[27] A Gospel story relates how the brothers wanted to call down heavenly fire on an unhospitable Samaritan town, but Jesus rebuked them.

[29] John is traditionally believed to have lived on for more than fifty years after the martyrdom of his brother James, who became the first Apostle to die a martyr's death in AD 44.

[40] After the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, only Peter and the "other disciple" (according to tradition, John) followed him into the palace of the high-priest.

[39] The "beloved disciple" alone, among the Apostles, remained near Jesus at the foot of the cross on Calvary alongside myrrhbearers and numerous other women.

[41] Peter and John were also the only two apostles who ran to the empty tomb after Mary Magdalene bore witness to the resurrection of Jesus.

[42] After Jesus' Ascension and the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, John, together with Peter, took a prominent part in the founding and guidance of the church.

Paul, in opposing his enemies in Galatia, explicitly recalled that John, along with Peter and James the Just, were collectively recognized as the three Pillars of the Church.

He also referred to the recognition that his Apostolic preaching of a gospel free from Jewish Law was received from these three, the most prominent men of the messianic community at Jerusalem.

The bishops of Asia Minor supposedly requested him to write his gospel to deal with the heresy of the Ebionites, who asserted that Christ did not exist before Mary.

Colin G. Kruse states that since John the Evangelist has been named consistently in the writings of early Church Fathers, "it is hard to pass by this conclusion, despite widespread reluctance to accept it by many, but by no means all, modern scholars.

"[64] Modern, mainstream Bible scholars generally assert that the Gospel of John has been written by an anonymous author.

[72][73][74][75] As The New Oxford Annotated Bible (2018) has put it, "Scholars generally agree that the Gospels were written forty to sixty years after the death of Jesus.

Adela Yarbro Collins, a biblical scholar at Yale Divinity School, writes: Early tradition says that John was banished to Patmos by the Roman authorities.

Some Catholic scholars state that "vocabulary, grammar, and style make it doubtful that the book could have been put into its present form by the same person(s) responsible for the fourth gospel.

John was banished by the Roman authorities to the Greek island of Patmos, where, according to tradition, he wrote the Book of Revelation.

According to Tertullian (in The Prescription of Heretics) John was banished (presumably to Patmos) after being plunged into boiling oil in Rome and suffering nothing from it.

[92] An alternative account of John's death, ascribed by later Christian writers to the early second-century bishop Papias of Hierapolis, claims that he was slain by the Jews.

[9] Until 1960, another feast day which appeared in the General Roman Calendar is that of "Saint John Before the Latin Gate" on 6 May, celebrating a tradition recounted by Jerome that St John was brought to Rome during the reign of the Emperor Domitian, and was thrown in a vat of boiling oil, from which he was miraculously preserved unharmed.

A church (San Giovanni a Porta Latina) dedicated to him was built near the Latin gate of Rome, the traditional site of this event.

However, some Muslim scholars mentioned their names,[115] likely relying on the resources of Christians, who are considered "People of the Book" in Islamic tradition.

Muslim exegesis more or less agrees with the New Testament list and says that the disciples included Peter, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, Andrew, James, Jude, John and Simon the Zealot.

[116] Notably, narrations of People of the Book (Christians and Jews) are not to be believed or disbelieved by Muslims as long as there is nothing that supports or denies them in Quran or Sunnah.

[6] Druze doctrine teaches that Christianity is to be "esteemed and praised", as the Gospel writers are regarded as "carriers of wisdom".

For Latter-day Saints these passages confirm the biblical record of John and also provide insight into his greatness and the importance of the work the Lord has given him to do on the earth in New Testament times and in the last days.

[119] It also teaches that in 1829, along with the resurrected Peter and the resurrected James, John visited Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery and restored the priesthood authority with Apostolic succession to earth,[120] though a few ex-Latter-Day Saints claim[121] controversially[122] that previous editions of Latter-day scripture contradict this claim of Priesthood authority and Apostolic succession.

As he was traditionally identified with the beloved apostle, the evangelist, and the author of the Revelation and several Epistles, John played an extremely prominent role in art from the early Christian period onward.

[125] He is traditionally depicted in one of two distinct ways: either as an aged man with a white or gray beard, or alternatively as a beardless youth.

[125] In Medieval and through to Renaissance works of painting, sculpture and literature, Saint John is often presented in an androgynous or feminized manner.

[132] Likewise, Sarah McNamer argues that because of his status as an androgynous saint, John could function as an "image of a third or mixed gender"[133] and "a crucial figure with whom to identify"[134] for male believers who sought to cultivate an attitude of affective piety, a highly emotional style of devotion that, in late-medieval culture, was thought to be poorly compatible with masculinity.

[135] After the Middle Ages, feminizing portrayals of Saint John continued to be made; a case in point is an etching by Jacques Bellange, shown to the right, described by art critic Richard Dorment as depicting "a softly androgynous creature with a corona of frizzy hair, small breasts like a teenage girl, and the round belly of a mature woman.