John, Saint

John, Saint



(first century a.d.)

Disciple of Christ, whom some Christians expected to live until his Second Coming.
Questions have been raised about the person to whom this prophecy was attached. An apostle named John figures in the Gospels as the younger of the two sons of Zebedee. There is a John known as the “beloved disciple” because of

closeness to Jesus, who, when dying, entrusts his mother to this disciple’s care. Early authors think these Johns were the same. The traditional story is that John, apostle and “beloved,” went to live at Ephesus in Asia Minor. During a Roman persecution he escaped, or perhaps was banished, to the Aegean island of Patmos, but when the danger passed he returned to Ephesus.
John is reputedly the author of the Fourth Gospel and three epistles, and also the Apocalypse or Revelation, which concludes the New Testament. If he wrote all these, he must have continued as an active author to a very advanced age. Much uncertainty exists, on stylistic and other grounds. The Fourth Gospel claims at the end to be giving the testimony of the “beloved disciple.” It was he, regarded rightly or wrongly as the only John, who was expected by some to live until the Second Coming, on the basis of chapter 21, verses 20 to 23. Jesus has risen from the dead and appeared to some of his disciples beside the Sea of Galilee. He tells Peter to “feed his sheep”—that is, to look after the community of believers—and foretells Peter’s martyrdom. Then:

Peter turned and saw following them the disciple whom Jesus loved.… When Peter saw him, he said to Jesus, “Lord, what about this man?” Jesus said to him, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me!” The saying spread abroad among the brethren that this disciple was not to die; yet Jesus did not say that he was not to die, but, “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?”

This report of a promise of survival may have been inspired by another enigmatic saying of Jesus’, recorded elsewhere with minor variations. Addressing a group of followers, he says that “some standing here” will live to witness the advent of the Kingdom of God. Misunderstood as referring to his future return in majesty, this may have been taken as a prophecy that some of his hearers would live to see it. The supposed prophecy could have been applied to John because of the remark quoted in the Fourth Gospel and also because he was seen to be living on when all the other apostles were dead.
He too died at last, but a legend asserted that his tomb at Ephesus was empty and he had gone no one knew where. The sixth-century historian Gregory of Tours notes a still-persistent belief in his survival until the Second Coming. Perhaps, though, it was not an earthly survival. He might have been taken up bodily into Heaven. Dante, in his Paradiso (XXV:100–129), imagines a meeting with John in the celestial regions but dismisses the bodily assumption.
The survival motif was continued or, rather, transformed in a puzzling medieval account of a contemporary of Christ who was still living in Armenia. The name given to him, Cartaphilus, means “most beloved” and shows that the story was derived somehow from the tradition of the beloved disciple, but this immortal is not the beloved disciple. He is said to have been a doorkeeper in Pilate’s house. When Jesus passed, carrying the cross, he shouted, “Go on faster!” Jesus replied, “I go, but you shall wait till I come”—another echo of the gospel but in a totally different context. Cartaphilus is converted, but the legend makes his survival a punishment. In the seventeenth century, the person in this encounter is described as a Jew, and thereafter, because of the doom upon him, he is the “Wandering” Jew who can never rest, a much more famous character than Cartaphilus. Here the legend parts company finally with the gospel.