WEEK 49 | THURSDAY | JOHN 13.21-30

So, the way John refers to himself as "the one whom Jesus loved" several times... is that more of a normal kind of thing in writing from this time? The author using a phrase to refer to themself? Because it mostly just feels almost tacky the way he makes himself sound so special, haha.

There has been a lot of discussion about the description of "the one whom Jesus loved" for centuries. Traditionally and based upon the Last Supper material in the other gospels, this is John—although the Gospel of John itself never makes this clear.

John 21:24 says that the core of the Gospel of John is based upon this disciple's testimony and writing: 

'This is the disciple who testifies about these things and has written these things, and we know that his testimony is true.'

The Gospel of John could be an edited version of the collected testimonies and writings of this disciple done by and for a community that knew him. I have in my own head the idea that perhaps this disciple did not want the focus to be on his own role or identity and maybe requested that those persons doing the final editing not include his name. But everything regarding this is theory.

There are some who have made the case that the disciple whom Jesus loved refers to Lazarus, since Lazarus is the other one in the Gospel that is described as being loved by Jesus:

So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, look, the one you love is sick.” When Jesus heard this, he said, “This sickness will not lead to death, but to God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” (Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.) (John 11.3–5 NET)

Jesus wept. Thus the people who had come to mourn said, “Look how much he loved him!” (John 11.35–36 NET)

Ben Witherington III is a NT scholar and professor at Asbury Seminary, and he is one who makes this case. Here are some of the reasons listed in one of his blog posts:

There are many clues both in what is absent from this Gospel and what is present. To start with, there are no sons of Zebedee references in this Gospel except in the Epilogue in John 21. There is no calling of the Zebedees by the lake, no story about their presence at the raising of Jairus’ daughter, no story about their presence on the Mount of Transfiguration, no story about them asking Jesus for the box seats in the Kingdom. This is very odd if this Gospel is supposed to be the personal, eyewitness testimony of John son of Zebedee, and let me just say that the first time anyone seems to have claimed he wrote this is between the middle and end of the second century in the persons of Justin Martyr and then Irenaeus. The labels at the beginning of the Gospels are later additions to these documents, not part of the inspired text of the document itself. Nevertheless, I think there is a John who collected these eyewitness accounts and edited them and gave them to us all as a biography of Jesus— his name is John of Patmos, a member of the church in Ephesus, and the person who was exiled to Patmos and had those remarkable visions recorded in Revelation. He is not John son of Zebedee, who seems to have been martyred early in the first century like his brother, and just as Jesus himself said they would be (‘you will be baptized with the same baptism as I will undergo’).

Scholars today have increasingly recognized that the Fourth Gospel is the testimony of a Judean disciple, whether or not it is by Lazarus, for it has none of the famous Galilean miracle tales found in the Synoptics, apart from the feeding of the 5,000/walking on water tandem. That is the only Galilean miracle found in all four Gospels. Uniquely in this Gospel we hear about the healing of a paralytic, but where— at the pool of Bethesda in Jerusalem. Uniquely we hear in this Gospel about the healing of a man born blind, but where— at the pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, and of course we have the unique raising of Lazarus in Bethany, a suburb of Jerusalem. We have no exorcisms in this Gospel and no proper parables, two things that absolutely dot the landscape in the three earlier Gospels. Instead we have seven I am sayings, seven discourses (e.g. ‘I am the bread of life’), and seven sign narratives— mighty miracle stories ranging from turning water into gallons of Gallo, to raising Lazarus from the dead.

The references to the Beloved Disciple only begin in John 11, and continue then all the way to John 21. Lazarus is the bridge figure that links the Book of Signs and the Book of Glory. So, for instance we find Jesus reclining at table in Bethany in John 12. One wonders what they talked about ‘What was it like on the other side of the afterlife— did you see a bright light etc.’ One wonders what questions Peter asked Lazarus at that dinner. It is also at that dinner that Mary, as an act of gratitude, anoints Jesus’ feet. This is the same story we find in Mark 14, which is said to take place at the house of Simon the leper.

