[aron]

I have been entertaining the concept for some time now that John the "beloved" disciple was the other, unnamed disciple of John the Baptist in the scene in the fourth Gospel, where John the B. is standing with two of his disciples, and he sees Jesus walking and says "Behold! The Lamb of God!" (vv. 35-36). I have seen it written that "tradition holds" that it is John the disciple there with John the B. It stands up to reason:

--John doesn't mention himself by name in the gospel, and one of the disciples is not named, while the other (Andrew), is. Why is one not named? John is a careful writer.

--John and his brother James were business associates of Peter (Luke 5:10). Andrew, the other, named disciple, was Peter's brother; in fact he goes and gets Peter in verse 41. The connection thus favors John or James; I think John because of the next point.

--John's gospel seems to be all first-person, rather than a collection of stories from others (as Luke's gospel clearly is, for example). The preceding verses about John the Baptist certainly seem to be intimate first-hand reporting, which matches all the rest of the book.

--Many other disciples are named, so the process of elimination narrows it down. Andrew, Peter, Philip, Nathaniel are all ruled out; they are delineated one by one as the narration proceeds. Of course, the disciple could have been one not of the twelve. It could have been Cleopas or someone else.

--But the fact that there are two, and they are spoken to by John the Baptizer, and then they speak to and go with Jesus ("and they stayed with Him that day" -- John 1:39), make me strongly predisposed to believe this was none other than John the "beloved" disciple.

Why is this relevant? Because John the Baptist came from a priestly family. His father was not at the outside court, but "inside the temple of the Lord, burning incense" (Luke 1:9). John was conversant with the ways of the religious Jews; when they came to him he addressed them as "Offspring of vipers" (Matt 3:7)...where did this antipathy come from, if not from some acquaintance? Sure, he was in the wilderness until his presentation to Israel, but he seems to have had some intimate first-hand experience with the Jewish religious crowd.

Secondly, the Baptizer (naturally) speaks in the OT vernacular. "A voice crying out in the wilderness..." His ostensible disciple, John, reverts to this mode in his apocalyptic opus, the "Revelation". Look at all the OT references in the final book of the Bible. The entire book is almost lifted verbatim from the OT prophets. Just as Saul/Paul was "trained at the feet of Gamaliel" (Acts 22:3), so I think it likely that John the disciple was trained in OT exegesis by John the B. This comes to the fore in "The Revelation".

Combine this with John 18:16, that "...the other disciple, the one known to the high priest" was clearly John the disciple, and you have someone able to perceive the in degradation of the christian fellowship a haunting echo of that of its predecessor, the (also God-given) system of Jewish worship.

John can see where the fellowship is heading. His "Revelation" is merely an extrapolation of the current trends in the assemblies.

This post, and thread, are meant to be adjuncts to the ongoing discussion in the "eldership" thread.