Welcome to the Saintly Sixteen! From 32 saints we have narrowed the field to 16. For this round, rather than the basic biographical information we enter the realm of Quirks and Quotes. Our Celebrity Bloggers will provide unusual information or legends surrounding their saints along with quotes either by or about their saints.
Don’t forget, you can always go to the Bracket Tab to easily find previous battles if you need to refresh your basic knowledge on these saints. This is yet another free courtesy extended to you, the Lent Madness Global Public.
In yesterday's Battle of the Bands, Catherine Winkworth made Isaac Watts sing the blues 56% to 44%. She'll go on to face Eglantyne Jebb in the Saintly Sixteen.
But that's all in the past. Today we kick things off with a battle between two Biblical heavyweights, Peter and John the Evangelist. At stake? The Elate Eight.
Peter
You may know the biblical accounts of St. Peter, but have you heard he was a renowned weeper? Tradition tells us he always wore a towel at his chest to wipe the tears from his face. He was prone to cry when he remembered the voice of Jesus, and he always prayed whenever he heard a cock crow -- a reminder of how he denied knowing Jesus -- and wept some more.
Many miracles were attributed to the penitent Peter. One day, his disciple George died while on a preaching mission. When St. Peter’s staff was laid on his corpse after forty days dead, George came back to life.
As a powerful witness for the Gospel, Peter found himself with an archnemesis, the sorcerer Simon, who aspired to be worshipped as a god through his feats of witchcraft. They first battled wits in Jerusalem, then Peter followed Simon, who ran off to Rome and befriended the nefarious Nero. Along with St. Paul, Peter found Simon in Nero’s court and exposed his sorcery as diabolical. Simon ordered his angels to attack Peter, and Peter replied, “I fear not thine angels, rather do they fear me.” Nero was shocked that Peter did not fear the sorcerer and agreed to provide him with a loaf of bread in secret. The sorcerer demanded Peter show he could read his mind, and Peter said he would do so by thwarting Simon’s schemes. Simon summoned snarling dogs to attack Peter, and Peter fed them the bread he’d secreted from Nero, thus demonstrating he’d known Simon’s plan all along.
Finally, angels of Satan held the sorcerer aloft, and Peter commanded them in the name of Jesus to drop the evil man. Simon was killed. For the loss of his magician, Nero arrested Peter and Paul. In prison, they converted their guards, who then set them free. As they fled the city, Jesus appeared to them and said, “I go to Rome, to be crucified anew!” So they followed him back to Rome. Famously, Peter asked to be crucified upside down. “Lord, I have desired to follow Thee, but I did not wish to be crucified upright. Thou alone art upright and high.”
Paul was also martyred that day, and later the disciple Dionysius saw the two great apostles holding hands and re-entering the city gate, “dressed in shining garments, crowned with light and glory.” Surely it was the holy city they entered, the new Jerusalem, where Christ would wipe every tear from Peter’s eyes, where there is no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away and Christ has made all things new.
(Source: The Golden Legend, a medieval hagiography)
John the Evangelist
What more can be said about Blessed John than to you I have hath said? Apparently, a lot. In round one, we uncovered the startling truth that the man we know as John the Evangelist is probably a mash-up of at least a few New Testament Johns (something like a Gospel version of the Megazord from Power Rangers – it’s morphing time!) To know more about John, we need to immerse ourselves in his parts.
John the Apostle, along with his brother James, was called by our Lord to leave their nets to follow him. While the call to follow Christ must have been compelling, one must sympathize with Zebedee when, in the middle of hauling in the fish, his two sons simply walk away. He is included, along with Peter and James, as the inner circle of Jesus’ inner circle, witnessing both the Transfiguration and our Lord’s anguish in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Curiously enough, the Gospel that bears his name – the Gospel According to Saint John – does not include the story of the Transfiguration. What it does include from the very beginning is a Christ who seems to enter the world already Transfigured. “In him was life,” records the Evangelist, “and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” From this narrative, it is possible to draw a lesson that the Gospel of John goes to great lengths to explore – that Jesus is the light from the very beginning, it just takes us a very long time to figure that out.
After Jesus’ Resurrection and Ascension, John asserts a great deal of leadership in the early church. For example, when the mission to Samaria resulted in converts to the faith, John goes with Peter to Samaria to lay hands on the neophytes so that “they might receive the Holy Spirit.”
