When Jesus cried out ‘Eloi, eloi, lema sabachthani’ as he was being crucified, why did the crowd think he was calling to Elijah? [This text is found in Matthew chapter 27, verses 46-47]

There are a number of reasons why “some of the crowd” witnessing Jesus’ crucifixion may have said this. CH Spurgeon, for example, believed it to be a continuation of the mocking jeers of the crowd (chapter 26, verses 39-44)[1].

However, the most likely reason is that they misunderstood his words because he was speaking in Aramaic, the common language of Galilee and Judea, which was not spoken widely elsewhere. The text says only some of the crowd were confused, and it may be they were primarily Greek speakers, who would have heard ‘Eloi’ and thought of the famous Jewish prophet, Elijah.

‘Eloi’ is the Aramaic pronunciation of the Hebrew ‘Eli’, meaning ‘God’. This saying from the cross is actually a quotation from Psalm 22, verse 1, but rendered in Aramiac, not the classic Hebrew that would have been used in the synagogues.

Elijah was a significant figure in first century Jewish thought. A prophet in Israel before the exile, he was renowned for being the only prophet who did not die, instead being taken bodily to heaven in a whirlwind (see 2 Kings Chapter 2, verse 11). His return was prophesied in Malachi chapter 4, verse 5, when he would return as a herald of judgment day (the ‘day of the Lord’). This has led to the traditional Jewish custom of setting out a cup of wine for Elijah during the Passover feast.

It appears that among the many beliefs surrounding the ‘messiah’ who would save the Jews and liberate Israel from the Romans, there was a tendency to believe Elijah would return (see Matthew chapter 17, verse 10). The disciples are aware that some people think Jesus is Elijah (Matthew chapter 16, verse 14) and the gospel-writers are keen to stress the parallels between Jesus’ miracles and the miracles attributed to Elijah, for example, the resurrection of a widow’s son  (1 Kings chapter 17, verses 17-23 and Luke chapter 7, verses 11-15).

The story of the transfiguration in Matthew chapter 17, where Jesus appears in the ‘shekinah’ glory alongside Moses and Elijah takes on added significance given the expectation that Elijah was going to return in the ‘day of the Lord’. Jesus’ followers could therefore claim that Elijah had returned and the prophecies had been fulfilled.

Whether the crowds comments about Elijah were confusion or malicious jeers, the point the gospel-writer is making is that Jesus has been rejected. The crowd are still searching for the ‘messiah’, God’s liberator, to come and save them, and are unaware of the significance of Jesus and his death, which is happening right before their eyes.

[1] Spurgeon’s Popular Exposition of Matthew (Baker Books, 1979), p.250

I am reading through a bible in a year bible – at present it is Leviticus where you get little nuggets of detail that just intrigue me with which things are mentioned. “Moses slaughtered the ram and took some of its blood and put it on the lobe of Aaron’s right ear, on the thumb of his right hand and on the big toe of his right foot.” WHY so precise and SO random?

Blood is significant in the Old Testament because it was thought to contain the ‘life’ of the person or animal killed (see Leviticus chapter 17, verse 11). This is why there are taboos against eating animal blood Leviticus chapter 17, verses 12-14), or shedding human blood (see 1 Chronicles chapter 22, verse 8).

When animals were sacrificed to make atonement for the sins of people, it was believed that “it is the blood that makes atonement” (again see Leviticus chapter 17, verse 11). The ‘sprinkling’ of the blood of sacrificed animals on those present at the sacrifice was thought to carry atoning power – a metaphor that was carried into Christianity (see 1 Peter chapter 1, verse 2 7 Hebrews chapter 10, verses 19-22), where the ‘Blood of Christ’ is regarded as having the same atoning effect.

The specific details of Moses bloodying various parts of Aaron’s body in Leviticus chapter 8, verse 23, follow extensive, very precise instructions regarding sacrificial practices. The anointing is highly symbolic – the bodily extremities are anointed instead of the whole body, but cover Aaron from ‘tip to toe’, as it were. The same practice is then performed on his sons.

Once anointed in this way, Aaron and his sons would be considered ‘clean’ as he would covered by the atoning power of the sacrificed animal’s blood, and could then present other sacrifices to God. The hands, represented by the thumb, are especially important as they would carry many of the offerings to the altar. The ear might also be symbolic as it represents hearing from God, or could represent devotion. A pierced ear rendered a slave in permanent service to his master (see Exodus chapter 21, verses 5-6).

