Word.ws English Dictionary

Beloved Disciple

Beloved Disciple proper noun: a figure in the Gospel of John whose identity is left implicit within the text; traditionally, John the Evangelist himself.

Proper noun

the Beloved Disciple

  1. A figure in the Gospel of John whose identity is left implicit within the text; traditionally, John the Evangelist himself.
    • And the beloved Disciple fell down as dead at the appearance of Christ in his Glory.1674, William Bates, The Harmony of the Divine Attributes […], page 90
    • The idea of the almost immediate return of Christ to judgment still so far retains its force that the Beloved Disciple is represented as probably living to see it […]1872, Thomas Scott, The English Life of Jesus, page 328

Origin of Beloved Disciple

Calque of Ecclesiastical Latin discipulus dīlēctus, applied as an epithet of John the Evangelist. The term is a summary of the expressions found in the Gospel itself, such as ὁ μαθητὴς ὃν ἠγάπα ὁ Ἰησοῦς (ho mathētḕs hòn ēgápa ho Iēsoûs, “the disciple whom Jesus loved”).

Questions about Beloved Disciple

What does Beloved Disciple mean?
Beloved Disciple means a figure in the Gospel of John whose identity is left implicit within the text; traditionally, John the Evangelist himself.
What part of speech is Beloved Disciple?
Beloved Disciple is a proper noun.

Words near Beloved Disciple in the dictionary

  1. belousovite
  2. belout
  3. belov'd
  4. belove
  5. beloved
  6. Beloved Disciple
  7. beloveder
  8. belovedest
  9. belovedness
  10. beloveds
  11. beloves

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: Beloved Disciple (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “Beloved Disciple.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/beloved_disciple. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.