John the Apostle (d. late 1st century). He was a son of Zebedee who with his brother James and Peter belonged to the small group of Apostles of Christ, who were privileged witnesses of special events such as the raising of Jairus' daughter and especially the Transfiguration and the Agony in the Garden. James and John were called by the Lord ‘Boanerges’ or ‘sons of thunder’; their ardent temperament was revealed both in their wishing to call down fire from Heaven on the Samaritans who rejected Christ and in their willingness to drink of the cup of suffering as witnesses to the Lord. This was verified in the case of James by his early martyrdom and in that of John by his suffering (according to ecclesiastical tradition) under Domitian's persecution, from which, however, he escaped alive and ended his days at an advanced age at Ephesus.
The tradition that identifies John as the author of the Fourth Gospel goes back to the 2nd century. It is certain, thanks to the discovery of the Chester-Beatty fragment, that this Gospel was in writing in the early 2nd century or earlier. This fragment is far older than that of any extract from the synoptic gospels. Although the Johannine authorship has been much disputed over the last century or more, it is strongly supported by internal as well as external reasons. There seems no compelling reason for rejecting the identification of John with the beloved disciple of the Gospel who was a witness of the events he describes. But he wrote about them in a contemplative way, emphasizing the theological reality and presupposing in his readers a knowledge of Christ's life, portrayed by the synoptic gospels. Above all he clearly stressed the Divinity of Christ, who is both Light and Life, and the importance of Charity (agape) which is the bond between Father and Son and between Christ and his disciples, as well as between the disciples themselves. Traditionally he wrote his Gospel towards the end of his life at the end of the 1st century, including within it inspired meditation on the truths he had witnessed. In this case it would have been written after the First Epistle of John. The Revelation or Apocalypse, however, although also ascribed to him, is so different in thought, style, and content from the genuine Johannine writings that John's personal authorship of it in any normally accepted sense seems unlikely.
After the Resurrection John, who had taken the Blessed Virgin Mary, following Christ's words on the Cross, as his adopted mother, was prominent in the early Church. Not only was he among the earliest witnesses of the Risen Lord, but he also shared in the preaching, organization, and even imprisonment of Peter, towards whom he was subordinate. Later he settled at Ephesus. Various anecdotes are related of him there by Clement of Alexandria and others, such as his recorded fear that the baths at which the heretic Cerinthus was bathing would fall down because he was in them, or again his repeated exhortation to his followers to love one another, which, often repeated, caused them tedium, but which he emphasized because ‘it is the word of the Lord and if you keep it, you do enough’.
Other traditions have had a more direct influence on artistic representations. These include a cup with a viper in it as his emblem, in memory of the challenge to him by a high priest of Diana at Ephesus to drink a poisoned cup. Another symbol is a book, while in evangelist portraits his emblem appropriately is an eagle. One hundred and eighty-one ancient churches and not a few modern ones are dedicated to him. He must have been a very familiar figure to medieval people though being represented on rood-screens, while the iconography of medieval apocalypses often include a series of pictures of his life. He is often represented in the West with John the Baptist, as on the stole of Cuthbert, embroidered at Winchester during the 9th century. A copy of the Gospel of John, written in uncials at Wearmouth–Jarrow in the 7th century and placed in Cuthbert's tomb, is now in the British Library. John is patron of theologians, writers, and all who work at the production of books.
Feast: in the East, 26 September; in the West, 27 December and 6 May, the Dedication of the church of St. John before the Latin Gate, which also commemorates his legendary escape from being plunged into a cauldron of boiling oil under Domitian. But in early times there was some confusion in the date of his feast: in some places it was kept with that of St. James the Less, in others there seems to have been some confusion with St. John the Baptist; but the feast of 27 December is very ancient, appropriately close to Christmas Day. In England both feasts were kept almost universally in the Middle Ages.
Bibliography
Click here for a list of abbreviations used in this bibliography.
- F. M. Braun, Jean le Théologien et son évangile dans l'Église ancienne (1959), pp. 301–93; F. L. Cross (ed.), Studies in the Fourth Gospel (1957); id., ‘St. John on Patmos’, New Testament Studies, ix (1963), 75–85; recent studies of the fourth Gospel include those by C. H. Dodd (1953 and 1963), C. K. Barrett (1955), M. J. Lagrange (1924), R. H. Lightfoot (ed. C. F. Evans, 1956), E. Malatesta, St. John's Gospel 1920–65; a cumulative and classified bibliography (1967). See also J. Ashton, The Interpretation of John (1986) and Understanding the Fourth Gospel (1991); Raymund Brown, The Community of the Beloved Disciple (1979)
