On “John, the Son of Zebedee” by R. Alan Culpepper *****

I'm something of a traditionalist in terms of who wrote what in the New Testament (it's the simplest answer); Culpepper, like so many modern scholars is not. He believes that John the apostle wrote none of the books attributed to him; rather, a community of early Christians wrote the works that were later associated with the apostle. Culpepper includes his arguments for why he believes this is so in his biography of John and raises a number of good questions for those who would take other positions. What makes this work so great, however, is that it isn't just an expression of Culpepper's views. Rather, it's an exploration of how the “myth” of John came to be. As such, it's a compendium of all the writing (alongside some other creative works) that has been done about John and that has been credited to John. It's probably the most complete and encyclopedic source on this subject around.

In discrete chapters, Culpepper explores who John actually was (What does Sons of Thunder mean? How was he a pillar of the church? Was he a priest or related to one? Did he know Greek?); who the Beloved Disciple, the author of the gospel of John, was (the apostle? the elder? Lazarus?); who the authors of the apocalypse and letters were (the apostle? the elder? a seer? the beloved disciple? a community?); how traditions in the second through fifth centuries tied or did not tie John to these writings; how John's reputation was burnished in various largely fictional Acts about his life and how much we can know about his life outside scripture (did he die a martyr? did he go to Ephesus? travel through Parthia?); the art and poetry about John; nineteenth-century scholarship on John; and twentieth-century scholarship on John (which scholars fall into which of three basic camps: John the apostle as author, John the Elder as author, or a Johannine community as author)?

For me, the chapter about the various mythic Acts was a slog. Culpepper provides a lengthy summary of many of them. That said, the summary is extremely useful as a reference and likely one I will return to. The chapter on art of poetry did not, for me, not all that useful, but it fits well with Culpepper's main goal, which is to provide a summary how John has been seen across the ages, even if these works never even purport to be accurate.

What in the end makes this such a great work is that while Culpepper has his own views on the subject, he provides full summaries of the points of views others have had. As such, one learns why some people claim the Beloved Disciple is John, why some claim the Elder never existed, why some claim John the apostle died early, and so on, even as one learns the views Culpepper himself holds. There really is so much that can be argued, and it's nice to have it all in one place.