A suggestion regarding the beloved disciple.

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Ben C. Smith
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Re: A suggestion regarding the beloved disciple.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

TedM wrote:Wow, 24:12 - for some reason that wasn't in my memory at all. Interesting. Scales are tipping...

RE who the beloved is - I'm going to have to pass. I know that's the tradition but don't know how strong the support is for that. I find it to be a strange phrase "the disciple whom Jesus loved" - one that I would attribute to a woman, but I don't know the culture well enough and as you said the pronouns are masculine. My point was that it looks to me like by itself the phrases don't seem to be clearly artificial - it is only when making assumptions about priority of other passages that one starts to have that suspicion. BUT adding 24:12 to the mix makes your case stronger than I initially was seeing because I wouldn't expect 'the other disciple' to have been left out of that particular verse had he also ran to the tomb.
Fair enough.

See, I think that John was written with (an)other gospel account(s) in mind. First, after reporting in 3.22 the baptisms that Jesus was effecting along with his disciples in Judea, and then mentioning in 3.23 that John the baptist was simultaneously baptizing in Aenon near Salim, John goes on to say, "For John had not yet been cast into prison." Well, of course not, since he is still baptizing! But this comment has the effect, for those who have read the synoptics (especially Mark), of placing all of John 1.19-4.43 in between Mark 1.12-13 (the temptation of Jesus) and 1.14-15 (the preaching of Jesus, coming into Galilee after the imprisonment of John). Compare Mark 1.14a with John 4.43. Second, in 11.1-2 Mary is introduced by a service that she has not yet performed for Jesus. Mary does not perform this service for Jesus until 12.1-8, but readers of Mark would know already that a woman (anonymous in Mark) had done so from Mark 14.3-9.

Therefore, if John presumes Mark, then those passages about the beloved disciple are probably Johannine additions to the overall story, not Marcan subtractions from it. This is the source of my "assumptions about" the "priority of other passages," as you put it. Now, it could be that John is simply correcting the record, as it were, making sure that this disciple gets his fair due, since Mark seems to have left him out of things (there is no indication in John that the beloved disciple is John of Zebedee: none whatsoever). But is that the most likely option?

It is interesting, at least, that most of the relevant scenes involve Peter, who accesses Jesus only through the beloved disciple at the Last Supper, requires his services (assuming it is the same disciple) to get in to the high priest's courtyard, loses his race with him on the way to the tomb, and has to be told by him that "it is the Lord" in Galilee. This counterpositioning seems deliberate to me, whereas Mark's treatment seems wholly innocent of the very existence of this disciple. YMMV.
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FelixAndor
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Re: A suggestion regarding the beloved disciple.

Post by FelixAndor »

I believe it was Mary Magdalene.

She was present at all the major events, and there is some suggestion she was the daughter of a major family in the priesthood of the the Mysteries.

She would have been admitted to the garden when Peter was barred, and so on.
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Re: A suggestion regarding the beloved disciple.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

FelixAndor wrote:I believe it was Mary Magdalene.
Since there are several details in the gospel which specifically forbid Mary Magdalene from being the same person as the beloved disciple (masculine pronouns, "behold your son," Mary reporting news to Peter and to the beloved disciple), you will probably have to expand on this before you get any traction here with it.
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Re: A suggestion regarding the beloved disciple.

Post by Ben C. Smith »

How to derive the authorship of the Johannine literature from carefully reading texts instead of from traditions....

We often assume that there are traditions afloat in the early church whereby information known in one generation gets passed on to the next via channels now invisible to us. And I do not doubt that information can be disseminated in such a way. But there is also exegesis: the close reading of texts in order to derive information from them.

