02x22 - The Beloved Disciple

[bunniefuu]

What does it all mean?

This is where the archeology has been found.

Oh, hi how are you?

Look at that.

I need a planter.

A shrine to a bellybutton.

Is this a rock of salt?

Look at that!

No one gets into this place?

Whoa, don't take me too far!

Now that's naked archeology.

[theme music]

[SIMCHA] He's considered by some

to be the most important figure in the Gospels

after Jesus. The Gospels themselves say

that he was Jesus' favourite.

It was said that he would not die

until the advent of the kingdom of God.

And the secret of his identity is the central mystery

of the novel "The Da Vinci Code."

And yet no one knows his identity.

He's known only as the Beloved Disciple.

People may be surprised to find out

that this Beloved Disciple appears

only in the Gospel of John

and only some three or four times.

So maybe by trying to unravel

a two thousand year old mystery

and looking at each instance

where the Beloved Disciple appears,

we can try to figure out who is the Beloved Disciple.

[SIMCHA] So who are the suspects?

He should be one of Jesus' Twelve Disciples.

The most obvious is John.

For almost two thousand years,

scholars and theologians assumed

that John was the Beloved

because he was the author of the Gospel,

and he was simply too modest to identify himself

as Jesus' favourite.

Recently, however, scholars have concluded

that the title of the Gospel was probably added later,

so it's unlikely that John was the author.

This has thrown a shroud

back over the identity of the Beloved Disciple.

I asked Professor James Charlesworth

what the Gospel does tell us

about the mysterious unnamed Disciple.

Where does it in the text-

where do we know the Beloved Disciple from?

How many times does he appear?

What does he do with each scene?

What is he doing?

Okay.

He appears for the first time

as the disciple whom Jesus loved, that is,

the Beloved Disciple in Chapter

at the Last Supper, and he is just to the right of Jesus.

The next time he appears, he's at the foot of the cross,

and Jesus commissions him:

"Son, behold your mother."

And then the next scene is

when he races with Peter to the tomb;

he gets there first.

The Beloved Disciple appears, then, only three times.

That's right.

At the last supper.

At the cross, and at the open grave.

[SIMCHA] So who could the Beloved Disciple be?

Some have suggested Judas Iscariot,

the man who betrayed Jesus.

But the novel the Da Vinci Code proposes

the most controversial candidate for

"the Disciple whom Jesus Loved": Mary Magdalene.

Although she wasn't a disciple,

some older traditions do suggest

she married Jesus and had a child with him.

Well what's wrong with that,

there are three passages in John

where the Beloved Disciple appears

and the second one he's at the cross

and Jesus says to the Beloved Disciple

"son behold your mother".

Well now we have a problem.

Is Mary Magdalene really a male? and so...

Oh you mean when he says "son"

he's addressing the Beloved Disciple.

Yes. So Mary Magdalene disappears.

And then people say how about Judas,

why not Judas?

At the Last Supper he's to the left of Jesus

and according to the Gospel of John

he's a powerful man.

But he cannot be the Beloved Disciple

because Judas is on the left,

the Beloved Disciple is on the right,

so Judas can't be in both places.

So now we're left with the question- who could it be?

[SIMCHA] If I'm going to answer that question

I need to see the places where the events took place.

The Gospel of John is clear

that the Beloved Disciple makes his dramatic first appearance

at the Last Supper where he's described resting his head

on Jesus' chest.

And a sixteen hundred year old tradition points to this

as the place where the Last Supper occurred.

This isn't the building, it's this building not that one.

[SICHA] Although most of the building was destroyed

when the Romans flattened Jerusalem in ,

the lower walls are still made up of stones

from the time of Jesus.

The second floor was rebuilt and dates

to almost a thousand years ago.

Still, some scholars believe it was the headquarters

for the early followers of Jesus,

including the Beloved Disciple.

Professor James Tabor showed me the building.

This is where the Beloved Disciple

puts the head on his shoulder.

That's right.

This is where Leonardo Da Vinci...

Yeah.

[SIMCHA] Leonardo's famous painting

depicts all twelve Disciples at the Last Supper.

