He declares that he is "the disciple whom Jesus loved," and that
he actually leaned on the bosom of Jesus at the last supper and
asked in a whisper which of them it was that should betray him.
Jesus whispered that he would give a sop to the traitor, and
thereupon handed one to Judas, who ate it and immediately became
possessed by the devil. This is more natural than the other
accounts, in which Jesus openly indicates Judas without eliciting
any protest or exciting any comment. It also implies that Jesus
deliberately bewitched Judas in order to bring about his own
betrayal. Later on John claims that Jesus said to Peter "If I
will that John tarry til I come, what is that to thee?"; and
John, with a rather obvious mock modesty, adds that he must not
claim to be immortal, as the disciples concluded; for Christ did
not use that expression, but merely remarked "If I will that he
tarry till I come." No other evangelist claims personal intimacy
with Christ, or even pretends to be his contemporary (there is no
ground for identifying Matthew the publican with Matthew the
Evangelist); and John is the only evangelist whose account of
Christ's career and character is hopelessly irreconcilable with
Matthew's. He is almost as bad as Matthew, by the way, in his
repeated explanations of Christ's actions as having no other
purpose than to fulfil the old prophecies. The impression is more
unpleasant, because, as John, unlike Matthew, is educated,
subtle, and obsessed with artificial intellectual mystifications,
the discovery that he is stupid or superficial in so simple a
matter strikes one with distrust and dislike, in spite of his
great literary charm, a good example of which is his
transfiguration of the harsh episode of the Syrophenician woman
into the pleasant story of the woman of Samaria. This perhaps is
why his claim to be John the disciple, or to be a contemporary of