Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

JOHN

The son of Zebedee and brother of James. He was a fisherman who grew up on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee (Mark 1:19-20). Because of their fiery tempers, John and his brother were nicknamed Boanerges, “sons of thunder” (Mark 3:17).

The earliest textual evidence for John is in Paul’s letter to the Galatians (ca. 52 c.e.), in which he mentions John (along with James the brother of Jesus and Cephas/Peter) as an “acknowledged pillar” in the Jerusalem church (Gal. 2:9). Mark’s Gospel, used by Matthew and Luke, is the primary NT source of biographical information about John. John and Jesus’ other 11 disciples play a significant role in Mark’s Gospel, although primarily as negative role models. Scholars suggest that, like Paul before him, Mark portrays the disciples negatively in order to challenge their authoritative position in the Jerusalem church. If so, then John’s special position as one of the inner circle of Jesus’ three disciples (Mark 5:37; 9:2; 14:33; cf. Acts 3:1; 4:1) may be largely a retrojection of Mark’s peculiar concern in 70 c.e. back into the ministry of Jesus. However, other biographical details about John seem less likely to have been invented by the early Church.

Five NT documents bear the name John: the Gospel of John, the three epistles of John, and Revelation. However, these titles were not originally part of the documents, and the name John occurs only in the book of Revelation. Justin Martyr (ca. 160) was the first to connect John, the visionary of the book of Revelation, with “John, an apostle of Christ.” The Muratorian Canon (dated variously from 190 to 350) is probably the earliest extant evidence that attributes all five documents to the Apostle John. But with the rise of historical criticism in the late 18th century, scholars began to question whether any of the five canonical documents could legitimately be traced back to John the Apostle. Differences in literary styles and a growing appreciation for the politics of authorship in the early Church led scholars to propose two other shadowy figures as possible authors of these texts. John “the elder” (2 John 1, 3 John 1, , Papias) — presumed by many to be totally different from the apostle — might be the actual author of at least two of the epistles and the Fourth Gospel. Another possibility is the “beloved disciple” who appears as a witness to Jesus’ passion and validates the Fourth Gospel (John 13:23; 19:26; 20:2; 21:7, 20). Some scholars suggest that the early Church may have melded these two individuals, along with the visionary of Revelation, into a single figure named John, the disciple of Jesus.

Between the 2nd and 5th centuries, texts purporting to be written by the Apostle John and legends about him continued to appear. These traditions help solidify and legitimate the peculiarities of Johannine theology within the canon and within the Church’s developing christological debates. It is during this period that Salome was identified as the mother of John (Mark 15:40-41; John 19:25), thus making John Jesus’ cousin and his youngest disciple. It is also during this time that church tradition identified John as the beloved disciple of the Fourth Gospel and the author of the book of Revelation. According to some traditions, John took Mary the mother of Jesus to Ephesus (Justin Martyr Dial. 81.4), from which he was exiled to the island of Patmos. He was eventually released, and returned to Ephesus to teach, where the young Christian, Papias, met him and came to know him as “John, the elder.” John the elder, the apostle, and beloved cousin of Jesus, then died at an advanced age ca. 100, the last of the living apostles.

Bibliography. R. E. Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (New York, 1979); J. Charlesworth, The Beloved Disciple (Valley Forge, 1995); R. A. Culpepper, John, the Son of Zebedee (Columbia, S.C., 1994); W. H. Wuellner, The Meaning of “Fishers of Men” (Philadelphia, 1967).

Jeffrey L. Staley

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

JOHN

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)