John in Louisville, Kentucky, listening on Sirius radio. John, you are on with Jimmy
Akin, what's your question? Jimmy, hi, how are you guys? Just fine. Okay so I'm in a Christian
Scripture...title of the course for a Certificate of Pastoral Ministry. Okay, I was
also going to say, sounds like we're in a car, but okay. Or a wind tunnel. Is
your Christian course with you in the car? No, I'm not doing both at the same time
Okay. Does the car have windows? Go ahead and roll them up. No, sorry. Okay. All right
John, I'm sorry, I shouldn't have bothered you. Go ahead. So first of all is the John the
Apostle whom Jesus loved, and John the author of the Gospel,
and John of Patmos, all the same John? It's a very interesting question, and the
church doesn't have a teaching here. This is not a matter of doctrine or dogma,
it's something on which Catholics can have different opinions. And that's
something that Pope Benedict actually talked about. If you read his discussions
about this he gave, for example, some audiences on the Johannine
literature in the New Testament, which you can look up on the Vatican's website.
He also talked about the Johannine literature in Volume One of his "Jesus of
Nazareth" series, and one of the things that he discusses is the fact that this
literature doesn't lock us down into a single option regarding who is exactly
who. And he says at one point that it was evidently the intent of the author to
leave the matter "shrouded in mystery," to use his phrase. Having said that, there
are some clues we can use to try to figure it out. Now one of the things I
need to kind of separate is the John the disciple who Jesus loved--you
mentioned that is one of the options--actually there's a question there:
Is John (the disciple that is referred to) John the Apostle (the disciple that Jesus
loved in the Gospel of John)? It's kind of tangled to say it that way, but
there's a question: Is John, son of Zebedee, the Beloved Disciple? And there's
an argument that he is. One of the things that there's--and it's been put
various ways--but one of the things you find out, when you read the Gospel of
John and you're being attentive to the clues, is that the author is apparently
someone who has intimate access to Jesus, because he's described as the
disciple that Jesus loved. Now that could be kind of literary artifice, because you
could say, well, Jesus loves all of his disciples, and the Beloved Disciple
felt loved by Jesus and so he's mentioning himself this way as a way of
emphasizing Jesus's love without saying "Jesus didn't also love other people in
the same way." Or it may mean, no, Jesus had a special affection for him. So both of
those are possibilities. But he does seem to have a bit of an access to Jesus, because
at the Last Supper he's the one who seated closest to Jesus, closer even than
Saint Peter. Now some people have said, "Okay, well, if he's a close disciple of
Jesus, that would put him in the twelve, and it would also put him presumably in
the core group of the twelve, which was like Peter, Andrew, James, and John. And,
well he can't be Peter, because he's just distinguished himself from Peter, because
Peter is seated farther away at the Last Supper. He wouldn't be Andrew either,
because he's keeping his name quiet throughout the Gospel, he's deliberately
not identifying himself, and he does identify Andrew early on, and so it
wouldn't be Andrew. That would leave James and John the son
of Zebedee, but we know from the end of John's Gospel there was a rumor that
this John would not die. Well guess what? James son of Zebedee died in, like, AD
42-43, and so there was no rumor about him that survived
about "He's not gonna die." So if it is one of the four core disciples, then John
would be the one who's left. So there's an argument that John son of Zebedee is
the Beloved Disciple. There's also an argument that he's not. One of the things
you find when you read in the Church Fathers is, there's another disciple, also
known as John, who was an eyewitness of Jesus's ministry. He was not one of the
Apostles, but he was an eyewitness and he's known as John the Elder. And some
early Christian sources, including Saint Jerome, attribute at least some of the
Johannine books in the New Testament to this John the Elder. Specifically, they
will attribute 2 and 3 John, because-- to the Elder--because they're not
addressed from--it doesn't say at the beginning "From John to so-and-so," it says
"From the elder to so-and-so," and a number of early Christian sources say, "Okay,
that's who's writing these. It's not John the Apostle, it's John the Elder." And
actually that's the position that Pope Benedict also took, that at least
those two books were written by John the Elder. What's the relationship, then
between John the Apostle and John the Elder? Well, they're two
different guys; they apparently were both buried at Ephesus, that's one of the
things that we're told by early Christian sources. And that could give
rise to confusion between the two. If you have two guys who were both eyewitnesses
of Jesus, both named John, and they're both buried in Ephesus, it's easy to see
