(nagi voice) pardon the intrusion! ☆

• i no longer have the textbook title, and only have pictures from this text book that i took in a delusional haze when reading this in my catholic mother’s household, hoping that she wouldn’t look through my phones photos to find these images.

this is all from a catholic standpoint, other forms of christianity are not accounted for. if you do not want to see GAY CONTENT ABOUT JESUS, move along

this post is about to unlock so much of my old hyperfixation on the catholic church that i had before leaving.

first of all, as backstory for those who don’t know john:

• john is one of jesus’ twelve disciples and wrote the Gospel of John (I, II, and III) which is a hella important book in the new testament (the second half of the bible.)

• the books of john tell the story of jesus’ life from birth to death. now, that’s kinda gay to write about another man that much, hmm.

• john has also earned the affectionate title of: “The Beloved Disciple”

• he is also traditionally credited with writing Revelations (also known as Apocalypse, which tells how the world is gonna end. fun right!!), though scholars are unsure if he wrote it, or a different john wrote it.

okay, now onto the gay stuff:

• most people jokingly ship judas and jesus because of the angst of judas’ betrayal to jesus. however, i disagree.

• though, knowing their ages, shipping jesus and john would be quite problematic these days, it was quite an acceptable age gap back then. jesus was around the ages of 30-33 at the time of his death, and john was a young adult, about 18. (yikes)

• my evidence begins with the way john writes about himself and jesus in the Gospel of John. in his gospel, he never calls himself john. you guys know what he calls himself in his gospel?? “the discipline whom jesus loved”

😐

sir. could you be ANY more obvious??

so far, all of this info is directly from my catholic textbook.

WOW! that page unpacks a lot. let me elaborate on the way john leaned up on jesus’ chest. first of all, that’s a real bible quote. let’s go:

John 13:23-25

• “23 One of his disciples, the one Jesus loved, was at the table to the right of Jesus in a place of honor. 24 So Simon Peter gestured to this disciple to ask Jesus who it was he was referring to. 25 Then the disciple whom Jesus loved leaned back against Jesus’ chest”

the passage then goes on to john (the disciple whom jesus loved) asking jesus who’s gonna betray him.

• to FURTHER add to this gay af moment, there are PAINTINGS of it, completed by MULTIPLE artists. i’m going to provide the image in my textbook, and then images found online that i particularly enjoy.

above: lovely image! i cannot remember the artist for the life of me.

above: Jesus and John at the Last Supper by Valentin de Boulonge

above: Last Supper by Plautilla Nelli (portions of the image were cropped)

above: cannot find artist’s name.

• if you are interested in finding hundreds more of images like this, all you need to type into google is “john leaning on jesus”. you’ll get the images you need. trust me

• those were my largest pieces of evidence, but there are smaller ones i’d like to share. the textbook helped “gay it up”. i think the author of this textbook was a closeted homosexual. cause no way did a straight person write this thinking “hmmm that’s totally platonic and not at all queer, cause that’s how i feel about MY best friend.”

here’s direct textbook images:

• hmmm man who was closest to him you say???

• “intimate relationship with God”

• best friend? 🤔 are we sure about that?

• symbol of his greater love?

• AND he was the first to recognize jesus??

• y’all. they’ve got to be shitting me atp. no way were they not In Love

and finally, from my study questions:

y’all. special favors? exceptional love?

this textbook had me GOBSMACKED. jaw DROPPED. WDYM THAT JESUS AND JOHN WERE DEFINITELY IN LOVE???

conclusion:

• i HIGHLY recommend you looking up more pictures of john laying on jesus.

• i think of john/jesus as canon. there’s too much evidence to support my point. including The Bible. judas/jesus is like what fanfics are for. they’re the pair that everyone wishes happened in canon, but the authors sucked, so it didn’t.

• literally, drop any questions in the reblogs and comments. i’ll be HAPPY to answer.

So, the image of John leaning on Jesus chest has been interpreted to A) be a reference to the Song of Songs (a romantic love song that was recast in the Bible as "love for God") and B) reference the allegorical imagery of Jesus' wedding, which representsthe union of God/Jesus with humanity/the Church. I'm sure I don't need to tell you who would be the bride in this case

Ok, I have to be pedantic here, but the translation of "the disciple whom Jesus loved" is... Not incorrect, but a bit misleading. See, there were different words for love in ancient Greek, the language the gospels were written in, and the word that was mostly used for this expression was αγάπη. This word was used for selfless love for other people, non-romantic in nature, and in the New Testament purposefully reframed as Love for God. In Latin it was translated as Caritas, from which we get charity, which can give you an idea of what its vibes were. Some languages, like german, translate it differently, like "Jesus' favourite disciple (still a pretty sus way to be referring to yourself, tbh). HOWEVER, there is one passage of the gospel of John where a differentword is used: when the emptied tomb of Jesus is discovered (John 20, 2-10) the word used for the disciple is φιλία. This word is used to refer to long-lasting, interpersonal relationships, and can refer both to friends or even married couples. Again, the meaning is not explicitly romantic, and probably has a similar meaning to the other cases, but when you consider EVERYTHING ELSE about these two...

let's move over to art history now! I just learned today that the scene of John leaning on Jesus' chest had a boom during the german gothic art current, and from the XII century onward one expression used for this iconography was "Johannesminne". Minne isn't just any word for love. Minne specifically refers to the love and devotion of the chivalric knight for his lady, with such famous cases as Tristan and Iseult or Lancelot and Guinevre. You know, this

is being conflated with this

So yeah, I really had to share that.

3. some various other things: the famous Renaissance artist Leonardo da Vinci used the likeness of his assistant (and lover) Gian Giacomo Caprotti, aka Salaì (because like the Saladin he was a damn heathen!) in various of his paintings. While not the same John we've spoken of, he was drawn here as st. John the Baptist

English playwrite Christopher Marlowe died on the 30th May of 1593 under mysterious circumstances. While we do not know of his sexuality, his writings presented queer people in a sympathetic light, which was enough to spread rumours about jis own nature. A few days before his death, spy Richard Baines sent a great number of accusations against Marlowe to the Privy Council. According to him, Marlowe claimed "…That St John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned alwaies in his bosome, that he vsed him  as the sinners of Sodoma." While unreliable for Marlowe's actual opinions, this does tell us that the idea did float around people's minds back then already.

In "il vangelo secondo Dario Fo" (the gospel of Dario Fo) Marco Compedelli and the great jester muse about the idea of Jesus and the disciples creating a theatre company to bring around the good word. Of course all the roles would be played by the men, even the female ones. And saint John, with his long hair and soft face was the Primadonna. But trouble started when the Magdalene showed up, with her pretty red hair. Jesus had eyes only for her, and made the truely revolutionary decision to employ an actress. John took this really bad, and turned to his theological studies to console himself