The Criticism of the Fourth Gospel / Eight Lectures on the Morse Foundation, Delivered in the Union Seminary, New York in October and November 1904

by W. Sanday

4. The son of Zebedee and the beloved disciple.

I cannot disguise from myself that if the elder John really perished at an earlier stage in the history, the position of the younger becomes much clearer. There would then be no difficulty in the way of identifying him at once with the beloved disciple and with the author of the Gospel and Epistles. We should indeed have all the advantages of Harnack’s theory without its disadvantages. We should not be compelled to attribute to the Ephesian Church any fraudulent intention or practice. We should only have to regard the younger John as succeeding in a manner to the place of the elder, much (as I said) in the way that James the brother of the Lord succeeded to the place of the elder James.

I do not wish to prejudge the question. But those who are familiar with its intricacies will, I think, agree with me that it would be a real gain to have only one claimant to the Ephesian tradition[^[84]].