and objections, and to these we next turn in the attempt to further clarify this relationship and its meaning.
1. The taboo has not been absolutely effective, however, as we shall see in chapter 5.
2. A further caveat before proceeding: Homosexual attraction in classical antiquity and in early modern culture was sometimes articulated in a misogynist way, on account of the patriarchal and often misogynist cultural presuppositions of the culture as a whole. One of the insights of feminist hermeneutics is that Jesus deviated from his culture in overturning these patriarchal and misogynist structures. Thus, to read Jesus’ relation to his beloved as a homoerotic relationship is not to read it as conforming to the sexist structures of some homoerotic rhetoric of classical (and modern) culture.
4. Other Gospels suggest the presence of the twelve, but this group is not given much credence by John. The exclusion of women from the meal may have been characteristic of both Jewish Passover tradition and of Greek symposium etiquette. Nevertheless our picture of Jesus’ behavior should consider that he broke these and associated taboos.
5. Some commentators see here an insertion into the text that is poorly integrated into the narrative as a whole. However, our concern is not with hypothetical sources or redactions but with the interpretation of the text as it stands.
6. Actually even this conclusion is in doubt since the narrator reports that “no one at the table knew” (13:28) the meaning of Jesus’ subsequent words to Judas: “What you are going to do, do quickly” (13:27). Thus, if we take the text as it stands, we would conclude that the beloved was also mystified by what Jesus had said to him and only later recalled the incident when he, with others, knew that Judas had been the betrayer.
7. Reasons for doubting that the “other disciple” of 18:15–16 should be included among the texts that contribute to our knowledge of the beloved are given below, pp. 47-53.
8. See chapter 10.
9. See Mark 3:32–35 and parallels and Luke 11:27–28.
10. The other Gospels know this also. See Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13:55, where we also learn that he had sisters as well.
11. This reading from Irenaeus was already established by the end of the second century.
12. Indeed the role of Mary here has even led to the suggestion that she had an especially close relationship to Jesus of the sort that this narrative in fact reserves for a man. This suggestion must be wholly based upon the account of Jesus’ appearance to her in the garden, because at no other point is she represented, by name, as having an especially close relationship to Jesus. A displacement seems to be taking place from the beloved to Mary Magdalene, as if the reader recognizes that something more than ordinarily intimate seems to be signaled by the text and so constructs, from another figure in the text, a more acceptable recipient of this intimacy.
