If we cannot read this episode either as an edifying reflection on the care of the disciples for one another or as depicting Jesus’ sonly sentimentality, what does it mean?
If we assume that Jesus and the beloved are lovers, the action becomes a transparent acknowledgment of the special relationship between Jesus and the beloved, an acknowledgment that has the same effect as a kind of betrothal. Our interpretation would be easier if Jesus had singled out, say, Mary the Magdalene instead: “Woman behold your daughter,” and to Mary Magdalene, “Behold your mother.” Had Mary of Magdala been depicted as having a particularly close relationship to Jesus characterized by physical intimacy, we would read the text quite easily. Because Mary of Magdala is Jesus’ lover, she is therefore his mother’s daughter (in-law). Especially does this relationship come to the fore with the death of the son of the one and “husband” of the other. In such a case for the sake of the dead son, the mother takes as her daughter the one who had been closest to him in life. And the lover takes the husband’s mother as her own mother. That is, they adopt one another. We already possess a beautiful model for this sort of relationship in the story of Jesus’ ancestress, Ruth, and her mother-in-law, Naomi. That story of love and loyalty between two women has even become a staple of marriage ceremony texts (Ruth 1:16–17) in spite of the same-sex love that the story actually depicts.
The mutual adoption of mother-in-law and daughter-in law would be the natural reading of the text if Mary of Magdala were the other. But she is not. Instead the man Jesus loved is now placed in an adoptive relationship with Jesus’ mother. So why should we permit the feature of the disciple’s gender to hide the plain sense of the narrative?
The plain sense of this episode is to buttress our hypothesis that Jesus is to be understood as having a lover or, in the more precise terminology of antiquity, as being the lover of a beloved. The relationship is depicted by the text as a homoerotic one, which is here acknowledged as entailing a loyalty that has consequences even beyond the death of Jesus.
We should notice that the relationship of adoption that Jesus indicates is one of mutuality. His mother and the man he loves adopt one another on account of the love they apparently have for Jesus. The man does not simply adopt the mother in order to look after her and comfort her in her grief. The reverse could also be true. The mother is to “mother” the beloved. The character of this adoption makes clear that we are not simply dealing with a concern for the mother (as in Mothers’ Day rhetoric) but a concern for the beloved.
This aspect of the episode is strengthened when we recall that the way of identifying this disciple stresses the fact that Jesus loves him. Thus this scene should be read as underlining not Jesus’ love for his mother (which is suggested nowhere in this or any other Gospel) but Jesus’ love for his beloved. The mother’s role and responsibility is expressed first: “Woman: behold your son.” Only then does Jesus relate the responsive role of the son: “Behold your mother.”
Jesus’ instructions are all the more striking given that the Gospel of John speaks of Jesus having “brothers” (2:12; 7:2–5, 10).10 One would think that Jesus’ mother is not alone in the world. She has other sons, not to mention the sister at her side at this moment. She has no need of relatives or kin, but now, in addition to those blood kin she already has, she receives another son—one who becomes her son because he is the beloved of her dying son. She is being charged with a responsibility here: being mother to this man for the sake of his lover who was (one of) her son(s).
The beloved thus receives a mother and in this way becomes the son of Jesus’ mother. She adopts him first (as a parent must do) and then he adopts her.
The episode concludes that the beloved did in fact take her as his mother. The passage often appears translated as “took her to his home,” but “home” is not found in the text. The word is added by the translator. He took her “into his own” is more literal. But specifying home or family or anything of the kind here is not necessary. According to the account, he indeed accepted the adoptive relationship, which began “from that hour.”
“That hour” is the hour of Jesus’ death. Thus the relationship between the beloved and the mother of Jesus begins from the death of Jesus. While before their relationship had been to Jesus, now it is to one another. The grief of the mother for (one of) her son(s) and the grief of the beloved for the man who loved him are to find consolation in their care for one another.
This scene is also consistent with what we noticed before concerning Jesus’ relation to the disciple he loved, namely, that it was not clandestine. The relationship was apparent to those people who knew Jesus best.
But why should such a domestic scene be recorded here at this climactic moment in the Gospel? We have to deal with this question again in connection with all the texts concerning the beloved. Here the text itself suggests that the event is recorded because the beloved said it happened and that his testimony was accepted by the writer(s) of the narrative.
The beloved is here also for the first time identified as a source for the recollections that serve as the basis of the narrative (19:35). Specifically what the beloved witnesses is that Jesus’ legs were not broken but that his side was pierced. This account is regarded by the narrator(s) as consistent with Scripture (19:36–37). But behind this fact is the even more important one that Jesus really and truly died. The beloved is certainly not the only witness to this fact, but he is a witness.
But another and more important reason exists for why the episode between Jesus, his mother, and his beloved may be recorded in connection with the account of Jesus’ execution. One of the themes of this Gospel is that the “Word became flesh.” Indeed, on account of the importance of this theme, John’s Gospel came to be accepted as an antidote to gnosticism.11 That Jesus really died was important for countering gnostic and docetic tendencies in the early church. The death of Jesus according to the flesh is the culmination of the incarnation (en-fleshing) of the Word. The scene of his death then is accentuated by the presence of his mother according to the flesh and of Jesus’ beloved according to the flesh. The presence of Jesus’ mother (who is certainly not regarded as an exemplary disciple) and the presence of Jesus’ beloved (who is also not singled out as a model disciple) underscore the bodily reality that is crucial for the death of Jesus as well.
Put another way, the love that is so often the theme of this Gospel is not only “spiritual”; it is also physical, just as the death of Jesus (or his incarnation) is not only a theological symbol but also a physical, bodily reality.
In this way also, the scene at the cross connects back to the scene at the meal where we first encountered the beloved and where his relation to Jesus was marked precisely by physical, bodily intimacy.
The Tomb
The episode of the tomb does not add a great deal to our hypothesis concerning the nature of the relationship between Jesus and the beloved. Nothing here is inconsistent with the view that theirs was an erotic friendship. But because Jesus himself is not present, little in the tomb account supplements the nature of their relationship either.
The main figure in the account of the empty tomb is Mary of Magdala, whom we first met by name as a witness to Jesus’ execution (19:25). She finds the tomb empty, and she is the one who first brings word of this event to the others. Although Peter and the beloved come running to the tomb and enter it, she rather than they encounter Jesus here.12
The hypothesis of an erotic friendship between Jesus and his beloved disciple at least serves to clarify the text and to “flesh out” some of the details of that relationship.
We notice first that Mary finds the beloved and Peter together. In the next chapter, we see that this piece of circumstantial evidence supports, though does not require, the view that the beloved is Andrew, Peter’s brother. Whether or not they are