Last of the disciples: John’s death and the Johannine relocation

The redactional treatment of the Apostles—and of John of Zebedee in particular—within the New Testament corpus offers clues as to the dating of the earliest Christian documents and as to the development of earliest Christian belief. In the first Gospel, the Gospel of Mark, Jesus predicts that the sons of Zebedee, the brothers James and John, will suffer execution for their faith. Jesus remarks: “The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized you will be baptized” (Mark 10:39).

Traditions from the following centuries, of course, would contradict this prophesy: John would live a relatively long life and die of natural causes. The New Testament itself attests to this emergent realization. The fashioner of the 21st chapter of the Gospel of John, the final editor of the work, for instance, has the resurrected Jesus assure Peter that while he, Peter, will be put to death by evildoers (John 21:18-19), the Beloved Disciple—at this stage a moniker for John of Zebedee—will potentially, though not definitely, live to see the parousia of the Lord (John 21:20-23). A throw-away saying of the risen Jesus, the redactor explains, constitutes the origin of a rumor that the Beloved Disciple “would not die [until Christ comes]” (John 21:23). Here Jesus’ insistence that Peter mind his own business (and not John’s) became the basis for a popular misunderstanding: “If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?” (John 21:22).

A saying of similar import to this “rumor” appears in the earlier text, the Gospel of Mark. In Mark 8:3-9:1 the mortal Jesus guarantees the twelve disciples that “there are some [of you] standing here who will not taste death until they see that the kingdom of God has come with power.” In other words, the Markan Jesus claims, at least one of the disciples will survive to witness “the Son of Man… come in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” Being that there is some indication that John of Zebedee was the last apostle to perish, conceivably outliving the others by a margin of 30 years, this saying preserved in Mark could have generated the rumor attested by the redactor of the Gospel of John. A re-negotiation, so it seems, has taken place in light of the contemporary situation: the (unexpected) death of John.

From this we might draw two conclusions:

• Mark writes prior to the death of the ultimate apostle, John of Zebedee. John’s putative death as a martyr like Jesus and like his brother James the Great (cf. Acts 12:1-5) had not yet been confirmed or refuted. At this stage, beyond Israel’s war with Rome but before the passing of John, hope remained that Christ would return to usher his beloved disciple into the kingdom of his Father.
• John 21 originates in an historical context wherein John’s death, in conjunction with the continued delay of the parousia, has rocked the confidence of some Christians. The last of the Twelve has died without the arrival of the kingdom. Earlier Jesus-sayings regarding the disciples living to witness the messianic age now appear dubious.

The author of the Gospel of Luke, writing sometime between the Gospel of Mark and John 21, corroborates these conclusions. He too appears cognizant that John of Zebedee is no more and that this is a problem. For one, Luke omits Jesus’ prediction regarding John’s supposed martyrdom. The material surrounding the prediction found in Mark 10:35-45, however, he duplicates elsewhere (Luke 22:24-30).

The Lukan evangelist then, himself a redactor of Mark, makes the following conspicuous revisions to his Markan source material in light of a postponed eschaton:

• In Mark 8:38-9:1 Jesus assures his disciples that some of them will live to see that “the kingdom of God has come in power.” Luke’s version of the saying eliminates the “has come in power” qualifier for a softer effect: “There are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God” (Luke 9:27). Luke thus allows for eschatologically-realized interpretations of the traditional saying that are otherwise not available within the context of Mark’s imminent eschatological framing (cf. Luke 10:9, 11:20, 17:20-21). For the Lukan reader, one might very well “see” the kingdom of God prior to the parousia.
• In Mark 13:24-27 the parousia of Christ interrupts the suffering that culminates in the destruction of the Temple (cf. Matthew 24:29-30). Luke elongates this transition between the siege of Jerusalem and the coming of the Son of Man by inserting into his text a new dispensation: the “times of the nations” (Luke 21:24). Israel will enter a period of prolonged domination under the Roman Empire after defeat in AD 70 but prior to the messianic age.
• In Mark 13:30 Jesus asserts that “this generation will not pass away until all these things have taken place.” In Mark’s context “all these things” refer to the events surrounding the great tribulation, the desolation of abomination, and the coming of the Son of Man with his angels. While Luke preserves this saying—perhaps feeling obligated to include it—he makes a significant alteration, changing “all these things” into “all things” (Luke 21:32). The third evangelist has here injected some ambiguity into an otherwise certain prophecy. A Lukan reader might well have presumed that “all [the] things [decreed for this generation]” have indeed occurred within a timely manner—now all that remained in advance of the parousia was the concluding of the “times of the nations,” a period of indeterminate length. Thus the passing of the previous generation need not invalidate the Lord’s words.
• In Mark 14:62 Jesus threatens the high priest who seeks to execute him: “You will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of the Power and coming with the clouds of heaven” (cf. Revelation 1:7). In Luke Jesus claims instead that “From now on the Son of Man will be seated at the right hand of the power of God” (Luke 21:69). Luke has thus transformed Jesus’ apocalytpic confession before the council from an implicit threat against the high priest (“I will kill you on the day of reckoning”) into a claim regarding the immediate status of the Son of Man as heavenly sovereign. Luke likely intends this as a reference to the exaltation of Christ following the crucifixion (cf. Acts 7:56). As elsewhere, Luke hesitates to ascribe a concrete timeframe to the parousia.