Taken together the four gospels identify all of them,

but only some of them are named in the Gospel of John.

And professor Tabor thinks that's a clue.

My theory is we've got to start with the idea

that he's not named.

So I'm going to eliminate any of the twelve disciples

that are named. Like, it's not Peter.

It's not Andrew. It's not James. It's not John.

But, if you take, of the twelve,

the ones that aren't named anywhere in the gospel,

you come up with Simon and James and Jude.

I'm not talking about the well known James and Simon

and Judas Iscariot, but the ones mentioned

at the tail end of all the lists, possibly,

I think, Jesus' brothers. And so that's a clue.

It's one of those three.

[SIMCHA] The Gospel of Matthew

identifies James, Judah and Simon as Jesus' brothers.

But which one is called the Beloved in John?

I know whom I have chosen.

[SIMCHA] There must be more evidence.

So I decided to look at the most famous scene

in the Gospels: the crucifixion.

And I discovered that not only is the Beloved Disciple there,

the text seems to identify him.

[SIMCHA] I'm searching for the identity

of the mysterious Beloved Disciple

whom the Gospel says would not die

until the advent of the Kingdom of God.

So far I've definitely eliminated the disciples John,

and Judas as well as Mary Magdalene.

James Tabor has led me to the most likely suspects:

James, Judah and Simon,

whom the Gospel of Matthew say are Jesus' Brothers.

But which one is it?

The Beloved is the only Disciple to witness the crucifixion.

And there, Jesus speaks directly to him.

I asked Professor James Charlesworth

whether the text can help us

narrow down the suspects.

Let's look at the Gospel of John.

In Chapter Jesus is on the cross,

he looks down and the Beloved Disciple is there.

And Jesus calls the Beloved Disciple "son".

And he says "Behold your mother".

Does he say anything else?

Oh yes, mother behold your son,

son behold your mother.

The implication is from that moment

he's asking the Beloved Disciple

to be a son to his mother.

[SIMCHA] If the Beloved is one of Jesus' brothers,

in whose hands would Jesus commission Mary,

his mother?

The Gospels don't say, but James Tabor

thinks that what Jesus said from the cross

is the key to the identity of the Beloved Disciple.

Who would Jesus give the care of his own mother to?

I think it has to be James, the brother of Jesus.

Who do you give your mother to?

In Judaism if the elder brother dies,

the next son has to take over the custody of the mother.

So it makes perfect sense.

He says to him in a kind of formal ceremony,

"Mother, behold your son; son behold your mother."

And it says that disciple took her into his house.

So where's his house? James.

Probably right here.

[SIMCHA] If James was so important

why does the Gospel edit out his name?

What many people forget is that Jesus and James

were Orthodox Jews as were the Disciples.

Some scholars believe that

by the time John was set to paper

a new version of Jesus had begun to emerge.

Jesus the man, whose Jewish followers called

the Messiah was being replaced by Christ,

the right hand of God.

The Gospel of John needed to reflect this new reality.

James Tabor thinks that this explains

why Jesus' brother was turned into the anonymous

Beloved disciple.

Why would you knock him out?

'Cause he's the flesh-and-blood brother of Jesus,

he takes over the movement,

and he's essentially

representing Jewish Christianity.

By the time John is finally redacted and edited,

we've got a Christ who's a god,

who's preexisted and comes from Heaven.

He rules in the heavens at the right hand of God.

This "earthly brother" stuff and the idea

that Mary had sex and had children,

and a physical Jew, as a brother,

is ruling the group is just too pedestrian,

I think, for these people. These are mystics.

[SIMCHA] James Tabor's argument is compelling.

But for a Disciple who is so important

there's remarkably little sign of him

in the rest of the New Testament.

And yet, there is one more famous incident

involving the Beloved Disciple.

He races the Disciple Peter to Jesus' empty Tomb.

Some say the race eliminates James

but points to another suspect for the Beloved Disciple.

[SIMCHA] I'm trying to unravel the identity

of the Beloved Disciple

who was the only one of Jesus's Disciples

to witness the crucifixion.

There he saw a curious detail:

a Roman soldier pierced Jesus' side

to make certain he was dead.

