=The Apostle John.= The Apostle John was probably a native, certainly a resident, of Galilee. His mother, Salome,[2] early became a follower of Jesus. She was probably one of the women of Galilee who accompanied him on his missionary tours, and ministered to him of their substance.[3] She was with him on his last journey to Jerusalem, and during the passion week, and was one of those women who were last at the cross and first at the sepulchre.[4] Like the other followers of Jesus, she anticipated the establishment of a temporal kingdom, was ambitious for her sons James and John, and made an application for special favors for them when the kingdom should be established. From a comparison of Matt. 27:56 with John 19:25, it would appear that she was own sister to the Virgin Mary, in which case John was own cousin to Jesus. This opinion is not accepted by all critics, but I believe it to be the correct one. See note on John 19:25. John’s father, Zebedee, was a well-to-do fisherman on the shores of the sea of Galilee. Of him we know very little. He was sufficiently prosperous to own several boats and to hire men to work for him. Tradition makes him of noble birth; and this tradition is perhaps confirmed by the fact that John had some acquaintance with the high-priest. John has been characterized by those critics who wish to make out that his character is inconsistent with the idea of his authorship of the Fourth Gospel, as ignorant and unlettered, on the authority of Acts 4:13, and as a vehement and bigoted Jew on the authority of Galatians, chap. II, and of the peculiar Hebraic tone of the Book of Revelation. Both characterizations are quite gratuitous assumptions. In connection with every Jewish synagogue was a parochial school, in which the pupils were taught reading, writing, and the rudiments of such natural sciences as were then in existence. The Jewish children of the common people were far better educated than those of Greece or Rome. There is every reason to believe that John received this common education of the age and community in which he lived, and there is absolutely no reason whatever to suppose the contrary. It was only by the Pharisees that John was considered as ignorant and unlettered, and they affixed the same stigma upon Jesus himself.[5] To the Pharisees the only learning worth the name was learning in the traditional lore of the church. Of this the Galilean fisherman was ignorant. In the eyes of a Pharisee of Jerusalem, Plato himself would have been ignorant and unlearned. As little reason is there to believe that John was a vehement and bigoted Jew. There is not the slightest evidence that John was among the Judaizing Christians to whom Paul so frequently refers, and whom throughout his life he combated. With one exception, Judas Iscariot, all the twelve were taken from Galilee. This province of Palestine was innocent of that formalism and narrowness which characterized the southern province of Judea.