NEW TESTAMENT CHARACTERS

JAMES AND JOHN.
Christ’s two cousins were among the first group of disciples, recruited before Jesus became a public figure. Along with Peter and Andrew, Philip and Nathaniel, they saw Him rise to fame. They were present at the wedding in Cana when Jesus turned water into wine. They shared the first campaign in Judea and they baptised His converts. (Jesus would not risk creating a spiritual elite by baptising people Himself.)

During that first Judean mission, James and John saw Jesus drive out the temple traders (the first time - he did it again three years later). They were probably present at the interviews with Nicodemus and with the Samaritan woman.

The Full Call.
For a short time it seems, the group disbanded. The four fishermen went back to Zebedee and the boats. Jesus visited Nazareth but was soon back in Capernaum. There He used to borrow a fishermen’s boat (in the daytime - fishing was at night) and sit in it preaching to crowds who sat on the steep slope from the hillside down to the sea (a good acoustic arrangement, but He must have had a powerful voice too).

Then came the day when He sent them out to fish in the daytime after an unsuccessful night. The catch was massive but was followed by the call to leave their fishing and come with Him full time. James and John, along with Peter and Andrew, became the first of the apostles

The Inner Group.
Jesus never had secret favourites. They all knew that He deliberately chose three of His followers for special confidence, His two cousins James and John and His best friend Peter. These, of the twelve, He knew best and trusted most.

This trio were the ones He took with Him to the bedside of Jairus’ daughter, up the mountain of transfiguration and to be His close prayer companions in the Garden of Gethsemane.

It was Peter and John whom he sent to prepare the last supper - fitting His teaching that menial tasks were the privilege of leaders. Peter and John were in training for their coming leadership role.

Sons of Thunder
James and John He nicknamed “Sons of Thunder.” Were they hot tempered?

It was James and John who talked about calling down fire from Heaven on the Samaritan village which had refused them hospitality. It is hard to believe they were really serious, but if they were joking Christ’s response seems unduly heavy - “You don’t know the Spirit you belong to - I have come to save people not destroy them.” Perhaps the simplest interpretation is that the joke was prompted by real underlying anger. To refuse hospitality to travellers was, in those day and that culture, unheard of bad manners, a severe insult. The hospitality involved was, at minimum, no more than a place to unroll mats and sleep the night, with provision of clean water. Often hosts chose to give more, but to refuse even the basic essential was to condemn travellers to the danger as well as discomfort of sleeping rough.

So James and John were angry and covered their anger with a joke about fire from Heaven. Christ’s response, in this case, was to the anger rather then to the joke.

A more serious incident involving the brothers was when they met someone outside their group who was doing miracles in Jesus’ name. They objected. The name of Jesus was their property, their copyright, their exclusive domain. Similar exclusiveness has dogged the church down the ages and Jesus had to make it very clear that the unknown miracle worker was on His side, though not in His team. Christ’s servants have no competitors.

At the Last Supper.
There are many paintings of the last supper, all wrong. The apostles were not sitting up at a table in modern style but lying on mats on the floor, resting on their left elbows and eating with their right hands. The table if raised at all was not more than a few inches high. (Another misconception caused by mediaeval art is that John was a boy and had no beard. He was young, but fully grown and had shared the herd life of a fisherman. They all had beards.)

Peter and John prepared the supper and their seating arrangements were challenged, (Dr Edersheim suggests the challenge came from Judas) in the last and final dispute about who was the greatest. To put His two cousins on each side of Him would seem reasonable at Passover if not in the future kingdom - but we find Judas on His left, John on His right. Peter, it seems, deliberately took the lowest place, opposite John.

This meant that when Jesus told them one would be a traitor, Peter could signal easily to John and John could speak confidentially to Jesus. He was the only one who could do so. Reclining on their left arms, John had his back to Jesus; so had to lean backwards to speak to him. The expression “leaning on Jesus breast” has nothing to do with any show of affection but to the practical means of speaking to Him unheard by the others. John leaned back and asked who would be traitor. Jesus murmured, “Watch who I pass this to,” and passed the bread to Judas.

After the Arrest.
Nine disciples escaped and went back to their safe haven - almost certainly the home at Bethany. Peter and John followed as far as the High Priest’s house. What happened to Peter is part of Peter’s story, but he was left alone in the courtyard because John knew someone, probably a servant, and could go right in.

It has been suggested that Zebedee’s fishing business included the sale of dried or salted fish far beyond Galilee. There is a place in Jerusalem which is supposed to have been Zebedee’s fish shop. John may have supplied fish to the High Priest’s household, in which chase he could enter by the servants’ door and be welcomed as “John the Fishmonger.” Be that as it may, he did know someone; so was able to go in unsuspected and find out what was happening to Jesus.

He continued to watch and wait. He saw the trial before Pilate insofar as any outsider could see it. He joined up with Salome his mother and Mary Jesus’ mother and they went together to the cross. There Jesus commissioned him to care for Mary. As soon as Jesus was dead, John and his mother took Mary away.

It seems they had lodgings in the city, nearer than Bethany. At some time in the day, Peter, broken-hearted, joined them. This was why on Easter Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene found John and Peter quickly while the other women had to walk farther to find the other disciples.

After the Resurrection.
The brief separation over, John and Peter rejoined the other apostles; but something seems to have happened to the relationships among the twelve. Until then John and James are paired with each other, Peter with his brother Andrew except when the inner circle of three are together. From the first Easter morning until at least the mission to Samaria in Acts 8, Peter seems to regard John as his right hand man. John had shared Peter’s worst moments, and his best. John, no doubt had heard Peter’s first confession of his denial - Peter was not the type to conceal it, he would have blurted it out as soon as he and John were reunited after Jesus had died. They had still been together when Mary Magdalene called them to the empty tomb.

In Acts both James and John are involved in the events of Pentecost but Peter and John remain the two leading figures. They were together when they healed the lame man (Acts 3), when they twice stood before the chief priests (Acts 4 and 5) and after the second interrogation were beaten (Acts 5:40-41). Together they rejoiced that they had been counted worthy to suffer for Christ. Finally, it was John whom Peter took with him to follow up Philip’s mission in Samaria.

Then Herod martyred the first apostle - James (Acts 12:1-2). The two sons of Zebedee were the first and the last of the twelve to die, John apparently the only one to die a natural death. Apart from his writings, he fades from the New Testament record.

According to history he settled in Ephesus, and there or elsewhere cared for Mary. He may have been involved in Luke’s meeting with Mary.

John’s Gospel
Bishop Robinson dates John’s epistles in the early 60s, his Gospel in or around AD 66 and Revelation as the last book of the New Testament to be written in AD 68-9. John’s exile in Patmos, where he wrote Revelation, was on the orders of Domitian - but not during the latter’s reign as emperor (AD 81-96). Young Domitian was acting regent and John’s exile lasted as long as the regency - which explains his release and return to Ephesus. After Luke and Paul he is the third greatest contributor to the New Testament narrative. Writers in those days normally had the help of professionals when it came to the use of educated Greek. The good style of John’s Greek does not mean it could not have been written by a Galilean fisherman, only that he had a good secretary.

By AD 120 John’s Gospel was being copied onto Papyrus in Egypt. There is a fragment of such a copy in the Rylands Library in Manchester (UK). It is called “The Rylands Fragment” and you can see it if you search the internet.