In conclusion, the main point of this whole sequence is to show the complete dedication of Aaron to serving as high priest of Israel.

I’m reading Luke chapter 8. Why did Jesus tell the Gerasene to tell everyone that he had been healed of his demon possession and Jairus to tell no one about the resurrection of his daughter?

These two stories in Luke chapter 8, along with the stories of the calming of the storm (verses 22-25) and the healing of the woman with permanent bleeding (verses 43-48) are key to establishing the various claims made about Jesus by his followers.

In order, Jesus is shown to be in charge of the natural world by stilling the storm on the Lake of Galilee, master of the ‘spiritual world’ by freeing a man of demon possession (verses 26-39), having authority over the law through his interaction with the woman who was bleeding and therefore ‘unclean’ according to the Torah, and finally, having the power to reverse the effects of death (verses 40-42 & 49-56).

The gospel writer is effectively setting out some very strong claims for Jesus’ divinity or, at the very least, his unique relationship with God. However, there are several occasions in the first three gospels when Jesus is reported as asking those he has helped not to tell anyone about it. This is particularly true in the gospel of Mark.

Jesus’ reported reticence has been referred to as the ‘Messianic Secret’. In more liberal theology, associated with the German theologian Wilhelm Wrede who coined the phrase, the ‘Secret’ is an invention of the gospel writers who believed that Jesus was divine and needed to explain why the miraculous side of Jesus’ life was perhaps not so well-known. The gospel writers therefore created accounts where Jesus instructed people not to talk about the miracles, but those in the know, his disciples, act as witnesses to them, and they are reported later in the gospels.

This is a bit of a convoluted theory and has been widely critiqued. There is only one occasion when Jesus instructs his disciples to keep quiet about a specific conversation about him being the messiah (Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ in Mark chapter 8). There are also numerous miracles – the feeding of 5,000 people which appears in all four gospels, for example – where it would be impossible for that to have been kept a secret, if it happened.

There may have been good reasons for Jesus wanting to keep certain miracles under wraps. He had attracted criticism and threats against his person for linking healing with forgiveness of sins. A resurrection, or rumours of one, would have raised the hackles of his opponents. The contradictory nature of his responses to the newly-restored Gerasene demoniac and Jairus could be explained by where the writer says the miracles took place.

The Gerasenes either lived near Gadara, one of the Hellenistic cities on the other side of the Lake of Galilee, or Gergesa on the shores of the lake. This wasn’t Jewish territory and a large number of non-Jews lived there – as can be seen by the presence of a large herd of pigs which were unclean animals in Jewish law. The likelihood of Jesus enemies among the Jewish religious leaders actively seeking out or believing stories from that area was very low.

Jairus, however, is noted by Luke as a “ruler of the synagogue” (verse 41). The account does not say which synagogue, but there had already been an incident in a Galileean synagogue which had almost resulted in Jesus being stoned, when had made a claim to being the fulfilment of a messianic prophecy (Luke chapter 4, verse 28-30). An appeal to Jairus’ discretion seems very plausible in those circumstances.

It’s also important to recognise that Jesus explicitly instructs the Gerasene man he has healed to go and tell other people about him. It is impossible to know whether the man himself was Jewish, but certainly Jesus gives no indication that he should restrict his witness to Jews. Luke’s gospel is often regarded as more ‘universal’ in its approach – and this story seems to bear out the theory that the writer wanted to show the good news was for both Jews and gentiles alike.

What does the Bible tell us about God’s relationship to time? I often hear people say that God is outside of time but am unsure of the grounding for such a claim.

One of the problems with Biblical translators using the word ‘eternal’ is that it implies a sense of timelessness. However, a better translation would be ‘endless duration’. The Biblical depiction of God is of a being who is not temporary, but in a sense is temporal, in that God acts within time and those actions and plans are time-bound.

Within the realms of religious philosophy there have been numerous attempts to resolve the paradox of a being that is unaffected by time, and yet interacts with a creation that is governed by time.

