John, Son of Zebedee

In the Gospels and Acts

John is present at the Transfiguration, the raising of Jairus' daughter, and Gethsemane. In the Fourth Gospel, he reclines next to Jesus at the Last Supper (John 13:23) and is the only disciple present at the crucifixion (John 19:26–27), where Jesus entrusts his mother to his care.

In Acts, John appears alongside Peter in the early Jerusalem church (Acts 3–4, 8:14). Paul identifies him as one of the "pillars" of the church, along with Peter and James the brother of Jesus (Gal. 2:9).

Later Life and Death

The most important testimony about John's later life comes from Irenaeus of Lyons (writing c. AD 180), who had heard it from Polycarp, who had known John personally. Irenaeus reports that John lived in Ephesus in Asia Minor and that he wrote the Fourth Gospel there. He also reports, in a famous passage, that John once fled a bathhouse in Ephesus when the heretic Cerinthus entered, saying, "Let us fly, lest even the bath-house fall down, because Cerinthus, the enemy of the truth, is within."

Unlike every other apostle of whom we have reliable report, John is said to have died a natural death at an advanced age in Ephesus, traditionally around AD 98–100, during the reign of Trajan. His tomb was shown in Ephesus in the second century and was known to later writers including Eusebius.

The tradition that John was exiled to the island of Patmos "because of the word of God and the testimony of Jesus" comes from the book of Revelation itself (Rev. 1:9), though the author of that book does not identify himself by name beyond "John." Whether the author of Revelation, the author of the Fourth Gospel, and the apostle John are the same person is one of the most contested questions in New Testament scholarship (see the Debates page).