Beloved Disciple

From Homolexis Glossary

The phrase the disciple whom Jesus loved or Beloved Disciple occurs several times in the Gospel of John, but in none of the other accounts of Jesus. In John's gospel, it is the Beloved Disciple who asks Jesus during the Last Supper who it is that will betray him. Traditionally, the Apostle John himself has been assumed to be the Beloved Disciple, and he is often shown as such in medieval and Renaissance art, where he appears as a beardless youth. However, this identification has no certainty. And indeed some scholars question whether John the Apostle is the same as John the Evangelist.

In fact the word “disciple” may be used generically, so that our quest for the identity of this figure need not be limited to the Twelve Apostles.

Some writers, including Dan Brown in his wildly popular fiction The Da Vinci Code, even suggest that the Beloved Disciple is Mary Magdalene. A gay Biblical scholar, the late Morton Smith, claimed to have discovered a Secret Gospel of Mark, existing only in fragments. As the account in Secret Mark describes a raising from the dead very similar to Jesus' raising of Lazarus in John 11:38-44, the young man is identified as Lazarus and fixed as the Beloved Disciple. The authenticity of Smith’s discovery has been questioned.

At all events, the figure of the Beloved Disciple, whoever he may have been, has been embraced by many gay Christians as evidence that Jesus could love another man, though not necessarily in the carnal sense.