Some of the attempts to resolve the paradox can be summed up as:

• a) God experiences all time simultaneously, which means he therefore knows all causes and all effects – this renders the universe as totally deterministic with every action predetermined and unalterable.
• b) God exists completely outside time (and therefore outside our physical universe), but occasionally interacts with it.
• c) God created the time-bound universe and has subsequently ‘stepped back’ to let the universe run its course, whereupon it will be restored to perfection through re-union with God (a form of Deism).
• d)God experiences ‘time’ as a set of dimensions similar to the way humans experience space, and therefore is not bound to a set point in time (or space). The populist Christian writer Rob bell explores this point in his DVD ‘Everything is Spiritual’.
• e) Time itself is part of creation and only ‘began’ when God created the universe – although for this to make complete logical sense it would mean God only ‘began’ to exist when the universe began as there was no ‘time’ before the universe.
• f) God is subject to time, in that God has willingly submitted to time, or is in some kind of ‘process of becoming’. The idea of a ‘developing God’ (to put it crudely) was popular in ‘Process theology’ in the 20th Century.

Interestingly, modern cosmological physics, with its idea of a multiverse and multiple dimensions hidden from our universe offers an intriguing alternative to the paradox. Although asking whether universes functioning in parallel to one another can influence each other leads into the same kind of theoretical issues that dog the religious philosophers.

Returning to the Biblical statements about God (for example, as ‘everlasting’, ‘steadfast’, ‘the same yesterday, today and forever’), it may be more satisfactory perhaps to see these terms as aspects of God’s character rather than God’s nature. God is revealed as reliable and consistent within the context of this universe, which is where humans are located and where those characteristics matter.

What is the difference between Israel and Judah, not just in a historical sense, but in the way they are referred to and referenced in the Bible?

The terms ‘Israel’ and ‘Judah’ refer to several different things in the Old Testament. ‘Israel’ is the new name given to the Hebrew patriarch Jacob, grandson of Abraham, after his night spent wrestling with God (the story is in Genesis chapter 32). As the ‘children of Jacob/Israel’, the Hebrews were eventually referred to corporately as ‘Israel’.

Judah is one of Jacob’s sons, and a brother to Joseph and thus becomes a founding father of one of the Hebrew tribes. Initially an unimportant people group within Southern Israel, Judah rose in importance when David became King. From the tribe of Judah himself, David’s capital initially was Hebron, the central city of Judah, until he led the invasion and capture of Jerusalem which he established as a new capital in order to unite the tribes of Israel.
Towards the end of David’s reign there were several coup attempts. Often these rebellions started in the North of the country, where David’s predecessor Saul had always had a strong following. David’s chosen successor, Solomon, faced similar problems and after Solomon’s death the Northern and Southern kingdoms separated into Israel and Judah.

Although Israel was geographically larger, the Southern kingdom of Judah (now incorporating the territory of the tribe of Benjamin) lasted longer as an independent nation. The two were quite clearly interdependent for much of their history, although there was a sense that Judah remained more loyal to both the Davidic kingly line and the worship of Yahweh that was centred on the Temple that Solomon had built in Jerusalem.

Israel was destroyed as a nation by the Assyrian empire in the eighth century BCE and its people were scattered. Judah meanwhile continued as a vassal state of the Assyrians and the Egyptians until they were eventually conquered by the Babylonians / Chaldeans in the sixth century BCE. These were the Hebrews taken into ‘Exile’, who returned to the land seventy years later.

Because much of the Old Testament was written after the fall of Israel, the words Judah and Israel became virtually synonymous to later writers. The word ‘Israel’ began to be used more frequently to refer to the ‘remnant’ of Judeans who returned to their homeland from exile in Babylon (see Ezra chapter 2), and not the original Northern nation.

After the exile Judah was increasingly regarded as the ‘true Israel’, once the progenitor of Israel’s greatest king, David, and, according to prophecy, the source of the great king to come, God’s ‘anointed one’; the ‘messiah’. The ‘messianic’ title ‘Lion of Judah’ underlines the way ‘Judah’ was considered the ‘true Israel’.

The talk began by reading out 1 John chpater 2 in the New International Version of the Bible.

There’s always a danger when we read Scripture that we only see the bits that we want to see. I’m sure like me you’ve heard plenty of sermons when it seems the point the preacher is making bears little relation to the text.

