Fair enough.TedM wrote:Wow, 24:12 - for some reason that wasn't in my memory at all. Interesting. Scales are tipping...
RE who the beloved is - I'm going to have to pass. I know that's the tradition but don't know how strong the support is for that. I find it to be a strange phrase "the disciple whom Jesus loved" - one that I would attribute to a woman, but I don't know the culture well enough and as you said the pronouns are masculine. My point was that it looks to me like by itself the phrases don't seem to be clearly artificial - it is only when making assumptions about priority of other passages that one starts to have that suspicion. BUT adding 24:12 to the mix makes your case stronger than I initially was seeing because I wouldn't expect 'the other disciple' to have been left out of that particular verse had he also ran to the tomb.
See, I think that John was written with (an)other gospel account(s) in mind. First, after reporting in 3.22 the baptisms that Jesus was effecting along with his disciples in Judea, and then mentioning in 3.23 that John the baptist was simultaneously baptizing in Aenon near Salim, John goes on to say, "For John had not yet been cast into prison." Well, of course not, since he is still baptizing! But this comment has the effect, for those who have read the synoptics (especially Mark), of placing all of John 1.19-4.43 in between Mark 1.12-13 (the temptation of Jesus) and 1.14-15 (the preaching of Jesus, coming into Galilee after the imprisonment of John). Compare Mark 1.14a with John 4.43. Second, in 11.1-2 Mary is introduced by a service that she has not yet performed for Jesus. Mary does not perform this service for Jesus until 12.1-8, but readers of Mark would know already that a woman (anonymous in Mark) had done so from Mark 14.3-9.
Therefore, if John presumes Mark, then those passages about the beloved disciple are probably Johannine additions to the overall story, not Marcan subtractions from it. This is the source of my "assumptions about" the "priority of other passages," as you put it. Now, it could be that John is simply correcting the record, as it were, making sure that this disciple gets his fair due, since Mark seems to have left him out of things (there is no indication in John that the beloved disciple is John of Zebedee: none whatsoever). But is that the most likely option?
It is interesting, at least, that most of the relevant scenes involve Peter, who accesses Jesus only through the beloved disciple at the Last Supper, requires his services (assuming it is the same disciple) to get in to the high priest's courtyard, loses his race with him on the way to the tomb, and has to be told by him that "it is the Lord" in Galilee. This counterpositioning seems deliberate to me, whereas Mark's treatment seems wholly innocent of the very existence of this disciple. YMMV.