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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2009
This article combines historical, literary, theological, and feminist criticism to inquire into the identity of the Beloved Disciple (BD) in the Fourth Gospel attempting to mediate between the theory of the BD as pure literary construct and the BD as a single historical individual. It proposes that the BD is a textual paradigm of ideal discipleship which is realized diversely in several characters in the text. This has ramifications for the textual identity of the evangelist and of the foundational Easter witness of the Johannine community. It suggests that women were more significant in leadership of the Johannine community than has been recognised in the past.
1 Charlesworth, James H., The Beloved Disciple: Whose Witness Validates the Gospel of John? (Valley Forge, Pennsylvania: Trinity International, 1995) 197–213,Google Scholar gives a succinct history of the theory and its status at present.
2 This term was coined by Bultmann, Rudolf, The Gospel of John: A Commentary, trans, by Beasley-Murray, G. R. (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1971 [orig. 1964]) 10–11.Google Scholar
3 I basically subscribe to the thesis of Culpepper, R. Alan in The Johannine School (SBLDS 26; Missoula, Montana: Scholars, 1975)Google Scholar that the Johannine community was, or included, a ‘school’ or community of Christian scholars and/or writers who collectively interpreted the witness of the Beloved Disciple and that that interpretation is embodied in the Fourth Gospel. I will nuance slightly the issue of how the Beloved Disciple is related to the members of the School. I also agree with Hengel, Martin, The Johannine Question, tr. by Bowden, J. (London: SCM/Philadelphia: Trinity Press International, 1989)Google Scholar that this School was headed by a single theological and spiritual genius who authored the Gospel.
4 When I use the term Great Church, capitalized, I mean the Christian movement as it was beginning to be unified by the acceptance of Petrine primacy and a tracing of origins to the apostolate of the Twelve and their coworkers, including Paul. This movement was underway even as the documents of the New Testament were being composed. I use the term in preference to ‘apostolic churches’ because I believe that the claim of the community of the Fourth Gospel is precisely that it is ‘apostolic’ in the sense of deriving its legitimacy directly from Jesus himself and holding the same faith (although understood in a superior way) as the other churches. The dispute is not over whether the Johannine community is apostolic but over who gets to define the meaning of apostolic, the Twelve alone or eyewitnesses whom Jesus legitimates through his commissioning and the gift of the Spirit.
5 Unlike Martin Hengel in The Johannine Question and Bauckham, Richard in ‘The Beloved Disciple as Ideal Author’, JSNT 49 (1993) 21–44Google Scholar, I do not equate the Beloved Disciple and the evangelist whom they identify as John the Elder.
6 Minear, P., ‘The Beloved Disciple in the Gospel of John’, NT 19 (1977) 123Google Scholar. Actually, Minear on p. 105 gives the best reason to continue the search, ‘The role of this disciple is too important to permit abandoning the search; the evidence is too baffling to permit a confident solution.’
7 Martin Hengel, The Johannine Question, esp. ch. 5.
8 Grassi, Joseph A., The Secret Identity of the Beloved Disciple (New York/Mahwah: Paulist, 1992)Google Scholar.
9 Stibbe, Mark W. G., John as Storyteller: Narrative Criticism and the Fourth Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1992) esp. pp. 76–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10 See note 1.
11 Valuable sources of virtually all the historical and contemporary writing on the subject are Charlesworth, The Beloved Disciple, esp. chs. 2 and 3; and Culpepper, R. Alan, John, the Son of Zebedee: The Life of a Legend (Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1994), esp. chs. 3, 9, and 10.Google Scholar
12 Charlesworth in The Beloved Disciple, ch. 3, supplies evidence that the exegetical discussion of the identity of the Beloved Disciple and the relation of the Beloved Disciple to the evangelist goes back much further than the last two decades. His overview of the literature on 22 individual or collective, Johannine or extra-Johannine, candidates for the role of Beloved Disciple is a real contribution.
13 The distinction hypothesis is defended by the majority of modern commentators but very recently Martin Hengel, followed by Richard Bauckham, has identified the two and named them as John the Elder.
