A disciple mentioned only in the Gospel of John and never identified by name. Appearing first at the Last Supper, reclining at Jesus’s bosom, at Peter’s bidding he asks the identity of Jesus’s betrayer (John 13:23-25). At the crucifixion, standing beneath the cross with Jesus’s mother, he is entrusted with her care (John 19:25-27). On Easter morning, he outruns Peter to Jesus’s tomb and finds it empty (John 20:2-10). Later, in Galilee, he identifies for Peter a figure standing on the shore as the risen Jesus (John 21:7). Finally, Jesus parries Peter’s question about whether the Beloved Disciple will live until Jesus’s return (John 21:20-23). He is also identified as the person responsible for writing down some of the material contained in the Gospel of John (John 21:24). The assumption that the Beloved Disciple must have been one of the Twelve led to the traditional view that he was John the son of Zebedee. Yet that identification is never made in the Gospel itself and other theories have also been advanced.