So, what is John trying to tell us in the second chapter of this letter to his friends? It’s not always clear to see, so out of a sense of curiosity I ran the text through a website called Wordle to see what the key themes were – creating this image.

Wordle counts the number of times certain words appear and gives them a certain weight in how they are visualised. You can see three of the words that appear the most often have been grouped together quite neatly there: Know, Father and Children.

The word ‘know’ is interesting. To know something is more difficult than you’d imagine. There’s a whole branch of philosophy related to knowing about knowing – it’s called epistemology.

I recently did a study course that included a module on W Edwards Deming’s ‘Theory of Profound Knowledge’ which at its most basic level says there are four things that enable us to know things. It was a bit too profound really, because I felt quite confused by the end.

So ‘knowing’ can be a bit difficult to pin down.

John had a real fondness for the word ‘to know’ and he often linked knowing to the word ‘love’. In the gospel of John, Jesus says this to his disciples: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” [John chapter 13, verses 34-35]

So, according to John, our knowledge stems from love and specifically being in a loving relationship with the person who John mentions most frequently in this chapter: our Father; God. As God’s children our knowledge of our Father comes out of knowing we are loved and loving our Father in return, and this affects the way we live.

The American writer Frederick Buechner says:
“Knowing somebody isn’t the same as knowing about them. More than just information is involved… To know is to participate in. to become imbued with, for better or worse to be affected by. When you really know a person, the knowledge becomes part of who you are.”

John links what we know to what we do, and what we do to our love for God.

About Jesus, John says: “We know that we have come to know him [Jesus] if we keep his commands. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him.”

John continues: “I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning… Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble.”

Incidentally, there’s something going on here in the language that John is using. You may have already picked up the juxtaposition of certain key words – there’s light and darkness, truth and lying, love and hate, obedience and not obeying. In the field of Biblical studies this is called Johannine parallelism and is all very interesting and scholarly, but the important point is this:

John is saying that if you want to know whether a person really knows the Father then you look at what they do and how they live and see if they obey the command to love their Christian brothers and sisters. And if they don’t do that, then they don’t love the Father and are not the Father’s children.

In life, I do take after my dad in some respects. Most of us do – we might not want to; we may kid ourselves that we don’t. Not all of us know our human dads that well. But if you’ve had the good fortune to grow up with your father around, and your father loved you, then you naturally take on their characteristics.

I personally find what John is saying here very challenging.

Do I take after my heavenly dad enough? Would it be evident that I love him? The evidence is in whether I follow his command to love other people.

Now at this point some people may feel a bit uncomfortable. It may sound like I’m saying that our salvation is based on what we do and how we act. Is it enough just to love people? What about ‘praying the prayer’ and stuff? Surely getting right with God is a matter of believing the right things. This whole idea that we have to love people makes it sound like we can earn our way into heaven.

Well, that’s the objection. I’ve had an interesting experience in my life in the past year that has kind of thrown that issue into perspective for me.
After six and a half years working in a Christian organisation I went to work somewhere else – it’s the public sector, actually it’s the healthcare service.

Now a lot of people have asked me about that transition. ‘How are you finding it working in a non-Christian organisation?’ My answer surprises most people. I mean no disrespect to that that organisation, but truthfully, I’ve actually found it great. I love the work I do and it’s meaningful.

And something really surprising – I have met people who are passionate about things that my reading of the Bible tells me God is passionate about. People who want to alleviate suffering, who care about the more vulnerable members of society, who want to restore dignity to people who’ve had it stripped away, who care about equality and justice and the fact that the poorer you are the more likely you are to die young and from a horrible disease.

The majority of these people aren’t Christians – or at least they wouldn’t say they were. And yet… and yet they seem to have God’s agenda front and centre. I wish I could always say that I always did the same.

Earlier this year the writer and preacher Rob Bell published a book. In the book, ‘Love Wins’, he questions the traditional understanding of hell.

The reaction among Christians that spilled onto Twitter and Facebook and blogs and all over the internet really was crazy in the levels of condemnation for him.

This is just the latest in a series of similar reactions that seem to bring out the worst in Christians – name-calling, accusations of heresy, personal attacks. Regardless of whether Rob Bell was right or wrong to publish the book, and whether what was in it was doctrinally correct or not, what are we to make of the reaction?

