Saint John the Beloved Disciple was the son of Zebedee the Fisherman. He was also know as John the Evangelist, Saint John the Theologian, Saint John the Divine, and John of Patmos. John and his brother James the Greater were also nicknamed by Christ as the sons of thunder because of their over-zealous defense of Christ’s honor when some Samaritans disparaged Christ (Mark 3:17).
John was born sometime around AD 6. He was the second born son of Zebedee the Fisherman and his wife Salome.
John’s mother Salome (also referred to as Mary) was one of the women who traveled with Jesus and His disciples and ministered to their practical needs (along with Mary the Mother of Christ, and Mary called Magdalene). Salome was also a direct eye witness to the crucifixion and death of Christ on Good Friday(Matthew 27:55 & Mark 15:40) and she watched the dead body of Jesus laid in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea by Joseph and Nicodemus(Mark 15:47). Mary-Salome was also one of the women who brought spices to the Grave of Jesus on Easter Sunday morning (after the end of the Jewish Passover Sabbath). Mary-Salome was with Mary-Magdalene and Mary the wife of Clopas, who was also the sister of Mary the mother of Jesus(John 19:25). The Marys intended to anoint the dead body of Jesus the Christ. Instead they found the tomb open and empty(Mark 16:1), because Jesus, the Son of God, who had been dead and buried, was no longer dead but bodily risen from death to life(John 20:18).
John the Evangelist is widely presumed to have been the un-named disciple of John the Baptist who was with Andrew the First Called, when they witnessed Christ’s baptism. John tells us that the day after Jesus was baptized, Jesus was walking along the Jordan River and John the Baptist proclaimed: “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!(John 1:29)” and that Andrew (and his associate John) then followed Jesus(John 1:37-40).
Andrew (and John) went and found Andrews brother Simon, to tell him that he had found the promised Messiah, who was Jesus of Nazareth and to bid Simon to come and meet him. Jesus renamed Simon as Cephas (Aramaic for the stone or rock, the Latin of which is Petra, and hence Simon-Peter.
John and his brother James the Greater (meaning the taller or the older), were also the Sons of Johan (Bar-Johan). So the four Galilean fishermen, Andrew, Simon, John and James who were likely commercial partners, were each called by Christ hence became his first four disciples(Mark 3:14).
John, his brother James the Greater, and Simon-Peter comprised a sort of “inner circle” of Christ’s disciples. They were the three whom Jesus brought with him to witnessed the Transfiguration of Christ, one of numerous scriptural and Christian existential examples of “thin spots” between heaven and earth, where the visible and the invisible, the physical and the metaphysical coexist. They saw the divine illumination of Christ, Moses and Elijah in the “uncreated light” of the shekinah glory of God(Mark 9:2-3).
It was also these three who Jesus invited to join him when he went to the house of Jairus, the ruler of the synagogue and restored his dead daughter back to life(Luke 8:49-54 & Mark 5:35-43).
It these three, again who Jesus took to pray with him in the Garden of Gethsemane, after he had instituted the sacrament of holy communion on the evening of Maundy Thursday, just prior to Christ’s arrest in the Garden(Matthew 26:36-38).
John is also “the Evangelist,” who wrote The Gospel According to John sometime around AD 60 or shortly thereafter, while he was serving as the bishop of Ephesus. He was a direct eyewitness to each of the events he described in his Gospel. In the ancient church, the term evangelist (which was derived from the Latin word evangelium) was a reference to one of the writers of the four Gospels of Christ, which John certainly was; much later, during the 16th century reformation, the term was used to describe Martin Luther and his followers, and today it connotes any Christian who wants to grow the church by recruiting converts to the faith.
John was also the author of 4 additional books which were incorporated into 27 books of the New Testament when that collection was finally completed, agreed to by the patristic fathers of the church and canonized by the church late in the 4th century. Those books included the Epistles of 1st John, 2nd John & 3rd John (written around AD 90), and the Book of Revelations (written around AD 94 while John was exiled on the Island of Patmos). John’s final 4 books were each pastoral writings which he wrote to encourage the Christian believers in his greater diocese of western Anatolia (a,k,a,. Asia Minor which is now western Turkey). John’s authorship of these writings was never disputed by the ancient, medieval, or reformed church; it is only in the last 2 centuries that the apostate and Gnostic naysayer “pseudo-scholars” have cast flimsy and unfounded aspersions on John’s authorship of these books.
