John, St

the Apostle, the son of Zebedee and Salome, the sister of the virgin Mary; originally a fisherman on the Galilæan Lake; after being a disciple of John the Baptist became one of the earliest disciples of Christ; much beloved and trusted by his Master; lived after His death for a time in Jerusalem, and then at Ephesus as bishop, where he died at a great age; he lived to see the rise of the Gnostic heresy, against which, as a denial that Christ had come in the flesh, he protested with his last breath as an utter denial of Christ; he is represented in Christian art as either writing his Gospel, or as bearing a chalice out of which a serpent i ues, or as in a caldron of boiling oil.