These verses from 1 John 2 are suddenly very pertinent. “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light.” It felt like there was a lot of hate in the debate about Rob Bell. How we disagree as Christians is very important. How we react, respond, retaliate – it all matters much more than we seem to think.

And John also says: “If you know that God is righteous, you know that everyone who does what is right has been born of him.” Apparently you can spot the people who are truly children of God. They’re the ones out there loving people.

Recently a friend of mine tweeted this: “You are what you say you are.” You know what? I think that’s wrong. More and more I have this growing sense that you are what you do. I’m beginning to think that what you say is immaterial; what you do is evidence of who you are.

There’s nothing wrong in emphasising right belief, or having a statement of faith, or trying to get everything cast-iron correct in our doctrine and our worship style and the way we make decisions as a church and the way we do baptism or communion or prayer or anything. It’s all important, but it reminds me of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter 13:

“If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.”

The point Paul makes is that we can do everything “right” and yet still, somehow, manage to get it wrong. If we lack love, the rest of it doesn’t matter much.

And John goes a step further that Paul – you can have all the knowledge in the world, he says, but if you aren’t loving people then your knowledge is deficient because you don’t truly know the father.

Now let’s be real. Some of our fellow Christians are difficult to love. It’s hard to love people who run you down, or wind you up, or grind on your nerves, or are just plain boring.

That’s why we need the command to love our brothers and sisters, I suppose. If it was easy to do, then we wouldn’t need to be told to do it. I don’t need someone to command me to eat doughnuts, or watch Match of the Day. I can do those things off my own bat. They aren’t hard things to do.

But loving people isn’t easy, which is why Jesus commanded his disciples to do it, and why John says that obeying that difficult command is the true test of whether we are Jesus’ disciples.

I’d like to conclude this talk with a final verse from the chapter we’ve been looking at today – the conclusion of the chapter in fact:

“And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.”

This command to love isn’t a one-off. It’s an on-going thing. Let us this week, as we seek to live as disciples, continually try to love each other so that we become more like our Father in heaven.

What is your perspective about the Holy Spirit and Divine healing?

There are several perspectives on healing in contemporary Christian thought. A stereotypical protestant liberal view would be that healing, like any miracle, will have a scientific explanation behind it (or be a ‘myth’ with a secondary meaning to reveal a theological truth). In more conservative traditions, such as Roman Catholicism and many Protestant churches, the possibility of Divine healing is held, although such events are regarded as rare.

Evangelicals in a ‘dispensationalist’ tradition would hold a view that healings and other supernatural signs and wonders belong to a previous ‘dispensation’ (period of time / revelation), and would be sceptical of any contemporary accounts of Divine healing. Pentecostal Christians and those in the charismatic traditions that arose in the late 20th century (such as the Vineyard movement) would hold a view that expects miracles to occur as proof of their beliefs.

The Scriptural precedents for a belief in healing generally associate them with a call to repent and believe the gospel. Miracles validate the teaching of Jesus, and his followers, including the apostle Paul (see e.g. Romans chapter 15, verse 19).

There are also occasions where Jesus enacts a miracle and the gospel-writers describe his motivation as compassion, and there are some occasions where Jesus enacts miracles to broker a discussion. For example, in Luke chapter 13 he heals on the Sabbath to start a theological discussion about religious rituals.
Healing then when it occurs in the New Testament is used as a means of verifying the gospel, reveals God’s compassion for people, and challenges people’s preconceptions and prejudice. Those are three useful starting points to use when assessing contemporary accounts of miracles.

There are some theological issues with a contemporary belief in Divine healing. The primary one being that often healing does not occur. Explanations for this include a lack of faith, or other unsatisfactory reason why the healing has not happened. Anecdotally, the claim that a ‘lack of faith’ prevents healing occurring has caused considerable hurt to many people.

Scripturally there are plenty of arguments against this view. Some of Jesus’ healings are done at a distance, following the pleading of a representative, for example the servant of a Roman centurion (Matthew chapter 8). It is also hard to make the case for healing being reliant on the faith of the recipient in the accounts of resurrections. In Acts chapter 3 a crippled beggar requests alms from Peter and John; Peter responds by healing him unexpectedly. It would appear the man did not know the disciples or express a request to be healed.

