You must be wondering why I repeated the title for this post. This morning I received in my email a comment from "Jim" telling me that what I wrote about the Apostle John was not substantiated with scriptures and thereby inaccurate.
I am sorry if I have cause Jim any inconvenience. If we would all turn to the Bible and look at the 5 instances where the phrase "the disciple whom Jesus loved" we would get a better appreciation of where I am coming from - John 13:22/ John 19:26 / John 20:2 / John 21:7 / John 21:20.
Jewish customs tell us that the youngest member of the family gets to sit on the right side of the father during the Pesak meal (Passover Feast) and it is their custom that the youngest would prompt the father to re-tell the Passover account during the meal - part of their oral tradition and is still being practise in Jewish homes. Now the Apostle John is the youngest member of His team (some bible scholars think he was a teenager when he followed Jesus) and therefore gets to sit next to Jesus at the table and it is customary for the Jews in Jesus' time to sit reclining when they eat (resting on their left elbow and leaning back on the chest of the person on his left) and so when you look at John 13:22, we get a hint that it was John who was that "disciple whom Jesus loved".
When Jesus was nailed to the cross, He commissioned the disciple whom he loved to take care of His mother after He had departed from them. Who would you think is this disciple? It is not recorded any more after this verse but if we look at some of the archeological records from Capernaum, we might get a hint. When we visited Israel 5-1/2 years and again 4 years ago, right at the entrance to the ancient city of Capernaum hung a plaque stating that this town was the town of Jesus (meaning that He made it His hometown after He was rejected from Nazareth) and among some of the artefacts was a stone with the carvings "Family of Zebedee". Well, James and john were the sons of Zebedee who once wanted Jesus to command fire from Heaven to reign down on a Samaritan village who did not welcome them into their village (Luke 9:54) and so they must have great influence (and means) in Capernaum to be able to have such expensive carvings left at strategic places.
Also note that the account of Jesus "assigning" the responsibility of caring for His earthly mother to the "disciple whom Jesus loved" is ONLY found in the Gospel of John. Why? because none of the other disciples were there as He hung on the cross except the one who wrote about it - the Apostle John. The rest of the disciples deserted Him as He had foretold during the Passover meal the night before.
Luke 24:12 tells us that Peter went to the tomb and saw the burial clothes of Jesus laying by themselves while John mentioned Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved were at the tomb (John20:2). Now if you are writing your own diary and giving a personal account of what happened, would you not used a term that you are familiar with to describe yourself? As I mentioned earlier, John being a teenager outran the older Peter all the way to the tomb which is not surprising.
As I wrote in my earlier post, this phrase "the disciple whom Jesus loved" can only be found in the Gospel of John. John using this phrase to describe himself is not surprising. If we know how much Jesus loves us, we would also use such phrases to describe His intimacy with us. If you see the description of myself in my Profile, I addressed myself as the 'Beloved Child of Jesus Christ and of our Heavenly Abba Father'.
Premise 1: No one should be presenting an idea as if it were Biblical if they cannot cite one verse that would justify teaching that idea.
ReplyDeleteNOTE: Circular reasoning is a logical fallacy. One cannot simply ASSUME that John was “the disciple whom Jesus loved” and then use this assumption as their starting point to reason from and yet you do exactly this. You wrote: "this phrase "the disciple whom Jesus loved" can only be found in the Gospel of John. John using this phrase to describe himself…” however you have not (and cannot) cite even a single verse that would justify teaching that this unnamed “other disciple” was John. You erroneously ASSUME that the tradition of men that attributed this unnamed author’s work to John cannot be wrong and then you reat this idea into scripture despite BIBLICAL EVIDENCE to the contrary.
Premise 2: Once one has been offered Biblical evidence that proves that a given idea is unbiblical, then they must stop teaching that false idea if they respect the word of God (because to continue to present an idea as if it were Biblcial when the Bible proves otherwise makes void the word of God by one’s tradition).
The FACTS in the plain text of scripture prove that whoever the “other disciple whom Jesus loved” was he cannot have been John. The Bible cannot contradict itself and the FACTS reported in scripture about this unnamed “other disciple” are mutually exclusive with the FACTS reported in scripture about John – these cannot have been the same person or the Bible would be contradicting itself.
You have been offered wholly BIBLICAL evidence on this question (see www.TheDiscipleWhomJesusLoved.com as was previously noted). You can choose to side with tradition or you can choose to side with “every word of God”. Ps. 118:8 recommends the latter course.