with his work (Mark 1:19–20). His mother was Salome, and it seems likely that she was the sister of Mary, the mother of Jesus (Matthew 27:56; Mark 16:1). With his brother James, he obeyed the call of Jesus (Mark 1:20). It would seem that James and John were in partnership with Peter in the fishing trade (Luke 5:7–10). He was one of the inner circle of the disciples, for the lists of the disciples always begin with the names of Peter, James and John, and there were certain great occasions when Jesus took these three specially with him (Mark 3:17, 5:37, 9:2, 14:33).
In character he was clearly a turbulent and ambitious man. Jesus gave to him and to his brother the name Boanerges, which the gospel writers take to mean Sons of Thunder. John and his brother James were completely exclusive and intolerant (Mark 9:38; Luke 9:49). So violent was their temper that they were prepared to blast a Samaritan village out of existence because it would not give them hospitality when they were on their journey to Jerusalem (Luke 9:54). Either they or their mother Salome had the ambition that when Jesus came into his kingdom, they might be his principal ministers of state (Mark 10:35; Matthew 20:20). In the other three gospels, John appears as a leader of the apostolic band, one of the inner circle, and yet a turbulent, ambitious and intolerant character.
In the Book of Acts, John always appears as the companion of Peter, and he himself never speaks at all. His name is still one of the three names at the head of the apostolic list (Acts 1:13). He is with Peter when the lame man is healed at the Beautiful Gate of the Temple (Acts 3:1ff.). With Peter, he is brought before the Sanhedrin and faces the Jewish leaders with a courage and a boldness that astonishes them (Acts 4:1–13). With Peter, he goes from Jerusalem to Samaria to survey the work done by Philip (Acts 8:14).
In Paul’s letters, he appears only once. In Galatians 2:9, he is named as one of the pillars of the Church along with Peter and James, and with them is depicted as giving his approval to the work of Paul.
John was a strange mixture. He was one of the leaders of the Twelve; he was one of the inner circle of Jesus’ closest friends; at the same time he was a man of temper and ambition and intolerance, and yet of courage.
We may follow John into the stories told of him in the early Church. Eusebius tells us that he was banished to Patmos in the reign of Domitian (Eusebius, The Ecclesiastical History, 3:23). In the same passage, Eusebius tells a characteristic story about John, a story which he received from Clement of Alexandria. John became a kind of bishop of Asia Minor and was visiting one of his churches near Ephesus. In the congregation, he saw a tall and exceptionally fine-looking young man. He turned to the elder in charge of the congregation and said to him: ‘I commit that young man into your charge and into your care, and I call this congregation to witness that I do so.’ The elder took the young man into his own house and cared for him and instructed him, and the day came when he was baptized and received into the Church. But very soon afterwards, he fell in with evil friends and embarked on such a career of crime that he ended up by becoming the leader of a band of murdering and pillaging brigands. Some time afterwards, John returned to the congregation. He said to the elder: ‘Restore to me the trust which I and the Lord committed to you and to the church of which you are in charge.’ At first the elder did not understand of what John was speaking. ‘I mean’ , said John, ‘that I am asking you for the soul of the young man whom I entrusted to you.’ ‘Alas!’ said the elder, ‘he is dead.’ ‘Dead?’ said John. ‘He is dead to God,’ said the elder. ‘He fell from grace; he was forced to flee from the city for his crimes and now he is a bandit in the mountains.’ Immediately John went to the mountains. Deliberately he allowed himself to be captured by the robber band. They brought him before the young man, who was now the chief of the band; and, in his shame, the young man tried to run away from him. John, though an old man, pursued him. ‘My son,’ he cried, ‘are you running away from your father? I am feeble and far advanced in age; have pity on me, my son; fear not; there is yet hope of salvation for you. I will stand for you before the Lord Christ. If need be, I will gladly die for you as he died for me. Stop, stay, believe! It is Christ who has sent me to you.’ The appeal broke the heart of the young man. He stopped, threw away his weapons, and wept. Together he and John came down the mountainside and he was brought back into the Church and into the Christian way. There we see the love and the courage of John still in operation.
Eusebius (3:28) tells another story of John which he got from the works of the second-century theologian, Irenaeus. We have seen that one of the leaders of the Gnostic heresy was a man called Cerinthus. ‘The apostle John once entered a bath to bathe; but, when he learned that Cerinthus was within, he sprang from his place and rushed out of the door, for he could not bear to remain under the same roof with him. He advised those who were with him to do the same. “Let us flee,” he said, “lest the bath fall, for Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within.”’ There we have another glimpse of the temper of John. Boanerges was not quite dead.
Writing in the fifth century, John Cassian tells another famous story about John. One day he was found playing with a tame partridge. A narrower and more rigid brother rebuked him for thus wasting his time, and John answered: ‘The bow that is always bent will soon cease to shoot straight.’
It is the great biblical scholar Jerome who tells the story of the last words of John. When he was dying, his disciples asked him if he had any last message to leave them. ‘Little children,’ he said, ‘love one another.’ Again and again he repeated it; and they asked him if that was all he had to say. ‘It is enough,’ he said, ‘for it is the Lord’s command.’
Such then is our information about John; and he emerges as a figure of fiery temper, of wide ambition, of undoubted courage and, in the end, of gentle love.
The Beloved Disciple
If we have been following our references closely, we will have noticed one thing. All our information about John comes from the first three gospels. It is the astonishing fact that the Fourth Gospel never mentions the apostle John from beginning to end. But it does mention two other people.
First, it speaks of the disciple whom Jesus loved. There are four mentions of him. He was leaning on Jesus’ breast at the Last Supper (John 13:23–5); it is into his care that Jesus committed Mary as he died upon his cross (19:25–7); it was Peter and he whom Mary Magdalene met on her return from the empty tomb on the first Easter morning (20:2); and he was present at the last resurrection appearance of Jesus by the lakeside (21:20).
Second, the Fourth Gospel has a kind of character whom we might call the witness. As the Fourth Gospel tells of the spear thrust into the side of Jesus and the issue of the water and the blood, there comes the comment: ‘He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe. His testimony is true, and he knows that he tells the truth’ (19:35). At the end of the gospel comes the statement that it was the beloved disciple who testified of these things, ‘and we know that his testimony is true’ (21:24).
Here we are faced with rather a strange thing. In the Fourth Gospel, John is never mentioned; but the beloved disciple is, and in addition there is a witness of some kind to the whole story. It has never really been doubted in tradition that the beloved disciple is John. A few have tried to identify him with Lazarus, for Jesus is said to have loved Lazarus (John 11:3, 5); or with the rich young ruler, of whom it is said that Jesus, looking on him, loved him (Mark 10:21). But although the gospel never says so in so many words, tradition has always identified the beloved disciple with John, and there is no real need to doubt the identification.
But a very real point arises – suppose John himself actually did the writing of the gospel, would he really be likely to speak of himself as the disciple whom Jesus loved? Would he really be likely to pick himself out like this, and, as it were, to say: ‘I was his favourite; he loved me best of all’? It is surely very unlikely that John would confer such a title on himself. If it was conferred by others, it is a lovely title; if it was conferred by himself, it comes perilously near to an almost incredible self-conceit.
