Could Apostle John be a woman? Joanna...

I had a thought about why the Gospel of John is, according to theologians, noticeably different than the other three. If I recall, the depiction of the crucifixion is one example. John gives a more close up account, but it is a little bit odd in that I read only women were allowed up close. Luckily this is a conspiracy thread, cuz this is a bit controversial. What if John was a woman? The name Joanna is very similar to John in many languages, including the Greek one that the oldest NT texts are written in. Today, in some languages they are still almost identical. Of course that by itself is no reason to assume that a sex change is the reason for the gospel of John to be different from the rest.
At the empty tomb, who would you predict would arrive at the tomb first that morning? Those who were closest to Him would.
Luke 24:10 KJAV"It was Mary Magdalene, and Joanna, and Mary the mother of James........."

Matthew 27:33-56; Mark 15:22-41; Luke 23:33-49; John 19:18-37.

Standing by the cross of Jesus,
there were His mother,
the Apostle John,
Mary Magdalene,
and several other women who revered Him.
It is impossible to describe the grief of His mother seeing the unbearable suffering of Her Son.
When Jesus Christ saw His mother and the disciple whom He loved standing near, He said to His mother,
"Woman,
behold Your Son!"
Then, He said to John,
"Behold your Mother!"
And from that hour the disciple took Her to his own home and cared for Her until the end of Her life.

John 1:29 "Behold the lamb of God" This is John the Baptist being quoted, and the lamb of God he is referring to is Jesus.
Revelations 21:9, (note the similar verse numbers, considering both chapters are by John). "Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the lamb's wife."
It is clear that Mary is very close to Him, and that John, the sole recorder of the Canaa wedding is also very close to Him.
Then there is a Joanna with Mary at the tomb, what is she doing there?
John writes Revelations, John describes the crucifixion quite differently than the other 3 'synoptic?' gospels.
It also makes the reference to John being Jesus' most beloved sound more appropriate.
In the KJAV, Luke 3:27 A list of names which is Jesus' dad's lineage, (else why put it in there?), it reads...." Which was the son of Joanna, which was the SON of Rhesa."
Here is a biblical reference to a male 'Joanna'. It is interesting that this was not corrected if it was a typo.
Finally, a Leonardo Da Vinci note. In the last supper painting, the figure to Jesus' right is said to be John, but if you look at the person closely, it is pretty clear that Leonardo painted a woman there.




[edit on 03 22 2005 by BlackGuardXIII]

'Me and other ATS members like queenannie38, also believe that the Gospel of John was written by a woman. More specifically, Mary Magdalene. Bellow are a few papers written by scholars who also hold that assumption.

ramon..._k_jusino.tripod.com/magdalene.html
www.earlychristianwritings.com...
www.theology.edu...

The Gospel of John was written by the 'Beloved Disciple'. I believe this was none other than the Bride of Christ, Mary Magdalene.

You might want to post those links on your thread for others to read.

Inverencial Peace,
Akashic '

I have considered that theory as well, and it has been speculated that this is why the Last Supper painting is like that, and why the writing is different. Still, I prefer the John/Joanna theory since the actual changing of sex from female to male could have originally been a mistake, the two names are so alike. Once the contradiction was noticed, then editors would have certainly favoured the male option. I do believe that Mary was more than just his wife, and that she was a high level member of the movement, probably his number one. The Joanna that accompanies her to the tomb has been proposed as another teacher in his group. It is my feeling that the reference in Matthew, of the presence of John, and other women, is suggestive too. It would be very plausible to me that Mary and Joanna could have co-authored John and Revelations, with Mary selflessly unconcerned who got the credit.

The first article on your list proposes an interesting hypothesis, which says that the Johannine community intentionally changed the authorship of the Gospel to make it acceptable to the emerging church.

From Mary Magdalene: Author of the Fourth Gospel?

The pre-canonical version of the Fourth Gospel clearly named Mary Magdalene as the disciple whom Jesus loved, just as the Gnostic writings still do. The Gnostic writings reflect a dependency on the pre-Gospel text which the "Secessionists" brought to the Gnostic groups after the schism (Brown 1979: 149). The rest of the community, Brown's "Apostolic Christians," also had the same pre-Gospel text. They, however, redacted their text in order to make it more acceptable to the emerging institutional church which they wished to join. They quashed references to Mary Magdalene as having been their founder. They, instead, made references in the text to a "Beloved Disciple," but turned the disciple into an anonymous male. In two passages of the text, their redaction attempts to make the Beloved Disciple and Mary Magdalene seem to be two different individuals by having them appear together in the same scenes. (Structural flaws within those passages, discussed below, support this contention.) They did this because they knew that the church leaders would not accept the authenticity of a Gospel written by a woman. As Brown has observed: "The acceptance of the (Fourth) Gospel into the canon...was only at the price of an assurance that it had apostolic origins" (1979: 149). And, in the worldview of the institutional church leaders, no woman's ministry could be deemed apostolic.

Inverencial Peace,
Akashic

the account of the tomb, and others where they both appear are the only thing that would have to be explained. I think either way, the Apostle John is still connected, and maybe the creation of a 'John' to replace Mary as the author, is where Joanna originated....

Yes I do indeed believe that John was Johanna it does not require alot of
brainwork to see how (especially if the language when the sex change happened was Germanic) it could be misread. If you accept that the text
was written on parchment or vellum, then a visit from Micky(the mouse/rat)
or relatives is all that would be required by the male scribes to change
Johanna to Johann, Female to Male.

