Today we shall continue with our examination of how the late George Beasley-Murray handled the authorship of the Gospel of St John. Last week we saw what he made of the external evidence, that is, the testimony of ancient writers about St John and the Fourth Gospel. We saw how impressive that line of authority was, including Irenaeus, who had been a pupil of St Polycarp, who had personally known the Apostle John; Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, where St John was buried; Clement of Alexandria who had studied what was then the recent tradition; the Muratorian Canon; and the Anti-Marcionite Prologue. Yet, Beasley-Murray rejected their unanimous witness that St John was the author of that Gospel, and also the Beloved Disciple mentioned in it. I further provided my reasons for saying that Beasley-Murray’s rejection was baseless. Now we shall look at why, on the basis of the internal evidence of the Gospel, that is, what we learn from the terms of the Gospel itself, he concludes that St John had no connection with either the Gospel or the beloved disciple.
Beasley-Murray states, as an opening salvo, first, that: “the disciple whom Jesus loved’ is not a natural self-designation for an author to use of himself, were he portraying the event of 13:21-26.” I will remind you that that passage relevantly reads:
“… Jesus was troubled in his spirit, and testified, “Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.” The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he spoke. One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at table at Jesus’ side, so Simon Peter motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. So that disciple, leaning back against Jesus, said to him, “Lord, who is it?”
Beasley-Murray does not say why it would be unnatural. I mention this now because when I offer a fuller critique, one might imagine I have omitted his argument; but there is no argument, only a short unvarnished assertion.
Second, he asserts that the phrase about reclining on the Lord’s breast is likely to be an echo of verse 1:18 of the Gospel: in the Douay-Rhiems translation, “No man hath seen God at any time: the only begotten Son who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” To imply that one was as close to the Lord as He Himself eternally is with the Father is, in Beasley-Murray’s assertion, “understandable about a disciple of Jesus, but inconceivable from the disciple himself.” (lxx) Once more, he does not say why one situation would be understandable but the other inconceivable. Also, to base this argument on one word without context seems to me to be rather desperate: there is surely a big difference between being eternally in the bosom of the Father, and leaning one’s head on the chest of Jesus at a dinner. I doubt that very many people have even noticed this, so how significant can it be, let alone so grave as to be evidence of non-authorship by John the beloved disciple?
But there is a further and most revealing matter: I have discussed this point with others, including some theology students, and they cannot discern what Beasley-Murray’s argument actually is. This could be taken as poor drafting; but the significance of the poor drafting is that it is intrinsic to the methods of the current Bible studies establishment. A breezy assertion is made as if no other opinion could be conceivable. I reiterate, his argument is literally that because the same words are used for “bosom” in the two passages, the beloved disciple could not have used them of himself. Of course, it is no argument whatsoever and yet it is presented and accepted by academics within the establishment as a rational means of discourse. I suggested in the last podcast that as long as evidence is set out in a certain form, it is – too often – treated as rational and persuasive in the Bible studies establishment.
Beasley-Murray concedes that it was probably the beloved disciple who stood at the foot of the Cross with Mary; but when it comes to chapter 21, he interprets Our Lord’s statement: “So I will have him to remain till I come, what is it to thee?” as meaning that the beloved disciple is “probably dead” and the “community” who had thought he would live forever are disappointed. The Gospel writer or writers, in Beasley-Murray’s reconstruction, therefore assure them that the Lord had not promised that the beloved disciple would not die. He does not even consider the possibility that the beloved disciple might be alive at the time of writing.
Then, turning to verse 24 which states that the beloved disciple is bearing witness, in the present tense, Beasley-Murray takes this as meaning that he does so “through the Gospel.” (lxxi) He interprets this verse as positively meaning the beloved disciple did not write it, and as further evidence that he was deceased at the time it is written. (lxxi-lxxii) Neither is he at all sure that the evangelist of chapters 1-20 wrote chapter 21. That is, like most commentators, he thinks that the final chapter of the Gospel may be not only a later addition, but an addition by someone other than the author of the first twenty chapters.
Beasley-Murray concludes, once more in his own words, that: “The Beloved Disciple is not a member of the Twelve, nor a well-known person in the early Church. It is difficult to supply a cogent reason for the Evangelist consistently and completely hiding his identity if he were a prominent leader like John the Apostle or Paul … By contrast, the anonymity is understandable if the designation were the common mode of referring to a leader within the Johannine churches not known elsewhere; there would be no need to name the beloved leader.” (lxxiii) Once more, an assertion is all we get — he does not say why one position is inexplicable while the other is understandable. On that logic, a writer only ever tells people what they know, names people that he expects them to know. This is also remarkable because I would have thought that the position was the other way around: if the beloved disciple was the otherwise unknown leader of a group of churches, that would be all the more reason to let people who had not known his name learn it.
He also offers sundry comments, including a few on the so-called Johannine Community, but I shall not deal with that now. Let us turn, instead, to this alleged proof that the beloved disciple was not St John and did not write the Fourth Gospel.
