The Beloved Disciple: His Name, His Story, His Thought: Two Studies from the Gospel of John

by Vernard Eller

124 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1987

About the author

Vernard Marion Eller was an American author, Christian pacifist and minister in the Church of the Brethren.

Reviews

[Fred Kohn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found out about this book by reading L. Michael Hall's book on the fourth gospel. In that book, Dr. Hall claims that Lazarus of Bethany, the Beloved Disciple, and not the Apostle John, wrote the Fourth Gospel. Vernard Eller's thesis is only slightly different. Eller believes an unknown person wrote the gospel but that Lazarus was the source behind it. Hall quotes Eller in his book *Over My Dead Body!* "Either the Beloved Disciple is *Lazarus*—or else we don’t have a ghost of a clue as to is."

Hall borrows some ideas from Eller, such as the idea that the author of the Fourth Gospel—whoever they were—was an upper-class, well educated, Jerusalemite. However Hall disagrees with Eller's opinion that the second disciple of John the Baptist who follows Jesus in John 1.35-42 was Lazarus. Instead, Hall believes that Lazarus did not become a disciple until after he was raised. Hall points out that the phrase "the disciple whom Jesus loved" does not appear until after Lazarus was raised.

Eller begins his first of two studies by saying he is going the way of Sherlock Holmes. By this he means that rather than consulting scholars, he is going to blaze a new trail. I think he does a pretty good job. He starts by noting that there are discrepancies between the Gospels. He has invented the term "pious imagination," by which he means inventing something to explain a discrepancy. He gives as an example the fact that the Fourth Gospel says Peter was from Bethsaida and the Synoptics say he was from Capernaum. Maybe Peter lived in Capernaum and then moved to Bethsaida? Eller rejects all such facile explanations. Maybe, says Eller, the Gospel writers didn’t conceive of themselves as writing history in the fashion we moderns have come to expect? This, I think, is a very good point.

Eller gives a parallel account of the Gospels, paying particular attention to how the disciples are described. He notes that in the calling of the Galilean disciples, Luke does not mention Andrew, the brother of Simon Peter. His hypothesis that Luke, like the author of the Fourth Gospel knows that Andrew was called in Judea, not in Galilee.

An important theme that Eller emphasizes throughout his first study is the distinction between historical eschatology, which he defines as where is human history headed; and divine communication, which is how God, from the heavenly sphere, can communicate his divine beatitude to human individuals in the sphere of the earthly, finite, and sinful. Eller doesn’t discount historical eschatology, but he does downplay it with respect to divine communication). An example he gives is in John 11 when Mary references the historical resurrection at the end of time (historical eschatology) and Jesus's pointing to himself as the resurrection (divine communication).

In his book, Hall cites many reasons why John of Zebedee cannot have authored the Fourth Gospel. Eller mentions a few more that I thought were of interest that Hall does not mention. Pointing to the apparent idealogical tension between the writer of the Fourth Gospel and the writers of Matthew and Mark, Eller notes that if John wrote the Fourth Gospel this tension would be *within* the Galilean community rather than *between* rival communities. Eller's argument that if the author was John of Zebedee it is hard to know how he would have inside knowledge of Nicodemus, is less persuasive. We know that the conversation in John 3 couldn’t have happened as recorded because it hinges on a pun that only exists in Greek. Eller also suggests that John 12.20-22, which mentions Greeks, may mean that the author want to suggest that the Jerusalem tradition (represented by the author of the Fourth Gospel) is more open to outsiders than the Galilean tradition (represented by John of Zebedee).

Eller states at the beginning of the book that it consisted of two studies that were too long to be articles, but too short to be books. So he combined them together to get one book-length text. I liked the first study a lot better than the second one. The second one, I think, was directed more at committed Christians, which I am not. The premise of the second study is that the theology of the New Testament prohibits not just sacramentalism but mystery religion in general. When I was a Christian, I was more attracted to the mystical side of religion than religion in its literalist form, so this premise grated on me a bit, but Eller might be right. When the N.T. uses the word "mystery," it is not in the sense of something hard to understand, but rather as something which was hidden that has now been revealed. So, Eller declares that the gospel is a revealer of mystery, a breaker of mystery.

When it comes to sacraments, Eller quotes Karl Barth as saying "There is only one sacrament," and that sacrament is Jesus himself. Eller spends quite a bit of time discussing Jesus's statement that he is the bread of life and that it is necessary to eat his flesh and drink his blood. Here, Eller sees not a reference to the Eucharist but instead believes that Jesus is declaring that Jesus wants his followers to meditate on his words. "If I have condescended to come to you as FLESH, then you had better have yourselves ready to CHEW." According to Eller, Strong's Concordance says that the Greek word [presumably φάγῃ] may have reference to the sound of *crunching* and might be translated "gnaw" or "chew" and that the Concordant Literal New Testament translates "masticate." It was in looking up the Strong's reference that I realized that the Strong's concordances you find online or in the back of your N.T. concordances are greatly abbreviated versions of the unabridged Strong's.

Eller notes that the Fourth Gospel omits the reference to the Eucharist during the last meal that Jesus had with his disciples. As a true believer, Eller thinks that this meal was a Passover meal and that the Eucharist as recounted in the Synoptics did occur, as well as the foot washing. But as I was reviewing this passage I noticed something interesting. When Judas leaves, the other disciples supposed that he was going to buy something for the feast. This would make no sense if they were in the middle of the feast, but would make a lot of sense if the feast were the next day.

I read a digital version of this book on the Internet Archive. It’s great that you can get so many great books for free in this way, but charts do not reproduce well in this format. This made me wonder how much a print version would cost? There are many available on Abebooks but they cost more than I would want to spend on a book that is free on the internet.