Who is Prester John?

A while back I read something regarding a man named Prester John. Supposedly this Prester John was the same John as the appostle of Jesus and was, in all practicallity, immortal and that he , not Judas, was the true betrayer of Jesus.
I remember this book quoting verse from the Bible explaining that John (he is named in the form of a metaphor, which can admittedly be misinterpreted) was to live untill the day Jesus came again to earth.

I am not sure if there was some kind of conspiracy in regards to the individual who betrayed Jesus to the authorities or if this is mere fiction. I have searched the net and have found little on Prester John. I have also tried to search for Bible verse which could lead to some kind of explanation, I however don't own a Bible, which is making it difficult.

So does anyone know anything about this Prester John?

I can tell you the Prestor John was a character in some post-apocalyptic stories by author David Gemmell (who is fantastic).

Perhaps you are confusing Prester John with Yohanon ho Presbuteros (John the Elder) who seems to have met "Jesus" in Jerusalem and lived to an advanced age.

He might also be some of the source material behind our present 4th Gospel which circulated anonymously for some time before the name "John" got attached to it.

But he certainly was not the Apostle "John" (Yohanon bar Zavdai, one of the two Benei Regesh, the sons of Thunder with his brother Yakkov/James), both of whom were executed by Herod in the 40s.

This "elder" John (ho presbuteros, or Presbyter, means Old Man or Elder) seems to have been buried at Ephesus alongside ANOTHER "John" (a very common name in Palestine in the 1st century AD) after the Jewish War destroyed Palestine AD 66-72 and lived to an advanced age to judge from Iranaeus who knew Polycarp (Polycarp allegedly met the 95+ year old John the Elder when Polycarp was 15 or so in around AD 92)...

But Prester-John and Presbyter-John do sound a lot alike !

Prester John, a somewhat less fictional character?

Just trying to keep this out of the BTS Literature Forum.

I thought Prester John was the 'christian king surrounded by barbaric heathens' ???

I've read that European bishops & kings mistakenly attributed the mysterious destruction of armies & bastions of islam throughout the middle east to an enigmatic warrior-king of the orient known as Prestor John, when actually it was mongol rulers Ghengis, then Hulagu Khan conquering the muslim lands. As the campaigns continued the European kingdoms realized this Prestor John was no friend to christianity either when King Bela IV of Hungary got routed.

Now thats an interesting theory. I guess they figured that anything that was destroying 'moslem infidels' must be a christian, just one that they'd never heard of. Intruiging, and ironic, the way it turns out.

I was going to post what NEOAMADEUS said--since he already said it, I'll have to just settle for saying--

'what he said.'

Prester John was a PriestKing from the Far East in the 12th or 13th century.
Supposedly he practiced a form of christianity and went to Rome to meet the Pope. Do a google search for Prester John as there are quite a few sites. Here's a few to get you started

www.fordham.edu...

www.newadvent.org...

Originally posted by shihulud
Prester John was a PriestKing from the Far East in the 12th or 13th century.
Supposedly he practiced a form of christianity and went to Rome to meet the Pope. Do a google search for Prester John as there are quite a few sites. Here's a few to get you started

www.fordham.edu...

www.newadvent.org...

That's the first I'd ever heard of him. Thanks for the good links, shihulud!

Both those sources note that its a fictional person, a story passed around in ignorant times.

I wrote an essay on the Prestor John myth and it came about because small groups of Christians with no connection to the Catholic church could be found in cities in Idia that had only just been contacted in the West, probably descendants of traders from the recently decesed Byzantine Empire.

It was hoped that they represented a major Chrisitian power somewhere in Ethiopia that could help lead a vast crusade against the Turks who had ovverrun the middle east and were beggining their occupation of Greece as a prelude to major European expansion.

Exploration of Ethiopia by the portugese put an end to the myth, but for a while it was a big craze amoung European monarchs.

While this post might not answer the question of just "who is Prestor John", I would like to note that Umberto Eco's novel Baudolino, might of interest. Umberto Eco, an Italian linguist and author (probably most notable, by most, for his novel, The Name of the Rose) wrote this marvelous book about, in part, the search for Prestor John.

Aside from being a novel steeped in the mythos of the early Church, it also deals with a number of medievil characters in a semi historical fashion (after all, this is a work of fiction) that makes this a highly readable and entertaining book....Unless you read it, you might never know who Prestor John is.

Prester John also came to be confused with "the fisher King" of the grail romances, the king who guarded the cup that Jesus drank from at the last supper.

Jim Morrison, a highly creative student of English Literature and anthropology often wrote references into his lyrics from the grail romances and Sir James Fraser's "Golden Bough." (The titles of chapters in that book include 'not to touch the earth,' 'not to see the sun,' etc.)(Chapter 2 is "Priestly Kings," which is our topic in this thread).

I believe that one of most famous of Morrison's lines, "I am the Lizard King; I can to anything" was actually a misheard reference to this mythical person: "I am the Fisher King; I can do anything" Jim's pronouncement was based on the fact that the possessor of the grail was supposed to be able to replicate the miracles of Jesus.