One of the unusual elements of the Gospel of John is its frequent references to an unnamed disciple "whom Jesus loved." The phrase is first used during the scene of the Last Supper, found in the thirteenth chapter of the gospel. Jesus has just predicted that he would be betrayed; the disciples wonder who could be the traitor.
23One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was lying close to the breast of Jesus; 24so Simon Peter beckoned to him and said, "Tell us who it is of whom he speaks." 25So lying thus, close to the breast of Jesus, he said to him, "Lord, who is it?"
Dinner parties in the ancient world were often furnished with long chairs that seated two men apiece; they resembled what we would today call a settee. It seems that in this scene, Jesus is sharing one of these settees with the disciple he loved the most, which is why the other disciples think that he (the "beloved disciple") might be the best person to ask what Jesus is thinking. Note that since Peter is named in this scene, logic dictates that Peter can't be the Beloved Disciple.
The Beloved Disciple also has an important role to play in the story of the crucifixion. In 19:25-27, he is one of the people standing at the foot of the cross as Jesus dies.
26When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said to his mother, "Woman, behold, your son!" 27Then he said to the disciple, "Behold, your mother!" And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.
A few verses later, the narrative says that after Mary Magdalene discovers that Jesus' tomb is empty, Peter and the Beloved Disciple run to go see. When Jesus makes an appearance after his resurrection in 21:4-6, the Beloved Disciple is also the first to recognize him.
But the most intriguing reference to the Beloved Disciple, and the reason why readers of the New Testament are so keen to work out his identity once and for all, is found in John 21:20-24.
20Peter turned and saw following them the disciple whom Jesus loved, who had lain close to his breast at the supper and had said, "Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?" 21When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, "Lord, what about this man?" 22Jesus said to him, "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!" 23The saying spread abroad among the brethren that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say to him that he was not to die, but "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?" 24This is the disciple who is bearing witness to these things, and who has written these things; and we know that his testimony is true.
John's typically wordy style can obscure some of the interesting things that are going on in this passage. First of all, it seems clear from verse 24 that the Beloved Disciple is the man who wrote the gospel of John. However, the issue is more complicated than that, since it's implied that the Beloved Disciple is dead by the time the Gospel was written -- or at the very least, close enough to death that people can make fun of the Johannine community for thinking he wouldn't die. This verse seems to be a weirdly defensive argument directed against those who would use Jesus' words against the community. The author is making the somewhat shrill case that Jesus never actually said that the disciple would never die; that it was all a misunderstanding; and that the death of the Beloved Disciple therefore does not disprove the claims of the gospel.
Other Clues
There are a few references to a disciple who is not explicitly called "beloved," but who may well be the same man. Raymond Brown has argued that the "other" disciple who joins Jesus after hearing John the Baptist preach in John 1:35-40 was the beloved one; perhaps he is not called beloved in these verses because at this point he is not yet known to Jesus. Later, in 18:15, there is a disciple who is given special access to the high priest's courtyard after Jesus has been arrested. He persuades the gatekeeper to let Peter in behind him. Brown believes that this, too, is the beloved disciple. Finally, a witness whose "testimony is true" is mentioned in 19:35, which seems to gel with the material in chapter 21.
So Who Is The Beloved Disciple?
As you can probably guess by the fact that the document is called "the Gospel of John," the Christian tradition has generally identified the Beloved Disciple with the apostle John, the son of Zebedee, and therefore assumes that the author of the gospel is that same John. This is what Irenaeus believed around the end of the second century: "John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia" (Against Heresies 3.1). The same opinion seems to have been held by Clement of Alexandria, the anonymous author of the Muratorian canon, and, a few generations later, the church historian Eusebius. Thus the idea that the author of the gospel = John of Zebedee = the Beloved Disciple is very ancient.
John of Zebedee is never mentioned by name in the gospel of John, but he is a prominent character in the Synoptic gospels; he also seems to be one of the "pillars of the church" mentioned in Galatians alongside Peter/Cephas and James. Since John is clearly a member of Jesus' inner circle in this tradition, and since the synoptics imply that only the members of the inner circle were present at the last supper, it seems logical to associate John with the Beloved Disciple.
There are problems with this view, however -- not the least of which is that the synoptics portray John of Zebedee as a rustic fisherman, while the gospel of John is an erudite document, filled with sophisticated Hellenistic philosophical language. Moreover, it may be misleading to assume that the author of the gospel should care about John of Zebedee; the character may be big in the synoptic tradition (the argument goes), but that doesn't mean that he necessarily hit the radar of the author of the Fourth Gospel.
Other candidates for the position of beloved disciple include, in roughly descending order of likelihood:
- Lazarus, who is raised from the dead in John's gospel but who does not appear in the synoptics. When Lazarus first succumbs to the disease that will kill him (for the first time, anyway), his sister approaches Jesus and says "Lord, he whom you love is ill" (11:3). We're told at least two more times that Jesus loved Lazarus (in 11:5 and 11:36). He also reclines with Jesus at a meal in 12:2.
- An ideal figure, that is to say, not an actual character but a sort of literary stand-in for the "perfect disciple." People who see John as a very Gnostic gospel sometimes argue that the author does not need to populate his book with historical characters, since Gnosticism was very much concerned with philosophical ideals.
- Judas Iscariot, oddly enough. Personally I find a compelling drama in the idea that the disciple that Jesus loves the most is the same man who betrays him. Unfortunately there is very little evidence to support this theory (and John 13:21 seems like a strong argument against it). However, the idea that Judas was beloved became popular among some novelists; Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ is one of the better-known works of fiction that portrays Judas as a hero, and the idea leaves some traces in Jesus Christ Superstar as well.
- Mary Magdalene. There is an obvious gender problem here; the pronouns that are used to refer to the Beloved Disciple are always masculine. However, some scholars, following Ramon Jusino, have made the case that Mary was anonymized and masculinized by an ecclesiastical tradition that was embarrassed by a woman's closeness to Jesus (to say nothing of her authorship of a gospel!). It's true that Mary Magdalene was given great honour in some Gnostic circles. She was explicitly described as a disciple in the apocryphal Gospel of Mary, which only survives in fragments.
- Bartholomew, Nathanael, and other "minor" disciples who are mentioned here and there.
I realize that I haven't actually answered the question that was asked in the heading. I have some theories about the relationship between each of these characters, the "Beloved Disciple", and the author of the document known as the Gospel of John, but I'd just as soon have you read the book yourself and draw your own conclusions.
Further Reading:
I draw my Biblical quotations from the RSV. Quotations from Irenaeus have been taken from the public domain translations of the Church Fathers available at the Christian Classics Ethereal Library.
A scholarly introduction to the issues described in this node can be found in Raymond E. Brown's The Community of the Beloved Disciple, published by the Paulist Press in 1979.
A nice comparative analysis of the conflicting disciple-lists in the New Testament, including some discussion of the Beloved Disciple, can be found on this web page: http://www.hccentral.com/eller8/part2.html
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