The astonishing Fourth Gospel: teasing out the narrative of the one we call John

I hesitate to call the Fourth Gospel “John’s Gospel”, since there is no reliable sign that John had anything to do with its authorship. It is the gospel of the Beloved Disciple, but who was he? The Beloved Disciple is never given a name, and that is quite deliberate. He (or perhaps she – except that women were rarely literate in those days) occurs four times in the text.