John

Abstract The John of the stories in this chapter is the son of Zebedee, one of the inner core of Jesus ‘ twelve disciples, the other two being John ‘s brother, James, and Simon Peter. The New Testament has John present at some of the most poignant moments in Jesus ‘ ministry, the raising of Jairus ‘ daughter (Mark 5: 37), the Transfiguration (Mark 9: 2-8), and the agony in the Garden of Gethsemane (Mark 14: 33). From the second century onwards he has been commonly accepted as the author of the Fourth Gospel (the Gospel of John) and identified as the anonymous ‘beloved disciple ‘ who appears several times in that Gospel. If this is a correct identification, then it is John to whom Jesus entrusts his mother at his death. For that reason, the figures at the foot of Jesus ‘ cross on rood screens in churches, and in other representations of the death of Jesus, are named as John, and the Virgin Mary. Some modem scholars accept that this John is the author of the first, if not all three, of the letters of John in the New Testament. Tradition also has this same John the author of the Book of Revelation-the John of Patmos-but many critical problems make such an identification unlikely. In the rest of the New Testament John appears in the Acts of the Apostles as a companion of Peter in Jerusalem; and Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians 2 knows John as one of the pillars of the church. Beyond the New Testament it is to the Acts of John that we tum for many of the later traditions about this apostle. The remains of the ancient Acts of John, which dates from the second century, have had to be reconstructed from several later sources, as is the case with most of the other apocryphal Acts.