Disciple Jesus Loved

[DaveMcAdams]

How can I verify for a protestant who believes that the Disciple Jesus Loved at the cross is a brother of Christ that it it is actually the Apostle St John, brother of James. Seems John usually refers to hinself only as Disciple Jesus loved.
The person I am discussing with assumes that since Jesus says: “Son-behold thy mother” He is indicating that the disciple is a true brother, and son of Mary. I’m sure that somewhere, scripture indicates that this is John, but cannot locate

 

[Jimmy_Akin]

The person you are talking to might want to read some Protestant commentaries on John, because even in Protestant circles it is recognized that the “disciple that Jesus loved” or “beloved disciple” is John son of Zebedee.

The reasons cited in such Protestant commentaries for this identification are fairly straightforward:

1. If you read John’s Gospel it reveals that the beloved disciple was a disciple who regularly travelled with Jesus (he witnessed the events of the Gospel). This means it wasn’t a “brother of the Lord” because Christ’s brethren were not among those who travelled with him.
2. It also is clear that the beloved disciple is one of the core disciples due to the intimacy he has with Jesus (e.g., being seated even closer to Jesus at the Last Supper than Peter). This means that he is one of the core four: John, James, Peter, and Andrew.
3. It can’t be Peter because the Gospel several times notes that Peter and the beloved disciple were present together at events and talked to or about each other.
4. It can’t be Andrew because he is named earlier in the Gospel and the whole point of the beloved disciple referring to himself obliquely is that he doesn’t use his own name.
5. It can’t be James because he was killed by Herod Agrippa early in Acts and thus did not survive to write a gospel, as the author of John did. (Indeed, the end of the gospel records a rumor in early Christianity that the author of John would live until the Second Coming.)
6. That leaves us with an identification of the beloved disciple and John.