Disciple whom Jesus loved
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The phrase the disciple whom Jesus loved or Beloved Disciple is used several times in the Gospel of John. It is the Beloved Disciple who asks Jesus during the Last Supper who it is that will betray him. In the Johannine account of the crucifixion, Jesus tells his mother "Woman, here is your son"; that he indicates the Beloved Disciple is the common interpretation. To the Beloved Disciple he says, "Here is your mother." When Mary Magdalene discovers the empty tomb, she runs to tell the Beloved Disciple and Simon Peter. The Beloved Disciple is the first to reach the empty tomb, but Simon Peter is the first to enter.
Identity of the Beloved Disciple
Since the Beloved Disciple does not appear in any of the other New Testament gospels, it has been traditionally seen as a self-reference to John the Evangelist, and this remains the mainstream identification. An issue is the identification of the Evangelist with John the Apostle, that is, whether the apostle is the same man as John the Evangelist. (See the authorship of the Johannine works for more information on this unresolved issue.)In an appendix to the gospel (John 21:24), there is an explicit testimony that the Beloved Disciple is testifying to the accounts told in John's gospel: "It is this disciple who testifies to these things and has written them, and we know that his testimony is true." Hugh J. Schonfield found the Disciple to be a highly placed priest in the Temple, based in Jerusalem, and unavailable to follow Jesus in his ministry in the north, thus accounting for his absence there, and for the knowledge of and access to the Temple of some of his followers during the week before the Cruxifixion.
As John's gospel gives the specific figure of the Beloved Disciple such an anonymous title, the title is sometimes given to other disciples to emphasize their favor with Jesus. In the Gospel of Thomas, Judas Thomas is the disciple taken aside; in the recently rediscovered Gospel of Judas Judas Iscariot is favored with privy enlightening information and set apart from the other apostles; in the Gospel of Mary it is Mary Magdalene:
- "Peter said to Mary, 'Sister, we know the savior loved you more than any other woman. Tell us the words of the savior that you remember, which you know but we do not, because we have not heard them'" (Gospel of Mary)
It has been suggested in Holy Blood, Holy Grail that the Beloved Disciple was Mary Magdalene, although John 20 has these two figures together, and in his words from the Cross Jesus is charging the Beloved Disciple with care of his mother Mary. In John, the author uses the male pronoun in reference to the disciple, and Johannine Christian tradition has it that John looked after Mary in Ephesus prior to Jesus' ascension.
Another more recent interpretation draws from the Secret Gospel of Mark. In this interpretation, two scenes from Secret Mark and one at Mark 14:51-52 feature the same young man or youth who is unnamed but seems closely connected to Jesus. As the account in Secret Mark details a raising from the dead very similar to Jesus' raising of Lazarus in John 11:38-44, the young man is identified as Lazarus and fixed as the Beloved Disciple.
None of the individual texts ever name the Beloved Disciple.
See also
References
- Charlesworth, James H. The Beloved Disciple: Whose Witness Validates the Gospel of John?. Trinity Press, 1995. ISBN 1563381354.
- Smith, Edward R. The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved: Unveiling the Author of John's Gospel. Steiner Books/Anthroposophic Press, 2000. ISBN 0880104864.
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