I hesitate to call the Fourth Gospel “John’s Gospel”, since there is no reliable sign that John had anything to do with its authorship. It is the gospel of the Beloved Disciple, but who was he? The Beloved Disciple is never given a name, and that is quite deliberate. He (or perhaps she – except that women were rarely literate in those days) occurs four times in the text.
The expression stands for the unnamed disciple who is closest to Jesus at the Eucharist, the only disciple to share the Cross to the very end, the first to recognise the meaning of the empty tomb and who, in the final chapter, is put forward as the author it y behind the message of the Risen Christ. These four marks touch every Christian: the witness of the Beloved Disciple is the witness of us all.
