Is it even possible?
That the “Beloved Disciple” was Lazarus and not John Zebedee?
According to BW3, YES!
What I am talking about is of course Witherington’s article entitled “THE HISTORICAL FIGURE OF THE BELOVED DISCIPLE IN THE 4TH GOSPEL“. It was first presented at SBL last year and is made available online recently.
To start, Ben says:
If you want to cause Biblical scholars to get their knickers in a knot there are two sure fire ways to accomplish that end: 1) you can skewer a sacred cow whether a liberal or conservative one; 2) you can propose a theory that requires one to believe in the possibility of the miraculous to even entertain the thesis. If you can accomplish both with one theory, well, you’ve created a Mallox moment! I seem to accomplished this at the last SBL meeting in November when I gave the following lecture. I’ll let you decide whether you find it illuminating or inflammatory. Flame On!
And as he concludes, he says:
If I am right about all this it means that the historical figure of Lazarus is more important than we have previously imagined, both due to his role in founding churches in and round Ephesus and of course his role in the life of Jesus and Jesus’ mother. Jesus must have trusted him implicitly to hand over his mother to him when he died. Lazarus was far more than one more recipient of a miraculous healing by Jesus. He was “the one whom Jesus loved” as the very first reference to him in John 11 says. We have yet to take the measure of the man. Hopefully now, we can begin to do so.