According to the Gospels,

three days later Mary Magdalene found the Tomb empty.

Then, In what some argue is

the Beloved's most important appearance,

he races another Disciple, Simon Peter, to the empty Tomb.

To understand what happened when they got there

and why it's important I want to see the place

where a sixteen hundred year old tradition

tells us it happened.

Yisca Harani showed me what

many Christians believe is the Tomb of Jesus.

So right behind us is the tomb that used to be a cave,

and then it was covered.

But you can imagine that when Peter

and the Beloved Disciple run to see the cave

and this is a barren land

they have to go up and down,

they have to jump over rocks.

They run in order to see a tomb,

which is carved in the rock.

[SIMCHA] And what they saw inside

is the founding principle of Christianity.

What we hear is that when coming to the tomb,

what they found was as it is you see now, right?

It's a rock with nothing on it except two shrouds,

and the shrouds were folded,

the head shroud and the body shroud separately.

[SIMCHA] But the story of the footrace

between the Beloved Disciple and Simon Peter

contains an important detail.

It says that one of the disciples

was running quicker and he approached the tomb

and didn't step inside.

Peter comes second but first to enter the tomb,

and he does not seem to understand what's going on.

That's a very interesting, I would say bizarre narrative

because it insists on the running

and the fact that the one runner

was better than the other.

[SIMCHA] The Gospel is clear

that the Beloved is the first to reach the Tomb.

And yet, Simon Peter is the first to enter.

Why does the Beloved hesitate before going in?

Professor James Charlesworth thinks

that that moment may be the biggest clue

to the code of the Beloved Disciple.

Now why do you think that the beloved Disciple

doesn't go into the tomb?

Pollution. He didn't want to pollute himself.

By coming into contact with a dead body.

Or going into a grave, yes.

And then eventually he goes in.

Okay, he goes in. Now you know the rules,

for six days he must not appear to anybody.

[SIMCHA] Because he had entered a grave,

Jewish law required the Beloved to purify himself

through prayer and sacrifice,

ritual cleansing and separation for seven days.

But according to the Gospels, that very night,

Jesus appeared to the Disciples.

One of them wasn't there.

The Disciple Thomas, aka "Doubting Thomas"

whom the Gospels call "Didymus",

he was missing. Why?

Beginning of the eighth day,

now that's the first time that the Beloved Disciple

can appear again, right?

Guess who appears? Thomas.

And now we have an explanation

why Thomas wasn't there.

He was purifying himself.

And then he gives us a real insight, he says:

"I must see the wound in his side."

Wait a minute! The wound in his side?

When people are crucified

they don't have a wound in their side.

How would he know that?

The Beloved Disciple is the one that saw it.

If the Beloved Disciple is the witness

to the spear then bingo, you begin to see

the author is cleverly saying,

perhaps the Beloved Disciple is Thomas.

[SIMCHA] But if the Beloved is Thomas,

and not James, as Professor Tabor suggests,

why would the Gospels hide him?

Who was he, and why would Jesus

have thought he was special?

That becomes abundantly clear

when you study old Syriac traditions.

He was considered "the twin."

In fact, in the Gospel of John, it refers to Thomas,

Didymus Thomas.

Now, Thomas in Aramaic means twin,

and Didymus in Greek means twin.

So we have a twin.

The early tradition is that Thomas

is Judas Thomas, the Twin.

So we have a tradition that his name

is Judas Thomas Didymus.

So, we can surmise what?

That his name was Jehudah, Judah,

and that he was known as the Twin.

But whose twin is he?

Well, it has to be the twin of Jesus.

But what does the twin of Jesus mean?

Are we to take it literally that Jesus had a twin brother,

or are we to take it as spiritual?

[SIMCHA] What if it is a literal twin?

A recent archaeological discovery suggests

Judah may have been related to Jesus.

But that he wasn't his brother...

[SIMCHA] I'm on the trail

of the mysterious Beloved Disciple,

who was supposed to live until the advent

of the Kingdom of God.

Following Professor James Charlesworth,

I've discovered that the most likely candidate

may be the disciple Thomas,

who is also known as Judah,

and was said by some to be Jesus' twin.