Christians with a view that miracles no longer occur, or never did, do not have a theological issue with miracles not occurring. This viewpoint was quite prevalent early on in Christian History. St John Chrysostom (c. 349–407CE), Archbishop of Constantinople, explained to his congregation that miracles no longer happened because the words of Jesus no longer needed to be validated – the real miracles were the transformed lives of Christians.

Later evangelical and dispensationalist thought connected the passing of the age in miracles with the compilation of the canon of Scripture. The replacement of revelations of God’s person through miracles with the revelation found in the Bible has long been a position in evangelical theology, and may explain much of its biblio-centric theology.

Perhaps ironically, the resurgence in a belief in miracles was also fuelled by the growth in literalist interpretation of the Bible. The assumption in this segment of the Christian church is that miracles, along with other ‘signs and wonders’ like speaking in tongues, are Biblical fact and should be expected to happen now. This divergence of opinion is the main cause of disagreements within the evangelical stream between charismatic and non-charismatic churches that often have identical theology except on this point.

It also seems likely that many stories of miracles could be explained in another way. There is little hard and fast evidence for some of the wilder stories that have emerged in popular Christianity in recent years.

Genuine ‘healing’ is difficult to define. If pain is eased but not eradicated, then has healing fully occurred?

Sometimes ‘miracles’ occur outside the Christian faith – unexpectedly people recover form terrible illnesses. These are very rare events and cannot always be explained by current medical knowledge.

In addition, the positive psychological benefits of being prayed for and cared for may stimulate physical improvement. Medical studies of the effect of placebo pills show patients taking them do improve – belief in healing, receiving prayer and so on may have a similar psychological effect.

There is also the ‘regression to the mean’ to take into consideration – basically a person will become ill then improve naturally over time, eventually returning to a state of normal health. However, if they have received an intervention, like a prescription drug, or prayer at a healing service, their natural ‘regression to the mean’ may be attributed to that ‘cause’.

Of course it may be difficult to request medical or scientific validation of a miracle. Such a request may be regarded as doubt or unbelief. However, the Christian faith has a long history of individuals committing fraud and chicanery and it is not unreasonable to ask somebody to offer proof of their claims. It is discernment.

While many Christians are wary of overblown claims of miracles, there may still be a reluctance to dismiss the possibility of Divine intervention if illness strikes. Caution must be exercised – it is cruel to promise healing that may never occur. But equally, the God who is revealed in the New Testament is the god who intervenes, to save the soul and heal the body, and therefore there is a place in the Christian faith for belief In Divine healing.

There have been many attempts to identify this ‘beloved disciple’ over the years, although their true identity will probably never be known. Here, though, is a short run-down of the main possible contenders for the title that have been suggested.

Before the run-down starts, it’s worth noting that the Fourth Gospel was not always traditionally ascribed to the apostle John, the brother of James and one of the three disciples in Jesus’ inner circle. Irenaeus (140-210CE) is one of the first to identify the author of the gospel as John the Disciple, and supplies the personal data that John lived in Ephesus until the time of the Emperor Trajan, who ruled between 98-117CE.

Doubts have been cast on this, as it would have meant the disciple would have lived an inordinately long life even if he had only been in his early twenties during Jesus’ ministry. It’s not impossible, but it seems unlikely.

The general scholarly consensus is that there may be personal recollections of the apostle/disciple John in the gospel, but that these have been edited by a group of Christians who knew him (the ‘Johannine Community’). This could have happened in Ephesus, the first Christians having fled Judea because of the Jewish War of 64-74CE.

The ‘beloved disciple’ is mentioned as the ‘author’ of the gospel in John chapter 21, verse 24, although this section does read like an epilogue attached to the gospel by someone else. Whether ‘author’ really means ‘author’ here, or should mean ‘source of material’, is open to discussion.

What can be said about the beloved disciple is that they were a person known to the other disciples, they interacted with Jesus, and they were accredited in some way with the creation of the Fourth Gospel. But who were they?

Contender 1: John the disciple
Pros: Tradition casts him as the author. Humility may have made him seek anonymity. There is a reference to the ‘Sons of Zebedee’, but no reference in the gospel to John by name. There is the link between the ‘beloved disciple’ and the author of the gospel, as mentioned above. The gospel uses ‘semitic’ language, which supports the idea that the writer was Jewish. The gospel writer displays knowledge of Galileean and Judean geography. The gospel ‘corrects’ some details found in Matthew, Mark and Luke (the Synoptic gospels) – a fairly bold thing to do if the author was not an apostle.