John the Son of Zebedee is also the first of the three men that the Orthodox church considers the “preeminent theologians” of the Christian faith (along with Saint Gregory of Nazianzus, AD 329 to 390 and Saint Symeon the New Theologian, AD 949 to 1022 ).
John “the disciple that Jesus loved” was at the foot of the cross with the Virgin Mary when Christ was crucified. John was ordered by Christ to become Mary’s guardian(John 19:26-27), and he provided for her well being for her for the rest of her earthly life. Sometime around AD 38, John went to the coastal port city of Ephesus (in Asia Minor) with the Virgin Mary, the mother of Christ, and, he became the bishop of the nascent church in that region and beyond and John served, taught, demonstrated, discipled and mentored in that region for some 60 years.
When John was older, he discipled the young Polycarp of Smyrna (AD 69 to 155) who became the Bishop of Smyrna. This was important because Polycarp was able to carry and transmit John’s teachings and understanding of the faith the next generation of Christians in that region. The mature Polycarp, taught Irenæus of Lugdunum in Gaul (now Lyon, France), passing on to him stories about what John was really like and John’s understanding of who Christ was and what He did for Mankind. Irenæus was born in Smyrna and after being discipled and ordained he moved to the important cross roads city of Lugdunum in Gaul. In Irenæus’s Against the Heretics, he relates how Polycarp told him a story of John’s days in Ephesus:
“John, the disciple of the Lord, going to bathe at Ephesus, and perceiving Cerinthus [the heretic] within, rushed out of the bath-house without bathing, exclaiming, ‘Let us fly, lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within.’ ”
Irenæus, in his turn, discipled Hippolytus of Rome (AD 170 to 235) who was influential in establishing and maintaining Christian orthodoxy in the politically corrupt and divisive and sometimes doctrinally confused capital of the Roman Empire. The extensive training and discipleship these patristic fathers received from their mentors is an excellent example of the full depth of meaning and concept of the apostolic succession of the church.
John is one of the four evangelists (with Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Many of the ancient and medieval artistic Christian renderings of the four evangelists depict them as “the four living creatures” which support and protect the throne of Christ in Heaven, the Glory Seat of God. These many eyed cherubim are described in Ezekiel 1:2-10 and in Revelations 4:7-9.
John is symbolized as the eagle along with Matthew, who is shown as a winged man or angel, Mark, who is shown as the winged lion, and Luke who is shown as a winged ox.
According to Tertullian of Carthage (in The Prescription of Heretics), around AD 95, the aging John was arrested and taken to Rome, where the Emperor Titus Flavius Domitian (the Christian persecutor who ruled the empire from AD 81 until 96) had John plunged into a caldron boiling oil in front of thousands of Roman citizens present in the Colosseum that day. John emerged from the boiling oil unharmed, and according to Tertullian, every one in the Colosseum that day converted to Christianity after witnessing the amazing event.
John was then banished by Domitian to the Greek island of Patmos, in the Aegean Sea (not far from Ephesus). However, as often happens, Domitian may have meant it for evil, but God used it for good. John’s exile on Patmos, gave him a welcome break which allowed him undistracted time to worship and enjoy God and to write the Book of Revelation. In AD 96, after the death of Domitian (and John’s completion of his last book), John’s exile was reversed by Domitian’s successor, the Emperor Nerva, and John returned from Patmos to Ephesus and he resumed his pastoral work there.
John lived to an old age, and he died sometime around AD 98 in Ephesus. Despite the Emperor Domitian’s rather dramatic attempt to martyr John (and a few later and probably spurious reports of John’s having actually been martyred) he almost certainly died of natural causes. Saint John outlived the all the other apostles and he was the only apostle who did not die a martyr’s death.
It is traditionally believed that John was the youngest of the apostles and that he survived all of them. In orthodox icons John is often depicted dictating the Book of Revelation to his disciple and scribe Prochorus.
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