But there's one more piece of the puzzle here,

and it shows that the Beloved

may not have been Jesus brother after all.

We're just outside of Jerusalem.

Traffic...not so much traffic now.

We're in a parking lot.

But in the middle of all this

there's a controversial tomb. Come on.

[SIMCHA] This could be

where the famous footrace took place

because, although most scholars dismiss it,

some believe that this is the Tomb of Jesus.

There you have it, a sealed tomb.

[SIMCHA] When the Tomb was reopened,

two thousand years after the crucifixion,

archaeologists found ten bone boxes,

or ossuaries. Most controversial was an ossuary

with an inscription on it that said

"Jesus, son of Joseph."

Most dismiss the inscription as referring to another Jesus.

But when I looked at the other ossuaries

there was one familiar name.

And it may explain the mystery of the Beloved Disciple.

Because the name on the ossuary is Judah,

son of Jesus.

Can you point out the inscription actually?

It says here very clearly in very good script:

Jehudah bar Jeshua, Judah son of Jesus.

Of Nazareth?

No, no. -What?

This is Judah, the son of Jesus,

one of the many Jesuses

that lived in the first century in Jerusalem.

[SIMCHA] But if the ossuary did

come from the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth,

could it be that when Jesus said

"Woman behold thy son",

he was referring to his own son,

and in effect telling Judah that he was now

the head of the family?

I asked James Charlesworth...

You've got him calling him son.

Why does he call him son?

That's a good question.

I think it's because I see Jesus

trying to keep his movement continuing, not dying.

But maybe there's some early Christian traditions

that suggests that it could be a real son of Jesus,

I don't know of any.

We have a piece of archaeology

that says Judah son of Jesus.

If you take the archaeology,

if you take the statements on the cross, "son",

if you take the tradition of the Twin.

I can tell you, my son,

I can't tell you how many people have said,

"He's your twin." Right?

'Cause he looks like me.

So the question is: couldn't twin really be Junior?

I think we just have to be open in exploring

and wondering what are we learning

and what are we capable of thinking.

And I think it's a time to be bold

and open and in dialogue with one another.

[SIMCHA] But if Jesus did have a son

why isn't he mentioned in any of the Gospels?

Maybe he is, and we just haven't noticed.

I'm in the garden of Gethsemane.

This is the traditional place where Jesus was arrested.

He might have stood by this very olive tree.

He was here with the Disciples,

and it's very interesting in terms of the mystery

of the Beloved Disciple because this is where

the Beloved Disciple is conspicuous by his absence.

The Beloved Disciple was at the Last Supper,

so why wouldn't he cross the Kidron valley later

that same night with the rest of the Disciples?

It turns out that he may have.

But the scene didn't make it into the Gospel of John...

There's a clue in the gospel of Mark.

There's suddenly a little boy,

a certain young man, in some kind of linen cloth,

that's following the arrested Jesus.

Sounds like a kid. And suddenly what do you have?

The soldiers turn around, grab him by the linen,

he escapes, they're left with the linen

in their hand and he runs naked through the streets.

Does that sound like a full grown man,

or does that sound like a little kid

following his father from a distance,

trying to be with him as he's

being led away to his death?

[SIMCHA] So is the Beloved Disciple

Jesus' brother James as Professor Tabor believes?

Or is he Jesus' twin, Judas Thomas,

as Professor Charlesworth maintains?

Or could the Beloved Disciple have been Jesus' son,

whose identity at first was hidden

because Jesus' followers didn't want his enemies

to know of an heir to the leadership,

later he could have been written out of the Gospels

because it didn't fit with the Church's

evolving conception of Christ?

If he was a son, this ossuary leaves one last problem...

The Beloved Disciple isn't supposed to die

before the advent of the kingdom of God...

But it turns out that he makes one last appearance

in the Gospel of John.

The Beloved Disciple is so important

that he's mentioned in the very last lines

of the Gospel of John.

And that's where his death is mentioned.

It seems that he was so central to their belief

and they were so sure that he would not die,

before Jesus came back that the writer

of the Gospel of John had to reassure them

that even though he d*ed before the second coming

it wasn't over. In a sense the Beloved Disciple lives.