After this, John fades from history into the realm of legend. If John the Apostle is John the Divine/Revelator, then it is widely held that he died in exile on Patmos. This is complicated because Polycrates and Iraneus, both 2nd century bishops, claim that John was martyred in Ephesus. To add to the complexity, third-century-Ephesus couldn’t even decide where in Ephesus the Evangelist was buried with two sites vying for shrine status. Another legend suggest the Apostle avoided martyrdom by miraculously emerging from a cauldron of boiling oil unscathed. And in later versions of the apocryphal Acts of John, the Apostle doesn’t die at all, but ascends to Heaven like Enoch and Elijah. A fitting and fanciful (albeit heretical) end for our Apostle/Evangelist/Seer/Divine.
[poll id="221"]
168 comments on “Peter vs. John the Evangelist”
Such interesting things influence our votes ......I reread the initial descriptions of the 32 for the contenders, and although I didnt vote for John in the first round, comparing that write up with Peter's swayed me!
John: In the beginning was the Word & the Word was God
John: At the end A Revelation I AM the Alpha & Omega,
the beginning & the end. Full circle vision.
Peter--the Rock to be built on. And I was not sure which John I was asked to vote for.
I'm in with Peter. The John composite gives me a headache, although it is well written. I didn't know Peter was a weepy guy. Interesting.
I go for Peter, the flawed and enthusiastic human being who loved Jesus with a passion that I can ID with. John seems like a merger of several persons.
Peter is human in every sense. His hands are dirty. If you saw him at the door on a bad day he would sit down with you cry on your shoulder and make fish for lunch. Peter has the attributes that I always vote for he was approachable and of the people. in ending,
Peter makes me laugh.
I’m disappointed that John the Evangelist is losing, partly because he was the subject of my dissertation. I had him going all the way. Another great resource for quirks, quotes and legends on J the E is R. Alan Culpepper’s “John Son of Zebedee: The Life of a Legend”
"My name is Simon. I catch fish. But you can call me Rocky." He has my vote.
I hope in this day and age we are becoming more comfortable with the tears of men. I am not much of a crier, but I have to say that there are times when I am moved by the Spirit and tears flood my eyes in an almost miraculous way. They are not emotional tears exactly, but from some other source, come as a sign or connection. Some of Peter’s tears may have been this kind. The rest seem to me to be the result of Peter living so powerfully in the moment.
This match up will bust my bracket. I have John winning the Golden Halo. It looks like he will be knocked out here. :>(
How can you not love a person who rose above his flaws, but remained humble to the end? Peter!
Anyone who thinks the martyrdom of Peter is "undisputed" better think again. The 2nd and 3rd centuries are rife with fathers of the Church who argued the point with some vigor. One claimed that Peter never went to Rome, another that Peter went to Rome as an apostle but was never a bishop, a third that at one time there were two Bishops in Rome (Linus and AnaCletus?) while Peter was there as an Apostle, etc., etc. That the church in Rome offered an official narrative after the fact is the only undisputed fact in the matter. Anyone who pursues Church History into the earliest centuries soon learns that "what really happened" is difficult if not impossible to reconstruct. Or as one historian observed, the longer a person has been dead, the more we "know" about them. He was speaking about Pythagoras, but the same rules apply in sacred history as in secular. Of course, none of this has any bearing on how we vote in this round, just as it has no weight in how we vote about John, whoever he was (or they were). For my part, John 16:33 (my favorite verse in Scripture) and 19:36 carried the day. Meanwhile I enjoy the legends for what they are, entertaining fictions that carry truths too deep for rational minds (or the rational part of anyone's mind) to comprehend. Had to go with John!
"The longer a person has been dead, the more we 'know' about them." I love it. Also: what we know we don't know isn't the problem; the problem is what we don't know that we don't know!
good response! I agree 🙂
Indeed this is true! There was a book compiled a couple or three decades ago called "The Encyclopedia of Ignorance." It started me thinking along those lines. I'm not sure what the author of I Timothy (Paul or someone using his name) meant by "knowledge falsely so called," but there's a lot of it floating around.
I voted for Peter as he is our church's namesake and saint - St. Peter's.
I love the "mashup" John. And how about those letters?
I'm so grateful that we have both Peter and John. I do so need them both: Peter for comfort when I realize how far short of worthiness I fall, and John for inspiration from the Gospel and all the other writings collected under his/their name. Regardless of who wrote down the words, they were inspired by God. If they were written imperfectly, the writers have been forgiven, just as Peter was forgiven, just as each of us is forgiven. Not can be, but is. Now, for which one will I vote? I think it is John, with the inspiring poetry that nourishes and uplifts me day by day.