Here we may have an aha moment! Let us say Simon is the father of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, and that he did indeed die of Hanson’s disease. This would immediately set off alarms in the Jewish community there about contagious diseases, and this may explain not only why Mary, Martha, and Lazarus are still single, living together as adults, and perhaps also Lazarus succumbed at a too early age to the same disease. In any case, John l1 told us that Jesus raised ‘the one whom he loved’ from the dead (the only person in this whole Gospel about whom that is said-that Jesus loved him in particular), John 12 has the celebratory response in their house, and then in John 13 we hear about the famous footwashing story, and again Jesus reclines with the Beloved Disciple. The normal dining protocol is that the chief guest reclines on the same couch with the host— in this case the Beloved Disciple. So both those meals are early during Passover week and in the house of Lazarus.

Let us then move forward to the story of Jesus’ capture, but we must bear in mind that John 11 told us that ‘the Jews’ that is the Jewish authorities from Jerusalem had attended the mourning of Lazarus, and were present when Jesus arrived four days late. They knew Lazarus quite well. This then explains not only why we get the personal name of the high priest’s slave, Malchus, whose ear Jesus healed at his capture, an ear severed by Peter, but also how the Beloved Disciple was able to waltz right into the high priest’s house, while Peter had to stand out in the courtyard warming his hands. The Beloved Disciple was not an unknown Galilean follower of Jesus like Peter. He was a Judean follower of Jesus, namely Lazarus.
Fast forward again to the crucifixion. There is the Beloved Disciple at the foot of the cross, receiving Jesus last will and testimony. The Synoptics tell us the Twelve were nowhere to be found. Judas had betrayed Jesus and hung himself. Peter had denied Jesus 3 times and like the others had hid or fled. But not the Beloved Disciple. He’s right there to the bitter end with Jesus. He is not a member of the Twelve, he is Lazarus, to whom Jesus bequeathed his mother. This why, according to Acts 1.14 Mary is still in Jerusalem awaiting Pentecost. She is staying in Bethany with Lazarus and family.

Fast forward again to John 20. Mary Magdalene reports Jesus has arisen and she has seen him alive and has commissioned her— she preaches the first Easter sermon. Peter and the Beloved Disciple race to the tomb, but the Beloved Disciple knows just where it is, and gets there first. Peter is puzzled by the empty tomb, but not the Beloved Disciple. Indeed, John 20 says ‘he saw the rolled up grave clothes and the empty tomb and believed, even though they did not know yet from the Scriptures Jesus must rise from the dead’. He had seen this movie before, indeed he had experienced it. God had raised Jesus just as God had raised the Beloved Disciple himself. Lazarus knew from experience, not from Scripture, what had happened.
 
Finally, fast forward to John 21. Here we learn that the BD had written down his memoirs and that after Jesus told Peter he would be martyred one day, Peter had asked what about the BD, and Jesus replied, ‘if it is my will he live until I return, what is that to you— follow me’. But then we have the disclaimer by the editor— Jesus did not say the BD would live until the second coming, it was a conditional statement. But one can understand why the BD’s community might think he would do so— after all, Jesus had already raised him from the dead once. They may have thought he would surely not die again. I’m not an archaeologist, nor do I play one on TV, but I would love to find Lazarus’ tombstone— it would say ‘died 29 A.,D., and then died, 90 A.D.’. That would confuse some people.

The end of John 21 tells us that the Johannine community had gathered the BDs written testimony, edited it, and made it available to us all— ‘this is the testimony of the BD and we know his testimony is true’. This is surely the voice of the final editor— John, returned from exile, and the one who shaped this Gospel into the form we have it now.

The Fourth Gospel is an eyewitness testimony of the leader of the Judean disciples of Jesus, just as Peter and his testimony as the leader of the Twelve Galileans is found in the Synoptics. We now can say with a high degree of likelihood we know who this Beloved Disciple actually was— not John son of Zebedee, or any other John, but rather Lazarus— ‘the one whom Jesus loved’.