Cons: The age issue calls Irenaeus’ testimony into question. Another early extra-Biblical tradition says that John was martyred alongside his brother James (see Acts chapter 12, verse 2). The ‘corrections’ to the Synoptic gospels show notable differences – if the Synoptics are based on other Apostolic traditions, could they differ so much, for example, over the timing of the ‘Cleansing of the Temple, which John places at the start of Jesus’ ministry rather than in Holy Week. The language used has semitic traces, but much of it sounds more Hellenistic, and even Gnostic – would John the disciple be so au fait with this language, he would be willing to use it? Finally, rather than sounding humble, it seems rather grandiose to refer to yourself in the third person as ‘the one Jesus loved’ (although if the gospel was ‘written up’ or edited later, this may have been a title bestowed upon John the disciple by one of his circle).

Contender 2: Clopas (or Cleopas)
Pros: Cleopas appears as a witness to the resurrection in Luke’s Gospel (see Luke chapter 24, verse 18). His wife, Mary, was present at the cross (John, chapter 19, verse 25) where she is described as Jesus’ mother’s sister, making Cleopas Jesus’ uncle. Very little is known about him, so Cleopas could have been versed enough in Hellenistic thought to begin shaping the prototype of John’s Gospel. He was in Jerusalem during Holy Week, so may have been an observer of what went on, which explains why so much of John’s Gospel narrative is unique.

Cons: Very little is known about him. John’s Gospel came to prominence after the Synoptics, but Cleopas is presumably of the generation of Jesus’ mother. Where was his gospel material hidden all that time?

Contender 3: Lazarus
Pros: The only person described as a person Jesus loved in the gospel (John chapter 11, verse 3). If he was raised from the dead, as recounted in John, then a rumour that he was not going to die would make sense (see John chapter 21, verse 23).

Cons: The beloved disciple was present at the Last Supper. None of the other gospels have Lazarus present there, or mention him at all. He does not appear in Acts either. If he was so close to Jesus as to write a gospel anonymously, then why is he anonymous in the gospels he did not write?

Contender 4: Mary Magdalene
Pros: Mary Magdalene seemed to have a close relationship with Jesus, although, unfortunately she has been consistently confused with a prostitute that washed Jesus’ feet. There is no inter-textual evidence that Mary was a prostitute. In fact, she was listed as one of the financial supporters of Jesus and the disciples, so she was presumably a woman of substance, and possibly well-educated. John’s gospel places her as the first person ‘sent’ by the risen Christ, making her technically the first ‘apostle’ – a position of high honour.

Cons: The beloved disciple is referred to as ‘him’. The recent interest in Mary Magdalene owes more to feminist Biblical scholarship (and The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown), than anything else.

Contender 5 – John Mark
Pros: He has the right name – John. He lived in Jerusalem, was of a priestly family, and would have possessed a good knowledge of the Temple. It may be that the Last Supper was held in his family home, a venue for early Christian meetings (Acts chapter 12, verse 12). He may be the ‘young man’ referred to in the gospel of Mark who was present at Jesus’ arrest (Mark chapter 14, verses 51-52) – if he was 13 (when Jewish boys became young men) at that point, he could have lived until the time of Trajan. Later he worked with Paul and Luke, and was aware of the controversy with the Jewish religious leaders, which may be why there are so many references in the Fourth Gospel. He was well-travelled and would have been acquainted with Hellenistic and Gnostic thought. If he was a young teenager, he may well have sleepily curled up next to Jesus at the Last Supper while Jesus talked to his disciples (John chapter 13, verse 23-25).

Cons: Like many of the above contenders, not enough is really known about John-Mark to say for certain that he was even present at many of the events described in the gospel. Tradition has associated John-Mark with the authorship of the Gospel of Mark – a very different account of Jesus’ life.

Contender 6 – the literary construct
Pros: If the Fourth Gospel was produced by a relatively small Christian group working together, then the ‘beloved disciple’ could have been a literary construct designed to illustrate the way disciples should behave. Similar ‘perfect pupils’ appear in other contemporary literature.