I am going with Peter because he seems to be the first to realize Gentiles could be part of the body of Christ.
Wasn't that Paul?
Actually, I believe Peter had his vision of a giant sheet filled with all kinds of animals, and a voice saying, "Peter, take and eat," when Peter had NEVER eaten any "unclean" meat, and then the Romans showed up at the door inviting him to come explain the gospel to them -- I think all this happened before Paul was taken to Antioch and started ministering to gentiles. Acts 10.
"Lord, save me!" is often my go to prayer and I've always loved Peter.
I think we have a couple of naughty priests on our hands. Paul vs Peter in the first round and then Peter vs John in the second. You knew this was going to happen. Way too much stress this early in the game.
I love John, the disciple that Jesus loved and his gospel has meant so much to me, and explained so much.
But still had to go with the very human Peter, the rock. The lord chose him for a reason.
What a wonderful story his life is. What a teaching! How hope giving!
I voted for the most alliterative author. Ok, maybe not, but Peter's always been my favorite, and I love the part about him always tearing up.
You had me at the Power Rangers reference. Voted for John.
I live in Toledo, Spain and often visit the El Greco museum here where there is a whole set of portraits of the apostles. The one of Peter is my favorite, with a tear glistening in one eye.
I am unable to believe that John, whomever he might be, wrote the Bible I read today. While the words are lovely, they have been translated from Hebrew or Aramaic, to Greek or Latin, and thus to English. I did give John some thought, but at last voted for the conflicted, imperfect man transformed and humbled by his encounter with Jesus. Peter the Fisher of Men, please.
I don't know which John I am voting for, but I know there is only one Peter.
I voted for Peter. He is earthy, flawed, and emblematic of Jesus' message. The Jewish literary critic Eric Auerbach said that, no matter whether or not one espouses the veracity of the Gospels, the story turns the prevailing attitude of worthiness on its head. Elevation by reason of bloodline, money, or power is refuted time and again by the way in which Jesus chose his followers and by the examples in the narrative of those he chose to befriend.
I love the KJV version of the Prologue to the Gospel of John. It is one of the most beautiful passages I have I have ever read in English. I've looked at the Latin, to which the KJV translation is mostly faithful, but it doesn't resonate for me as clearly as the KJV version does. I have yet to look at the Greek.
We really don't know if the John we refer to is a "mashup," but we do learn from Scripture that Peter was one of us. His very human failure to acknowledge Jesus on the eve of the Crucifixion was followed by his dedication to spread his Lord and friend's calling, to accept his transition from disciple (student) to apostle (literally "one sent away") to go out to spread the Gospel "unto all lands.". As for the story of Peter's weeping, I think it embodies not only his sorrow but his deep compassion for the suffering of others and the realization that we can never hope to achieve fully our desire to achieve the "Imitatio Christi" in this life but that that is no excuse not to try.
I think this is one of those times that it’s more about blogger versus blogger than saint versus saint. The argument for John is not as impassioned or dramatic as the argument for Peter. For me, my love of John’s Gospel outweighs any arguments.
I loved this. Amber and Marcus wrote such fun things. Then I read the comments. I had to go back and read the blogs. In the '70's I told my youth group we could do anything they wanted. Much to my surprise they immediately said they wanted to know about the Book of Revelation! I couldn't believe it. Why? Because the kids at school were talking about the Apocalypse. The rest of THAT meeting was quite a learning experience for me. The Episcopal Church had done a horrible job of teaching senior high kids anything about the bible. So, I don't have a thing to say about the writers. The "message" I take from the blogs and all the comments is how very powerfully and wonderfully our lives have been affected by these old stories and our own experiences of a loving God. We connect to the ancients by quoting them in the places where we understand what they knew and frequently died to tell us. I voted for John. I'm over my snit. I think.
Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram voto meo, projiciam
Crying men leave me cold. John gets my vote.
Went with John. No matter how many “versions” of John contemporary criticism wants to offer us, the impact of the Gospel, Revelation and the epistles in the Canon cannot be denied. The beauty of His Gospel alone takes my vote for John! Not that I don’t love Peter for flawed humanity, I do! Tough vote today!
I don't know why I can't get my head around a saint who is an amalgamation of 4 different historical/literary figures. I have never had any trouble with the Trinity. Maybe 4 is just too many? So I cast my vote for the repentant, weeping Peter. Also, my brother is Peter, and he is a rock to his children.