For this exercise I will be assuming my argument for the proposition that 1 and 2 John were once regarded as a single epistle. If one does not agree with that argument, the same results may be achieved by assuming that 2 John is nevertheless an early epistle, as early as (or nearly so, or earlier than) 1 John, and was simply too short to have made a huge splash in the documentary record:
  1. Papias knows of an elder, who presumably lived in Asia Minor, known as the elder John. All further steps in this process presume some knowledge that such a figure existed, whether said knowledge derives from Papias or just from common lore (this is the only element of possible tradition here, and even it can be ignored if Papias is the source).
  2. 2 John was written by someone who called himself "the elder" — it would be easy to assume that this is the elder John.
  3. 1 John shares so many themes and stylistic features with 2 John that even today scholars often assume a common authorship — it would be easy to assume that the elder John wrote both epistles, especially if my hypothesis that they were once bundled together is correct (but even if not).
  4. The gospel of John shares many themes and stylistic features with 1 John, including similar prologues (1 John 1.1-3; John 1.1-14) — it would be easy to assume that the elder John wrote the gospel, as well.
  5. John 21.24 says that it was the beloved disciple who "wrote these things," and 19.35 seems to apply to this disciple, too — it would be easy to assume that the elder John was this beloved disciple.
  6. The gospel of John calls Jesus Lord very frequently, including in several verses involving the beloved disciple (John 13.23, 25; 21.7, 20), and Papias calls seven men "disciples of the Lord" in his preface — it would be easy to apply the phrase "disciple of the Lord" to the elder John.
  7. The apocalypse of John attributes itself to a man named John (Revelation 1.9) who is writing to churches in Asia Minor — it would be easy to assume that this man is the same figure as the elder John, disciple of the Lord.
  8. The gospel texts and the Acts repeatedly list a certain John, a son of Zebedee, as an apostle — it would be easy to assume that John the elder is an apostle, and even that John the elder is this same John, the son of Zebedee.
None of this assumes that the elder who wrote 2 and 3 John was named John. None of this assumes that the John who penned an apocalypse is the same man who wrote any of the other Johannine literature. None of this assumes that the beloved disciple was named John even in the imagination of the author(s) of the fourth canonical gospel. The only assumptions are that certain texts (1 and 2 John, Papias) belong to a somewhat early period relative to Ptolemy, who was the first person who calls the author of the fourth canonical gospel John, an apostle and disciple of the Lord. If those assumptions are correct, then no invisible tradition is called for. The whole process can have proceeded directly from the texts in a very natural, virtually inevitable fashion.
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TedM
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Re: A suggestion regarding the beloved disciple.

Post by TedM »

Good points Ben. Thanks.
Ben C. Smith wrote: See, I think that John was written with (an)other gospel account(s) in mind. First, after reporting in 3.22 the baptisms that Jesus was effecting along with his disciples in Judea, and then mentioning in 3.23 that John the baptist was simultaneously baptizing in Aenon near Salim, John goes on to say, "For John had not yet been cast into prison." Well, of course not, since he is still baptizing! But this comment has the effect, for those who have read the synoptics (especially Mark), of placing all of John 1.19-4.43 in between Mark 1.12-13 (the temptation of Jesus) and 1.14-15 (the preaching of Jesus, coming into Galilee after the imprisonment of John). Compare Mark 1.14a with John 4.43. Second, in 11.1-2 Mary is introduced by a service that she has not yet performed for Jesus. Mary does not perform this service for Jesus until 12.1-8, but readers of Mark would know already that a woman (anonymous in Mark) had done so from Mark 14.3-9.

Therefore, if John presumes Mark, then those passages about the beloved disciple are probably Johannine additions to the overall story, not Marcan subtractions from it. This is the source of my "assumptions about" the "priority of other passages," as you put it. Now, it could be that John is simply correcting the record, as it were, making sure that this disciple gets his fair due, since Mark seems to have left him out of things (there is no indication in John that the beloved disciple is John of Zebedee: none whatsoever). But is that the most likely option?

It is interesting, at least, that most of the relevant scenes involve Peter, who accesses Jesus only through the beloved disciple at the Last Supper, requires his services (assuming it is the same disciple) to get in to the high priest's courtyard, loses his race with him on the way to the tomb, and has to be told by him that "it is the Lord" in Galilee. This counterpositioning seems deliberate to me, whereas Mark's treatment seems wholly innocent of the very existence of this disciple. YMMV.
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