14 Although current research tends more toward the theory that the Beloved Disciple was a real person, even if heavily idealized in the Gospel, Bultmann's thesis (perhaps influenced by A. Loisy) that the Beloved Disciple is a symbol of Gentile Christianity (cf. Bultmann, , The Gospel of John, 484Google Scholar) continues to attract followers.
15 The hypothesis that the Beloved Disciple was Lazarus has emerged as a kind of ‘front runner’ in recent years but, as Charlesworth has ably demonstrated in The Beloved Disciple, 127–224, there have been at least 17 other contenders throughout history and many are still live candidates today.
16 The major theories see the Beloved Disciple as the eye-witness authority behind the Gospel (e.g., Raymond Brown), a symbolic figure representing a Christianity of Gentile and non-Twelve origin rivalling Simon Peter who symbolizes the ‘apostolic churches’ of Jewish origin (e.g., Rudolf Bultmann and Margaret Pamment), a representative figure for the ideal disciple of Jesus (very common), or a presentation of the ideal author (e.g., Richard Bauckham).
17 An early article calling attention to this fact was published by Brown, Raymond, ‘Roles of Women in the Fourth Gospel’, TS 36 (1975) 688–99Google Scholar. I published a study of the women figures in ‘Women in the Fourth Gospel and the Role of Women in the Contemporary Church’, BTB 12 (1982) 35–45.Google Scholar
18 As indicated in note 3 there is a real problem in using the word ‘apostolic’ in relation to the Fourth Gospel. John does not use the term ‘apostle’ for persons, preferring the term ‘disciple’. Furthermore, there seems to be an ongoing rivalry between, on the one hand, Simon Peter and the ‘apostolic churches’ as Raymond Brown calls those tracing their legitimacy to the Twelve and, on the other hand, the Beloved Disciple who is not one of the Twelve but whose authority is based on eyewitness experience of Jesus (cf. Brown, Raymond E., TheCommunity of the Beloved Disciple [New York/Ramsey/Toronto: Paulist, 1979] 81–8)Google Scholar. When I use the term ‘apostolic’ in this article I intend to denote authentic ecclesial foundations, whether stemming from the Twelve or not. I have not found a better term since Christian legitimacy down through the centuries has been based on holding the faith that comes to us from the apostles and therefore restricting the term apostolic to the persons or communities associated with the Twelve seems to grant the premise, which I reject, that ‘apostles’ and ‘the Twelve’ were identical.
19 There are actually two sets of criteria for apostleship in the New Testament: to have accompanied Jesus during his earthly life (Acts 1.21–2) and to have seen the Risen Lord and been commissioned by him to preach the Gospel (cf. Gal 1.10–2.10; 1 Cor 9.1–2 and 15.8–10).
20 See Maccini, Robert G., Her Testimony is True: Women as Witnesses According to John (JSNTSup 125; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1996) esp. ch. 11.Google Scholar
21 See Powell, Mark Allen, What is Narrative Criticism? (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990) 19Google Scholar, for a brief discussion of the category of ‘implied reader’ in narrative criticism. The implied reader is distinct from any real historical reader but is a set of clues given in the text to the desired response to the text by real readers.
22 I have developed the theory that the face veil discovered in the tomb by the Beloved Disciple constituted a sign of the glorification in ‘The Face Veil: A Johannine Sign (John 20:1– 10)’, BTB 8 (1983) 94–7.Google Scholar
23 The category of ‘representative figures’ in John was developed by Collins, Raymond F., ‘The Representative Figures of the Fourth Gospel – I and II’, Downside Review 94 (1976) 26–46, 118–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar and has been generally accepted by scholars in the field.
24 There is, of course, a female form of ‘disciple’ in Greek, μαθήτρια, but it is generally used when the only person denoted is female and/or the intention is to highlight her gender. The masculine form, μαθητής, is used both for male disciples exclusively and for groups including both men and women or when there is no particular emphasis on female gender intended. A good example of all three uses is Acts 9.36–9 where Tabitha is called mu;αθήτρια when she alone is mentioned but the group of disciples which explicitly includes both the men (ἃνδρας) sent to Peter and the widows (ϰῆραι) who were Dorcas' companions are collectively called the disciples (οіμαθηταί). In other words, ‘disciple’ is a generic masculine.