The Magdalene as Johanna , possible. But as stated both are together on at lease one occasion.

Another possibility has occured to me and maybe others?
Johanna , the traveling companion and chronicler of the Magdalene recorded
the sayings and musings of Mary, excerpts of which became the book of ?John?

I speculated on the John being Joanna last year, and have seen nothing about it in any other books. Did you get this idea from your own study, or did you hear it from some other source? If so, please let me know where. I'd love to read some other supporters views. I feel that maybe both these women were key figures, who held high positions in his group. But I don't know of any supporting documentation other than what I found in the bible and used to come to my conclusion, that John was the Joanna at the tomb with Mary that morning. Bibles differ as to who was there too, Joanna not always being mentioned, and also the KJAV reference in Joseph's ancestry to a 'Joanna, son of....' is different in other versions as well.

Just like today, you have editors who will change contents of a book to suit more the local people. Changing of names to local or familiar names. For all everyone knows the name could have been Guido.

I wonder how many would be able to get as close to Jesus' real name as the Yehoshua Bar Joseph translation? Very few, I bet, and yet that is even off the name as spoken by his peers. Jesus Christ is way off.

Did you get this idea from your own study, or did you hear it from some other source? If so, please let me know where.

A little of both. Right at this point I cannot recall exact "chapter and verse" of
where I read it. There were maybe half a dozen references and discussions
of the subject that I ran across following a line of thought from The Gospel
of Mary Magdalene .

I think ( but am not sure) one reference may be in Woman With the Alabaster Jar. I just got 3 New Books at Christmas about MM but have not even had a chance to open them.

I will be more than Hpaay to pass on info as I find or remember it.

Originally posted by stalkingwolf

Did you get this idea from your own study, or did you hear it from some other source? If so, please let me know where.

A little of both. Right at this point I cannot recall exact "chapter and verse" of where I read it.

I have never read any theories that John was Joanna, but I think I did hear somewhere the idea Mary wrote the gospel of John. But I came up with the Joanna/John idea totally on my own, based on a number of things I had read. The mystery of why John's gospel is so different was something I knew long of ago. And that he was called the beloved disciple. And that John was up close to the cross, with the women too. But it was when I learned Joanna is the female form of John, that Joanna was at the tomb, and that Luke wrote Joanna son of Rhesa that were the triggers that sparked the idea. It answers the why John was so different than the three other gospels question, and I was glad to see that one of the great thinkers of all time, Leonardo, painted John as a woman in the last supper. Some books propose that he did so to imply that the figure to Jesus' right was Magdalene, but when I read that idea, my idea that John was Joanna was not changed. It makes more sense to me that he painted John/Joanna if that is what he is said to have done than that he painted Mary and said it was John, unless of course, John and Mary are the same. Though that could be so, it is not as likely in my view, for reasons stated above.

it's an interesting theory, but it seems to be based on the idea that the gospel of john was written fairly close to the death of christ, i thought modern schollars had dated it quite a bit later. also, as i understood it, none of the gospels were written by the person they are named for anyway, as a way to add weight to the account, this would suggest that it is a possibility that every gospel could be written by a woman.

another question that occours to me, and i note it for the sake of discussion, does the gender of the author change the context of the document in any way? wouldn't it be fair to say that the writers of the gospels go out of their way to remove themselves from the accounts. so being, the message is made the focus and not the messanger, speculation about the author is at best, acidemic and at worst, unfounded fanaticisim to equality or atheism.

Originally posted by pieman
it's an interesting theory, but it seems to be based on the idea that the gospel of john was written fairly close to the death of christ, i thought modern schollars had dated it quite a bit later. also, as i understood it, none of the gospels were written by the person they are named for anyway, as a way to add weight to the account, this would suggest that it is a possibility that every gospel could be written by a woman.

another question that occours to me, and i note it for the sake of discussion, does the gender of the author change the context of the document in any way? wouldn't it be fair to say that the writers of the gospels go out of their way to remove themselves from the accounts. so being, the message is made the focus and not the messanger, speculation about the author is at best, acidemic and at worst, unfounded fanaticisim to equality or atheism.

The gender itself is not the issue. If John was Joanna, then someone somewhere changed the bible. It is agreed the message is what matters, but I see that few people actually pay attention to the message at all. Even the disciples had a hard time understanding Jesus when he said, you are not my servants, salvation is to be found within, love your enemy, etc.
If biblical texts can be wrong about the gender of one of Jesus' closest mates, they could be lying/wrong about anything.
I know well the chronology of the texts, none exist from Jesus' lifetime, and of the many writers in the region at the time, none of them wrote about any of Jesus' entourage. It seems unlikely that a man drawing thousands of people, and performing miracles, is not mentioned once by any of them. The writers who were contemporaries of Jesus and his flock, tthe non-biblical sources, never wrote about any of them. To this day I see people claiming that Josephus is a non-biblical contemporary who wrote about Jesus, and for years I believed that. I recently read that Josephus was born after Jesus' crucifixion, and could not have seen him. So the lone eyewitness account outside the biblical texts is not quite what it is being claimed to be. Lots of similar hero tales previous to Jesus' story parallel his in many ways, Horus being a good one. So, on the evidence alone I'd say the most likely conclusion is that Jesus did not exist. But, I feel he did, despite that. My view of him is very different than most though. It is based on my own interpretations, not what the 'experts' say is right. Women were prominent in the early church, and it took around 300 years for that to change. Joanna, or John, whomever wrote it, doesn't matter as much as what was written, of course.