Man Jesus Loved. Theodore W. Jr. Jennings

Peter’s Companions

      This brief survey indicates not only that Peter and the disciple whom Jesus loved are different disciples, but also that a pronounced relation is present between them. They appear in the text as comrades, which suggests, in fact, the possibility that the beloved disciple may be Andrew, Peter’s brother. In the Gospel of John, we are told that Andrew, who had been a follower of John the Baptist, is the first to follow Jesus and identify him as the Messiah. Andrew then brings his brother to Jesus (1:35–42), and together they are involved in recruiting Philip (from the same city, Bethsaida, as Peter and Andrew).

      Andrew appears later as the one who finds a lad with loaves and fish that Jesus multiplies to feed the multitudes (6:8–9).

      Finally Andrew is mentioned as one to whom Philip goes to introduce a group of Greeks who had come to see Jesus. Andrew then takes Philip to Jesus where they relay this information to him (12:22).

      Let us now review this material to see what kind of a case could be made for identifying of the beloved disciple with Andrew.

      1 As Peter’s brother, Andrew would be expected to have the sort of relation to Peter that the beloved disciple is represented as having.

      2 Relative to the other Gospels considerably more detailed interest in Andrew is available. He is given a “prehistory” as a disciple of John the Baptizer that also serves to account for the greater attention that this narrative gives to the baptizer.

      3 This disciple is represented as having the role of greater access to Jesus. Andrew brings Peter to Jesus, brings the lad to Jesus, and brings Philip to Jesus with news of the Greeks. He appears to have a certain personal access to Jesus consistent with the depiction of the beloved disciple, which is especially suggested in the case of the beloved by the question addressed to him by Peter at the supper.

      4 The mention of the beloved disciple coincides with the disappearance of Andrew from the text. Andrew last appears at 12:22, and reference to the disciple Jesus loved first appears at 13:22.

      A case can thus be built for identifying the beloved disciple with Andrew. The difficulty that we encounter here is that the text does not provide us with more than this circumstantial evidence. Furthermore, this evidence is all formal in character; that is, it stresses the “role” of Andrew within the first half of the text as formally similar to the role of the beloved in the second half of the text.

One of the problems with the case for Andrew is that he is not named as a member of the fishing party organized by Peter in the last chapter of the text. This is, of course, not a crippling difficulty since two unnamed disciples are there as well, one of whom could be Andrew. In fact, this would correspond with the way in which we first encounter Andrew in the text. We are first told of John the Baptizer speaking to two of his (unnamed) disciples (1:37). They then follow Jesus. Only then we are told that one of these anonymous disciples of John (and now of Jesus) is “Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother” (1:40). A certain symmetry would exist in Andrew’s being present in the final scene of the narrative as one of two unnamed disciples, since that is in fact how he makes his first appearance in the opening scenes of the Gospel.⁹

      The pairing of Peter with the disciple loved by Jesus in many of the texts that mention the latter have suggested the possibility that Andrew may be the disciple whom Jesus loved.

Another passage sometimes linked with the tradition concerning the beloved concerns an unnamed disciple with connections to the Jerusalem establishment who gains access for Peter to the trial of the Sanhedrin (18:15–16). He is twice identified as “known to the high priest.” It seems most unlikely that Andrew, or for that matter any other Galilean disciple of Jesus, would have been known by the high priest in such a way as to gain access to the proceedings of the Sanhedrin for himself and for another of his company. But Jesus does not only have Galilean followers in the Gospel of John. Indeed one of the best-known passages in this Gospel concerns a dialogue between Jesus and a “Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader [ruler] of the Jews” (3:1). The designation of Nicodemus as a ruler indicates that he was a member of the Sanhedrin and thus clearly in a position to gain admittance to the deliberations of that body. This status is also true of Joseph of Arimathea who, unlike Nicodemus, is known to the synoptic tradition, is a member of the ruling council, and is identified by the Gospel of John as a secret disciple of Jesus (19:38). In this Gospel, Nicodemus and Joseph share in the tasks of claiming, preparing, and burying the body of Jesus (John 19:38–42).

But from the text, a conclusion that the disciple known to the high priest is also the beloved is not necessary. In favor of such an identification would be that the “other disciple” known to the high priest does accompany Peter (something otherwise true of the beloved) and that the beloved then would be a witness to the trial as well as to the Last Supper, the execution, the empty tomb, and the risen Jesus’ commissioning of Peter. However, no apparent reason exists for the Gospel’s not identifying this disciple as the beloved in the text if the author wants us to suppose that he is. When Nicodemus reappears at the end of the story, he is reintroduced as the one “who had at first come to Jesus at night” (19:39), and Joseph is introduced as a secret disciple as though he had not previously appeared in the narrative. Moreover the beloved need not be a witness at the trial since Peter is, thanks to the work of another disciple. Thus, while we have one or two likely candidates for the “other disciple” who admits Peter to the scene of the trial (Joseph and Nicodemus), nothing connects this figure to the disciple whom Jesus loved.¹⁰

       Fishermen

      We have thus far pursued the clues in the text that place the beloved alongside Peter. Another clue more often pursued to discover the identity of the beloved is the makeup of the fishing party in the final scene of the Gospel where, we subsequently learn, the beloved is also found. Peter is here, as are (for the only time) the unnamed sons of Zebedee.¹¹

Who else?

      The first disciple listed here is Thomas the twin. Do we have reason to suppose that Thomas is the beloved?

      In his favor we may mention the following:

      1 He is placed at the final scene where we subsequently encounter the beloved.

      2 He is called “the twin.” What are we to make of this strange designation? Could this be because he is someone else’s twin or because “twin” is used here as an allusion to his relationship to Jesus? In this case, he would not be a blood twin but a twin in the sense of the affectional other of Jesus.12

      3 This possibility receives a certain amount of substantiation in that the twin is represented as having an especially fervent attachment to Jesus. In chapter 11, we have the dramatic story of Jesus’ return to Judea on account of the death of his friend Lazarus. He has been camped out on the other side of the Jordan in order to escape the attempt on his life by the Judeans. When news comes of Lazarus’s illness and then death, Jesus leaves his hideout to go into danger to the scene of Lazarus’s death. Here for the first time in the narrative we encounter Thomas. “Thomas, called the twin, said to his fellow disciples, ‘Let us go also, that we may die with him’ ” (11:16).They then proceed to Judea where the raising of Lazarus takes place. The determination of Thomas to die with Jesus is especially striking in view of Jesus’ subsequent word that the greatest love is the willingness to die for one’s friends (15:13). Thomas is thus represented as having this love for Jesus in a particularly striking degree.

      4 Thomas together with Peter, Philip, and Judas (not Iscariot) are the interlocutors of Jesus in the long final discourse of Jesus with his disciples following the first appearance of the beloved. This discourse deals in part with the nature of love (13:36–14:24). But nothing can be determined from this passage since the question raised by Thomas, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” bears on the question of the destiny of the disciples rather than on the character of love per