25 Grassi, in The Secret Identity of the Beloved Disciple, 117–18, devotes a section at the end of his book to the topic, ‘A Note on This Close and Affectionate Male Relationship’, no doubt acknowledging the discomfort of some male commentators with the scene at the Supper.
26 See Culpepper, , John, the Son of Zebedee, ch. 5, pp. 107–38.Google Scholar
27 See the overview of this issue by Sloyan, Gerard S., ‘The Gnostic Adoption of John's Gospel and Its Canonization by the Church Catholic’, BTB 26 (1996) 125–32.Google Scholar
28 The thesis of egalitarian discipleship among the earliest Christian communities is substantiated in Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler, In Memory of Her: A Feminist Theological Reconstruction of Christian Origins (New York: Crossroad, 1983).Google Scholar
29 A number of significant studies of this topic have appeared recently. See, e.g. Marjanen, Annti, The Woman Jesus Loved: Mary Magdalene in the Nag Hammadi Library and Related Documents (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies; Leiden/New York/Köln: E. J. Brill, 1996)Google Scholar; Thompson, Mary R., Mary of Magdala: Apostle and Leader (New York/Mahwah: Paulist, 1995), esp. chs. 6 and 7Google Scholar; Ricci, Carla, Mary Magdalene and Many Others: Women whoFollowed Jesus (tr. Burns, Paul; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994)Google Scholar.
30 For a detailed treatment of Mary Magdalene in each document see Marjanen, The Woman Jesus Loved. For a more synthetic treatment of the data from the apocryphal literature against the background of an understanding of female leadership in the mediterranean world at the beginning of the Christian era, see Thompson, Mary ofMagdala
31 See note 23.
32 Collins, Raymond F., ‘From John to the Beloved Disciple: An Essay on Johannine Characters’, Interpretation 49 (1995) 367Google Scholar, notes that ‘the enigmatic Beloved Disciple plays only a minor role in the Fourth Gospel…. Nonetheless, the Beloved looms large in the narrative…. In his anonymity and stylization, the Beloved is the epitome of discipleship; he is the disciple par excellence … the Beloved believes unhesitatingly that Jesus is the Lord. Virtually reduced to a single trait, the Beloved is the consummate disciple and authentic witness to the rest of the story.’ I think Collins comes close to noting the reason the Beloved Disciple should be regarded as a textual paradigm but does not quite draw the conclusion.
33 Although Grassi in The Secret Identity of the Beloved Disciple does not propose that the Disciple is a textual paradigm he does make some interesting suggestions about others sharing this identity in some way. In particular, he claims that Mary Magdalene is ‘almost a counterpart of the beloved disciple … sharing the same role from a woman's unique standpoint’ (p. 90). If she and other disciples share the role, then the role is paradigmatic in the sense I am suggesting rather than individual.
34 Most recently Stibbe, , John as Storyteller, 56–72Google Scholar, presents the arguments for Lazarus.
35 It must be noted that in John, even in 21.15–17 which may well be the work of the ecclesiastical redactor, Simon Peter is not made shepherd but told to feed and tend Jesus' lambs and sheep.
36 The only uses of the term ‘the Twelve’ in John are negative: 6.67–71; 20.24.
37 Actually, I agree with Martin Hengel who, in The Johannine Question, maintains that the evangelist was the pre-eminent member or leader of the School. See his summary hypothesis on pp. 102–8.
38 I have developed this point in ‘A Case Study: A Feminist Interpretation of John 4:1–42’, The Revelatory Text: Interpreting the New Testament as Sacred Scripture (San Francisco: Harper, 1991) 180–99.Google Scholar See also the article by Pazden, Mary Margaret, ‘Nicodemus and the Samaritan Woman: Contrasting Models of Discipleship’, BTB 17 (1987) 145–8.Google Scholar
39 Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schüssler in BUT SHE SAID: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation (Boston: Beacon, 1992) 28Google Scholar, attributes to me the position that John was written by a woman evangelist. This is not quite accurate, as the foregoing argument should make clear. I think the gender as well as the specific identity of the evangelist is and will remain unavailable to us. But that means that it is no more self-evident that the evangelist was male than female and, as I have tried to show, there are some good reasons to entertain the hypothesis of female identity.
