12/14/2020 / Day 211 / John 1 -2 – The Intro / 4 of 5
I know, I know: The intro should be #1 of ?
The author/messenger is secondary and so is the historical setting. But they are far from insignficant. Theologians seems to center around the year 90 for the writing of this gospel. John had a family fishing business in Capernamaum and Halley’s Bible handbook tells us: “that he also had a house in Jerusalem (John 19:27) and was a personal acquitance of the high-priest (John 18:15,16)
His father was Zebedee. He and his brother James, both disciples, were nicknamed “Sons of Thunder” by the Lord himself. I seem to recall Salome, their mother, came up to Jesus with the other disciples around them, asking for a special place in heaven for his sons. As I have joked in the past, certainly that was: “That’s the ticket!”, certain popularity with the group for sure. Toward the end of John’s Gospel , he identifies himself as the “disciple that Jesus loved”, at that point it was threatening as most all of other remaining disciples, excluding Judas, had already been martyred at that point.
Halley notes that John spent much of his later years in Ephesus. But funny that neither he nor Matthew Henry mentions him being exiled to the island of Patmos not too far off the coast from Ephesus. Patmos was stark, call it a rock with little habitation I expect excepting others like John that were banished there by the Romans.
John was a disciple of John the Baptist (John 1: 35, 40) . Halley notes: “If he was a cousin of Jesus, as seems implied in passages above cited, then he was kin to John the Baptist (Luke 1:36) and must have known of the angelic announcements about John and Jesus (Luke 1:17, 32). So, when John the Baptist appeared, crying that the Kingdom of Heaven was at hand, John the son of Zebedee ws ready to take the stand with him.”
I must take a minor issue with Halley’s premise that loyal disciples just naturally occur within an extended family unit. For example, James , the brother of Yeshua, was a leader in the Jerusalem church up until his martyrdom, but he did not become a beliver until after his resurrection and ascension. In with respect to local community, Yeshua biblically notes how a prophet or Son of God is not accepted in his hometown. In the case of Yesuhua, that is shown scripturally at least in two different episodes.
I have a question which I would like to take a statistical survey of: Who can recount a testimonial of someone coming to Christ through a sibling as messenger in adulthood. Anybody?
Blessings! Soli Deo Gloria!