Cons: The ‘beloved disciple’ in the Fourth Gospel is too human a character – interacting with Jesus and the other disciples – so it does not feel like an artificial construct. There has been a long history of allegorical and metaphorical Biblical interpretation, stretching back to Augustine and earlier and yet non one before the twentieth century interpreted the ‘beloved disciple’ as a fictional character.

Contender 7: A. N. Other Disciple (possibly even a female author)
Pros: There are several possibilities. A woman would have hid her identity in those patriarchal times. Alternatively, Nicodemus plays a part in John’s Gospel and was present in the Sanhedrin that sat in judgement on Jesus. Joseph of Arimathea is another Gospel character who has had several different legends associated with him.

Cons: It could be anyone, but there are no real strong possibilities. Again, the ‘beloved disciple’ is referred to using masculine pronouns, so it probably was not a woman. Other persons featured in the Gospel do not seem to have the closeness of relationship that the ‘beloved disciple’ is said to have.

Although there is general agreement between the Gospels that Jesus began his ministry by selecting people to become ‘disciples’, there are differences between the accounts. The version of events usually thought of as the call of the first disciples is found in Mark chapter 1 and Matthew chapter 4, where Jesus tells fishermen on the shores of Lake Galilee to leave their nets and follow him.

In John’s gospel, however, one of those fishermen, Andrew, is already John the Baptist’s disciples, and is one of two disciples who latch onto Jesus by the Jordan River after Jesus’ encounter with John and baptism (John chapter 1, verses 35-39). The author does not reveal the identity of the other disciple of John the Baptist who follows Jesus, but it has been proposed that it is John, who is traditionally ascribed authorship of the fourth gospel.

This divergence between Mark and Matthew, and John, is interesting, although attempts have been made to harmonise the different texts, for example, by suggesting Andrew following Jesus at the Jordan was later ‘made official’ in Galilee, when Jesus called him along with his brother Peter, and his business colleagues (or, perhaps rivals) James and John.

A key difference in the ‘call’ of the first disciples is in the ‘active’ and ‘passive’ natures of those who are ‘called’. In Mark and Matthew, Jesus takes the initiative, calling the disciples away from their regular lives and into following him. In John, the disciples take the initiative. Jesus asks Andrew and his unnamed comrade why they are following him. Andrew seeks out Simon Peter to tell him that he thinks he has found “the Christ” (chapter 1, verse 41). A similar action then happens with Philip, who meets Jesus and then searches out Nathanael (John chapter 1, verses 43-46).

The contrast between those for whom the call is sudden and unexpected, and those who were looking for the messiah is quite marked. John is a seeker’s gospel, which uses Gnostic and other mystical terminology. It seems quite fitting then, that in John, the disciples are looking for the messiah, that is, salvation. John is written in a way that is accessible to those looking for salvation in the various mystery cults of the time.

Mark and Matthew, however, seem to be written out of a more Jewish context, where divine revelation was a feature of belief and theology. In the Jewish tradition, God chose people, such as Abraham or Moses, so it would be only natural for God’s Son to do the choosing, rather than to be ‘discovered’ by a seeker. Like the heroes of the Jewish faith, the disciples hear the voice of God and respond.

Luke’s gospel has a different story. The event does take place in Galilee, but is accompanied by a miracle (chapter 5, verses 4-11). Additionally, Jesus had already been to Simon Peter’s house and performed a miracle of healing (chapter 4, verse 38-39). In Luke’s version, Jesus already had a relationship with the disciples and it was only later that he specifically ‘called’ them.

One aspect of Luke’s account that is different to the others is Simon Peter’s declaration that he is a sinful man and therefore unworthy of following Jesus (Luke chapter 5, verse 8). Luke possibly includes this to illustrate the need for self-awareness of one’s own sinfulness in the journey of discipleship. Jesus ignores Peter’s protestations and accepts him anyway. This is an example of Luke’s over-riding message of universal salvation that is available to any, and every, one.

There are many similarities under the surface of these stories. The main likeness is that those called followed Jesus, leaving their livelihoods and regular lives behind to become disciples. All four gospels want to make this point – and they all allude to the reason the disciples were prepared to do this: because they recognised Jesus as the Messiah.

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