John was the son of Zebedee, a Galilean fisherman, and Salome. John and his brother St. James were among the first disciples called by Jesus. In the Gospel According to Mark he is always mentioned after James and was no doubt the younger brother. His mother was among those women who ministered to the disciples.
James and John were called Boanerges, or “sons of thunder,” by Jesus, perhaps because of some character trait such as the zeal exemplified in Mark 9:38 and Luke 9:54, when John and James wanted to call down fire from heaven to punish the Samaritan towns that rejected Christ. They offered to drink with Him the cup of suffering (Mt.xx.22). In the Fourth Gospel, ascribed by early tradition to John and known formally as the Gospel According to John, the sons of Zebedee are mentioned only once, as being at the shores of the Sea of Tiberias when the risen Lord appeared. Whether the “disciple whom Jesus loved” (who is never named) mentioned in this Gospel is to be identified with John (also not named) is not clear from the text.
John and his brother James, together with Peter, formed an inner group of disciples. Jesus chose these three to be with him on the momentous occasions of his transfiguration and his agony in Gethsemane. Tradition has always identified John with the unnamed ‘disciple whom Jesus loved’, who leaned on his Master’s breast at the last Supper and to whom Jesus on the cross confided the care of his mother. Tradition identifies him with the anonymous disciple to whom St. John the Baptist shows the Lamb of God (i.35-40). It was John who outran Peter to the tomb on the morning of the resurrection and, seeing it empty, believed; and who first recognized the risen Lord by the Sea of Tiberias. In the Acts of the Apostles John is again found associated with Peter, at the healing of the lame man in the Temple, sharing his imprisonment, and going with him to the converts in Samaria.
St. Paul names John with Peter and James as pillars of the church in Jerusalem (Gal.ii.9). In later years John was exiled to the island of Patmos, ‘because I had preached God’s word’ (Rev.i.9). John is said to have passed his last years at Ephesus, and to have died there at a great age.
Numerous western biblical scholars have questioned the Johannine authorship of the four books attributed to him; their opinions vary from some to none. The traditional biblical ascriptions are not questioned in the East and these are now accepted by the Methodist scholar, Margaret Barker and in part by Dr John Robinson. More papyrus copies of John – 17 in all – have survived than of any other New Testament book. A fragment of papyrus discovered in 1935, now in the Rylands Library, Manchester, dating from the first half of the second century is the oldest New Testament manuscript we have. It is generally agreed that St John’s Gospel was written c 95-100. In recent times archaeologists have uncovered the Pool of Bethesda and ‘the place called The Pavement, and in Hebrew, Gabbatha’ (19.13) and numerous other places laying to rest the scepticism of western scholars. Johannine scholarship has resulted in much literature on the subject. One of the most concise and readable books is A.M. Hunter’s According to John.
The ‘Cowley Fathers’ was an Anglican monastic order of priests founded in the nineteenth century in Oxford by Father Benson and Father O’Neil under the patronage of Saint John the Evangelist. The first vicar of Lyneal cum Colemere was closely associated with them and they helped him with his ministry in the newly formed parish. When Fr. O’Neil visited for a mission in 1872 it was recorded that the church was ‘crowded in every corner’. This connection is almost certainly why Colemere Church is dedicated to Saint John the Evangelist. The altarpiece is a fine terracotta by Tinworth of the Crucifixion with Mary in the care of Saint John.
Christopher Jobson
Feature Image: Paintings of Saint John the Evangelist in Monastero del Sacro Speco (Subiaco), WikiCommons, PD.