Luke’s redactional activity demonstrates that he writes from a time well beyond that of Mark and the crisis in Roman Palestine. The author of the Gospel of Luke, like the final editor of the Gospel of John, navigates an historical context in which earlier predictions concerning the parousia have gone unfulfilled. Indications of the end have come and gone: prophets have appeared preaching a kingdom “at hand,” the Christ has been raised from the dead as the first-fruits of the great harvest, terrible wrath has befallen the people of Israel as birth pangs of a new age, and now, most importantly, the last disciple has died. The generation of the Lord has passed away and the heavens still refuse to open. As Christians peer out upon the century to come they see no more sign-posts in the distance, no lamps in the fog. What was this kingdom Jesus taught? What was this coming he promised?

By the 3rd and 4th centuries the eschatological vision advanced by the Johannine tradition, that of a eschaton made immediately accessible by the spirit of Christ, would prove far more useful to such Christians than the ever-nearer Son of Man of the Synoptic Gospels. John’s relocation of the parousia and all its accompaniments into the spiritual life of the believer would prevail despite Luke’s (somewhat inconsistent) efforts to temper (but not eliminate) Mark’s eschatological urgency for a second Christian century.

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Appendix: The Johannine relocation

Some of the sayings regarding the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Christ in the Gospel of John may have at one time existed in a matrix of imminent apocalypticism. As such, the Johannine craftsmen, like the Lukan evangelist, would have appropriated and then reinterpreted Jesus material (both oral and written) toward new ends.

• The prediction made in John 1:51 (“Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”) bears a resemblance to Mark 8:39-9:1. The presence of angels [for judgement], the appearance of the Son of Man (from heaven or from the Father), the assurance that the disciples themselves will “see” the Son of man, and the shared introductory words Ἀμὴν λέγω ὑμῖν (“Truly I say to you”) suggest that John 1:51 originally had the parousia in view. Within the spiritualizing context of the Gospel of John, however, the saying could plausibly find fulfillment in any number of ways.
• The teaching in John 8:51 (“Truly, truly, I say to you, if anyone keeps my word, he will never see death.) also echoes Mark 9:1. The incredulous restatement of Jesus’ words by the Jewish opponents substitutes the words “see death” with their Markan equivalent: “taste death” (John 8:52). The promise of life sustained until the parousia (cf. Matthew 24:13) has become in the Gospel of John the promise of eternal life in the here and now.
• The repeated prediction that the Son of Man will be “lifted up [upon the cross]” (John 3:14-15, 8:28, 12:32-34) may constitute an early and independent attempt to reconcile Daniel 7:13-14 with the hope of the parousia of Christ from heaven. While the Danielic vision heavily implies that the one like a son of man will fly upon the clouds up to God’s throne-room so as to receive the dominion with which he might subjugate the earth, the early Christians believed Christ would come down from heaven in order to achieve the same ends. Whereas the Synoptic Gospels simply disregard this inconsistency—the Son of Man proceeding downward on the clouds on the day of his public glorification—the material preserved by the Johannine community may have conceived of the parousia as the manifestation of the Son of Man “lifted up” into the heavens so as to bestow judgement upon the terrified peoples below. In this case Christ’s post-crucifixion ascension into heaven had not yet been coherently integrated into the Christian Son of Man cycle.