Suggest an Edit — Apostle John

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Biography

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John the Apostle, known in the West as Saint John the Evangelist and in Eastern Christianity as John the Theologian, was one of the Twelve Apostles of Jesus. The canonical Gospels identify him as the son of Zebedee, a Galilean fisherman, and as the brother of James, later called James the Greater. Their mother is commonly identified with Salome, one of the women who followed Jesus from Galilee. The brothers worked the Sea of Galilee, apparently in some form of partnership with Simon Peter and Andrew, and were called by Jesus while they were in their boat mending nets; they left their father Zebedee and the hired men and followed him. Mark records that Jesus surnamed the pair Boanerges, often rendered 'sons of thunder,' a notice later writers connected with their zeal. No contemporary source preserves a precise year of birth. Later tradition frequently names Bethsaida in Galilee as his hometown, by association with the fishing circle of Peter and Andrew, but the New Testament itself does not state a birthplace.

Together with Peter and James, John belonged to the innermost group among the Twelve. The Synoptic Gospels place these three at the raising of Jairus's daughter, at the Transfiguration, and in Gethsemane during Jesus's agony. In the Fourth Gospel a figure called 'the disciple whom Jesus loved' appears reclining next to Jesus at the Last Supper, standing at the cross—where Jesus commends his mother to that disciple's care—and running with Peter to the empty tomb. From the later second century this Beloved Disciple was widely identified with John son of Zebedee, an identification that became standard in church tradition, though modern historical-critical scholarship treats it as traditional rather than independently demonstrable. After the crucifixion the same Gospel depicts that disciple as taking Jesus's mother into his home. Patristic writers from Irenaeus onward treated this as the beginning of John's charge to care for Mary.

In the early chapters of Acts, John appears with Peter in Jerusalem, including at the healing of the lame man at the Temple gate and in the subsequent hearing before the Sanhedrin, and later in a mission to Samaria after the preaching of Philip. Paul, in the letter to the Galatians, names James, Cephas, and John as the 'pillars' of the Jerusalem community with whom he conferred. Beyond these New Testament notices, the historical record for John's later life depends on second-century and subsequent church writers. Irenaeus of Lyons, who claimed a connection through Polycarp of Smyrna, places John's old age at Ephesus in the Roman province of Asia and presents him as a living link to the apostolic generation and as an opponent of the teacher Cerinthus. Polycrates of Ephesus, quoted by Eusebius of Caesarea, states that John, 'who reclined upon the bosom of the Lord,' fell asleep at Ephesus and was buried there, and even describes him as having worn the Jewish high-priestly petalon, a claim that cannot be verified from earlier sources.

A further strand of tradition holds that under the emperor Domitian John was exiled to the island of Patmos, where the Book of Revelation locates its visionary author, and that he returned to Ephesus after Domitian's death, dying a natural death in the time of Trajan—the only one of the Twelve, according to this tradition, not to be martyred. Tertullian records a separate Roman legend that John was plunged into boiling oil near the Latin Gate and emerged unharmed, an episode commemorated in the former Western feast of Saint John before the Latin Gate. By the late second century the Great Church commonly attributed to him the Fourth Gospel, the three Johannine epistles, and Revelation. Many modern scholars distinguish the apostle from the evangelist, from the author or authors of the epistles, and from John of Patmos, and treat the single-author apostolic attribution as a theological and canonical judgment of the early church rather than a settled historical fact. Eastern tradition especially emphasized his virginity, and he is often called 'the Virgin' (ho Parthenos) in Greek sources; no spouse or children are documented.

John was venerated from an early date as apostle, evangelist, and, in the East, theologian—the title reflecting the high Christology of the Fourth Gospel. His principal feast in the Latin West is 27 December; Byzantine calendars commemorate his repose on 26 September and a miracle associated with his tomb on 8 May. Iconography typically shows him either as a youthful beardless disciple or as an aged seer, often with an eagle (the traditional symbol of the Fourth Gospel), a book, or a chalice sometimes containing a serpent, alluding to the legend of a poisoned cup. He is invoked as patron of authors, theologians, booksellers, printers, and related trades, of friendship and loyalty, and against poison and burns. The great basilica raised over his traditional tomb at Ephesus, rebuilt on a monumental scale under Justinian in the sixth century, remained a major pilgrimage church through late antiquity; its ruins lie at modern Selçuk in western Turkey.

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