In the catalogue of “gay saints”, or pairs of supposedly “gay lovers” in Scripture, the coupling of John the Evangelist (the “beloved disciple”) and Jesus himself is surely the most controversial. Many people, including some of my friends from the LGBT Soho Masses, find the whole idea that this may have been a “gay”, sexually active relationship, highly offensive. Others argue the opposite case.
In an explosive book, “the man jesus loved
, the reputable biblical scholar Theodore Jennings mounts an extended argument that Jesus himself was actually gay and that the beloved disciple of John’s Gospel was Jesus’ lover. To support this provocative conclusion, Jennings examines not only the texts that relate to the beloved disciple but also the story of the centurion’s servant boy and the texts that show Jesus’ rather negative attitude toward the traditional family: not mother and brothers, but those who do the will of God, are family to Jesus. Jennings suggests that Jesus relatives and disciples knew he was gay, and that, despite the efforts of the early Church to downplay this “dangerous memory” about Jesus, a lot of clues remains in the Gospels. Piecing the clues together, Jennings suggests not only that Jesus was very open to homosexuality, but that he himself was probably in an intimate, and probably sexual, relationship with the beloved disciple.
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Thanks for this I have added a link on my posts for the 12 Days of Christmas at http://holyirritant.blogspot.com
Thanks for the link, Tony – and for drawing my attention to The Holy Irritant, which looks to be useful.
Does anyone have any ideas about John's the Beloved's origins? His background? Had he possibly been the subject – "toy" – of a pederast centurion whom Jesus rescued? I have no sources, just ideas. I am writing a play about the Saturday after the death of Jesus – Yeshua – The play is tentatively titled "Maryam" the mother of Yeshua.
Thank you for this. I'm called John (João, in Portuguese), and, some time ago, I was kinda upset when discovered that my name comes after John the Baptist and not John the Evangelist, who I find to be simply amazing. It just takes one look on the artistic representations of John to see that he was different from the others. And Jesus wanted to have him between his followers, as he did not judge people as they "followers" do, nowadays. If laying with a man like laying with a woman was a sin by the Old Testament, then Jesus himself would have died much earlier for spreading the word of forgiveness, love to others, and everything that makes Christian people different from Jew people (that yet insist going against the Old Testament when they, lets say… shave, or eat fish without scale. Thank you for the post, and thank St John for being so different, because I feel much more confident about myself when I see that, even in the religious institutions that thinks I'm wrong, there are wrong people like me to whom they pray every day. Thank you.