The first point to note is that there is not a single piece of factual evidence cited in support of this thesis: it is entirely based on what is, to Beasley-Murray, conceivable, understandable, and “natural,” as he puts it. Such arguments amount to no more than assertion, and so can easily be met by counter-assertion. If Beasley-Murray asserts matters are not conceivable, the sufficient answer is to say that it is, that someone has in fact conceived it. And that is exactly the situation throughout church history; namely that it has been conceived, understood and considered natural enough that St John was the beloved disciple, referred to himself as such, did say that he had reclined on the Lord’s chest, and had not written his own name in the Gospel; not least the many ancient sources whose testimony to precisely that effect has been rejected by Beasley-Murray. That is how the great majority of readers have understood it, and to my mind it is a failure of any rational method not to offer some account why these things should be inconceivable. But to say “It was understandable to Irenaeus but not to me,” for example, would irrepressibly raise the obvious rejoinder that Irenaeus being from that culture, would share the assumptions and presumptions of the evangelist in a way we can not. As I have mentioned before, it seems to me that what these writers can conceive or find is natural is just what they have been conditioned to find natural by their training within the Bible studies establishment.
Second, there is, in the absence of any such account, a massive subjectivity: Beasley-Murray is clearly, if implicitly, stating that his own idea of what is understandable is adequate for a supposedly-historical reconstruction of the writing of the Gospel, and all related matters. At the least one would expect an analysis of the ancient culture and the customs of writers. It may be inconceivable to us now, but would it have been inconceivable to them then? Imagine the text were a medieval Muslim book, and within one hundred years or so of its writing, people from culture who knew others who had known the stated author, were assuring us of his identity and related matters. Would one be correct to project upon it his own assumptions and views, and declare theirs to be inconceivable? I suspect that in the case of a Muslim text even Beasley-Murray would have realised that it was presumptuous.
Further, Beasley-Murray has overlooked one very important fact: nowhere in the Fourth Gospel is the name of John the son of Zebedee given, and yet we know from the Synoptics that he was one of the chief apostles. This alone should give one cause to suspect that the beloved disciple was St John; and to conclude that he no more wished to name himself in this Gospel than St Paul did in writing of his mystic experience in 2 Corinthians 12:1-6, which relevantly reads:
I must go on boasting. Though there is nothing to be gained by it, I will go on to visions and revelations of the Lord. I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows. And I know that this man was caught up into paradise—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows— and he heard things that cannot be told, which man may not utter. On behalf of this man I will boast, but on my own behalf I will not boast, except of my weaknesses— though if I should wish to boast, I would not be a fool, for I would be speaking the truth; but I refrain from it, so that no one may think more of me than he sees in me or hears from me.
St Paul wrote like that about himself. It seems to me that St John’s method of calling himself the beloved disciple and speaking about himself in the third person until the very close of the Gospel is within that same tradition of writing. Likewise, St Matthew refers to himself in the third person. When the Gospel of St John fails to mention the name of one of the three main Apostles, this tells us that the evangelist has carefully omitted it, especially when it mentions other disciples such as Simon Peter, Andrew, Philip, Nathanael, Thomas, Judas Iscariot, and Judas (not Iscariot). In fact, he does not just name them, he takes pains to give them larger roles than in the Synoptics (Peter excepted).
When the ancient evidence of those who knew St John, and those who heard from them, is that the beloved disciple and evangelist was St John the Apostle, then the failure to state his name at all can safely be attributed to a conscious decision of St John.
There is another very significant point: by speaking about what he finds inconceivable, or understandable, Beasley-Murray gives the impression he is making an intellectual judgment, but if you think about it, you will see that he is talking about, and basing himself on, his feelings. And they have been shaped by the Bible studies establishment, so that, in my view, those who belong to that establishment sincerely cannot imagine that any other opinion, at least on fundamental matters, can be countenanced for an instant.
Consider this alternative interpretation: St John wrote the Gospel, as Clement and the Muratorian Canon state, to supplement what was missing in the other Gospels. He also corrected some errors they had made, such as the dating of the cleansing of the Temple. After all, as Papias said, the others had followed the teaching of St Peter, and he had not given everything in order. St John knew that he would be presenting a picture of the life of the Lord which had some elements quite different from what had been written. He therefore had to make clear his authority to do so, and at certain key moments, refers to himself as the beloved disciple whose head touched the chest of Our Lord at the Last Supper itself; who stood at the foot of the Cross; and who arrived at the tomb with Peter; and so on. This establishes his closeness to the Lord and his knowledge. With that in mind, his failure to name himself strikes me as deep and profound humility: the one Gospel in which St John is not named, and the Transfiguration not explicitly mentioned is that which he wrote and where he declares his mystical understanding of who Christ was and what the Lord had taught. For the record, the Transfiguration may be alluded to in verse 1:14 (And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth).
I have no doubt that St John the Apostle was the beloved disciple and wrote the Gospel which bears his name.
Glory be to the Father …