John: The Beloved Disciple

It is common to accredit the fourth gospel to the disciple John, even though there is no mention of his name in all of the book. The only thing that we know es that the gospel is self-attributed in 21, 24 to the “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 21, 27). It has been the tradition of the church that the beloved disciple was John and that John was the author of the gospel. Obviously we cannot be sure that it was him, because there is no proof that indicate it without a doubt. There is a principal question that allows to reflect over this topic. Why didn’t the authors of the sinoptic gospels speak of this beloved disciple?

Well as we’ve seen, the gospel of John is very different than the sinoptic gospels in it’s style, it’s language, and it’s content. In every text that John mentions the beloved disciple, he is mysteriously absent of the parallel in the sinoptic gospel. In fact, the sinoptics don’t even speak of this unknown figure. One text that gives reference to the beloved disciple is John 20, 2, when the evangelist tells that he accompanied Peter to the empty tomb, but it doesn’t reveal his name. The sinoptic gospels have a different version of the story. Matthew and Mark only speak of the women that found the empty tomb. Luke says first that Peter when running to the tomb, then in Luke 24, 24 he contradicts himself saying that “some of those with us went to the tomb,” changing his story. We see that the sinoptics didn’t give a single reference to the beloved disciple, but that John was the only one to speak of him. For this reason we cannot be sure of the name of this disciple.

In another of these differences, John tells us that the beloved disciple was at the foot of the cross with the women in John 19, 25-27, but the sinoptic gospels name only the women and don’t refer to the disciple (Matthew 27, 55-56; Mark 15, 40-41; Lucas 23, 49). It’s an important detail from this famous scene that John tells, but that the sinoptics opted to exclude. This happens many times in the gospel and there is no way to know exactly why. We don’t know if perhaps the author knew something that those that wrote before him didn’t.

With these texts, and any other in the gospel of John, we see that there is never anything said of this beloved disciple. But if we realize, it doesn’t mention the disciple John either. Could this be a coincidence? Some believe this to be true, and others believe that the reason his name doesn’t appear in the gospel is because John himself is the author.