The Beloved Disciple

‘Lord, what about this man?’ (John 21:21). Peter’s question hints at a rivalry which has bubbled beneath the surface of the second half of John’s Gospel. Which disciple takes precedence: Peter, or the disciple whom Jesus loved? The latter had reclined in the privileged position of intimacy at the Last Supper, acting as mediator between Peter and Jesus (13:23–25). He had enabled Peter’s access into the high priest’s courtyard (18:15–16) and stayed to witness Jesus’s death after Peter’s denial and flight (19:26–27, 35). On Easter day, the two disciples set off for the tomb together, but the beloved disciple arrived there first (20:4). The rivalry between these two intimates of Jesus continues to the Gospel’s end. ‘Lord, what about this man?’

The French artist James (Jacques) Tissot depicts that tension between Peter and John, albeit here in the earlier scene of their running to Christ’s tomb (20:1–10). One of 365 scenes from the life of Christ, painted following what Tissot called a ‘pilgrimage of exploration’ to the Holy Land, it presents the moment when the beloved disciple reaches the sepulchre.

Following Christian tradition, Tissot’s John is ‘younger and more active than his companion’ (Tissot 1898: 245), well able to outrun Peter. Arriving at the tomb, he is already illuminated by the light emanating from the two angels inside (20:12). Indeed, John himself looks angelic, clothed in dazzling white. Peter, following behind, is still in the shadows, his head turned back towards the city of Jerusalem rather than ahead to resurrection light.

For the community which produced John’s Gospel, Peter may be the shepherd, who confesses his love for Jesus (21:15–19). However, it is the disciple whom Jesus loves who is their direct link to Christ, and who has nurtured them in the faith. His testimony is the testimony they have come to know as true.

References

Tissot, J. James. 1898. The Life of Our Saviour Jesus Christ. Three Hundred and Sixty-Five Compositions from the Four Gospels with Notes and Explanatory Drawings, Volume II (London: Sampson, Low, Marston & Co.)

As the Gospel of John ends, memories come flooding back of that poignant meal in Jerusalem, the night before Jesus suffered. ‘Peter turned and saw following them the disciple whom Jesus loved, who had lain close to his breast at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is it that is going to betray you?”’ (John 21:20). This climactic scene recalls three characters who, in the hours following the Last Supper, would respond in markedly different ways. Peter would deny him; Judas would betray him; the beloved disciple alone would follow Jesus to the cross. Now, post-Resurrection, just two remain: Peter, newly rehabilitated (21:15-19), and the anonymous beloved disciple, whom tradition would identify as John, son of Zebedee.

Those memories shape the central section of Plautilla Nelli’s Last Supper, where all three disciples appear in a single grouping around Christ. Christ tenderly cradles the head of his beloved disciple with his left hand, while offering the morsel to Judas (John 13:26) with his right. The older figure seated to Jesus’s right, bearded and with grey curls, fits conventional depictions of Peter. But it is the intimacy between Jesus and John, the ‘one who is bearing witness’ (21:24), that dominates.

Suor Plautilla Nelli was a sixteenth-century Dominican nun, and prioress of the convent of Santa Caterina di Cafaggio in Florence. According to Giorgio Vasari, her impressive Last Supper was originally displayed in the convent refectory, visible to Plautilla’s religious sisters as they ate together. 

Plautilla’s John is conventional: an androgynous figure, the virgin apostle of Christ and type of the contemplative. But this androgyny might have taken on new significance when viewed through the eyes of a female religious, a consecrated virgin ‘Bride of Christ’. For Suor Plautilla and her sisters, this is their story. They recline at Christ’s bosom. And, in their life of contemplation, they bear faithful witness.

References

Falcone, Linda (ed.). 2019. Visible: Plautilla Nelli and her Last Supper Restored (Prato: B’Gruppo Srl)

Nelson, Jonathan K., (ed.). 2008. Plautilla Nelli (1524 – 1588): The Painter-Prioress of Renaissance Florence (Florence: Syracuse University in Florence)

This final passage of John’s Gospel centres on an ambiguous saying of Jesus, which provoked a rumour. ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?’ (John 21:22). Did this mean that this disciple would remain alive to witness Christ’s second coming? At least some of the brethren thought so (v.23). Yet the beloved disciple seems to have died by the time this passage was written. Hence the problem, and the need to challenge the rumour.

Yet the rumour was not completely scotched. This saying of Jesus was sufficiently ambiguous to provoke different answers concerning John’s destiny. Augustine knew the story that the earth near John’s tomb in Ephesus continued to move, a sign that John was not dead but sleeping (On the Gospel of John, Tractate 124.2). In one Western tradition, John was destined to wander the earth until the Lord’s return.

Perhaps most widespread in the East is the tradition of John’s metastasis or ‘translation’ (the feast of which is celebrated on 26th September), depicted in this fourteenth-century fresco from Dečani Monastery in Kosovo. The aged John urges his followers to dig a grave for him outside the city of Ephesus. He lies down in the grave, and his disciples return to the city. When they subsequently revisit the burial site, his body is no longer there. One interpretation among Orthodox Christians is that John, like Enoch, Elijah (Genesis 5:24; 2 Kings 2:11–12), and Mary, was translated to heaven.

The Dečani Monastery fresco, like the feast it visualizes, plays on the ambiguity of the dominical saying. On the one hand, John dies in that grave outside Ephesus. On the other, his ‘translation’ means that he is alive in the heavenly realm, where he ‘remains’ until the Lord comes. ‘If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?’

References

Culpepper, R. Alan. 2000. John, the Son of Zebedee: The Life of a Legend (Minneapolis: Fortress Press)