how people could get the two of them mixed up. And so that could be part of what's
going on in our struggle to figure out who wrote exactly what in the New
Testament. In terms of the argument that John the author of John's Gospel might
be somebody other than John the Apostle, there are some interesting points. One
point is that even though he's not identified by his first name, John
the Apostle is mentioned in the Gospel of John. He's mentioned as one of the two
sons of Zebedee when they go to the Sea of Galilee. And so there's a kind
of a minor argument that if he's really trying to keep his identity secret, why
would he mention himself that way? It seems more likely that the Beloved
Disciple is one of the two completely unnamed disciples who was there on that
occasion. Also whenever you look at where this disciple appears in the Gospel of
John, he tends to appear--with a few exceptions--he tends to appear in
Jerusalem, he doesn't seem to be following Jesus on a regular basis
through Galilee. He seems to be a native of Jerusalem. He also seems to be an
upper-class aristocratic, and likely priestly
resident of Jerusalem, because the high priest knows him personally. When
Jesus has been betrayed and they're taking him to the house of the high
priest to interrogate Jesus, John is immediately given access, because the the
servant girl who's keeping the door knows him because the high priest knows
him. So he's a familiar person in the household of the high priest. This is
very unlikely for a Galilean fisherman, and in fact we know that because she
doesn't know Peter. She keeps him out, and John has to go and get Peter brought in,
which he again does because he's known in the household of the high priest. So
that could suggest he's an aristocratic inhabitant of Jerusalem who
may himself belong to the priestly class, if he's on a first-name basis with the
high priest. Also, there's a question of: Why would John the Apostle be seated
higher than Peter at the Last Supper? Because that's the kind of thing that's
going to provoke some dissension. And if he's one of the Apostles and
he's being seated higher than Peter, that's going to cause confusion. So maybe
there's another explanation why someone would be seated next to Jesus on that
occasion. And a very plausible answer that's been proposed is: he was the house
owner. Because if your host is there at the Last Supper, it would be
natural to seat the host next to the guest of honor. And it would make sense
to have, therefore, John of Jerusalem, if we want to call
him that, seated next to Jesus, and Peter in second place. So could--and this is a
proposal some have entertained--could the Zebedees have owned a
property in Jerusalem that then became the site of the Last Supper? So maybe
John son of Zebedee could have been seated there as kind of the son of the
house owner, and thus the representative of the family? Well, it's possible they
could have owned a house in Jerusalem, but here's the problem with that: If you
look in the synoptic Gospels, and specifically if you look in Luke, Jesus
sends two of his disciples to find a representative of this household to
arrange for them to have the Last Supper there. And He tells them, you know, go find
a guy who's carrying water on his head and it was gonna lead you back to this
house, and tell the householder we want to have the Passover here. Well, guess
what two disciples he sends? In Luke, it's Peter and John. And so it would--if this
was John's house--it wouldn't make a lot of sense to send John to go find this
servant with the water jar and go back and ask the householder. Jesus would just
say, "John, let's have it at your place." So there's an interesting argument to be
made that maybe the Beloved Disciple is a different John. That's also...and
there are also hybrid solutions. Now, we know the Beloved Disciple's the author of
this Gospel, because he identifies himself as such late in the Gospel. Some
have proposed a kind of hybrid solution; for example, if you look at what Pope
Benedict wrote in "Jesus of Nazareth," his proposal is that the Beloved Disciple is
John son of Zebedee, but that the gospel in its final form was written by John
the Elder. So there's a kind of hybrid possibility there. Other people, like the
scholar Richard Balcom, have thought that it was John the Elder who wrote the
Gospel. Others have said "Well maybe Revelation was written by John the Elder,"
that was a position favored by the church historian Eusebius in the 400s--er,
300s, the 4th century, and there are other solutions yet. So the Church doesn't have
a teaching on this, it's something that is a very interesting question to
explore; the majority opinion has been that John
the Apostle wrote all this stuff, but what's important is not specifically the
historical individual that wrote it, but that it's both historically reliable, and
more importantly, divinely inspired. And as long as that's guaranteed, people can
discuss and have different opinions about who precisely the inspired author
was. Does that help you, John? Sure does, thank you. I wish I had about
five months with you, but I don't, so... At some point, maybe.