The final part of the narrative
in John 21:20-23 also portrays Jesus as a reliable interpreter of the future,
this time of the fate of the Beloved Disciple. Despite the latter having
featured briefly in the fishing story, he is reintroduced to readers in terms
of his first appearance in the narrative of the earlier Gospel (21:20; cf.
13:23-25), suggesting that at least 21:15-23 and possibly 21:20-23 themselves
had been separate traditions. In the midst of a dialogue between Peter and
Jesus about the Beloved Disciple, Peter is told, “If it is my will that he
remain until I come, what is that to you? Follow me” (21:22). But the writer
depicts this saying, which was intended to instruct Peter to mind his own
business, as in fact being remembered as a prophecy that the Beloved Disciple
would not die before the return of Jesus. He then corrects that memory with a
reminder of Jesus’s practice words. As they stand, what are claimed as
Jesus’s precise words do not, of course, constitute a prediction. Its
conditional clause makes the saying vague and non-committal. Jesus is presented
as in effect saying that, depending on his will, the Beloved Disciple might or
might not die before his coming again. (Andrew T. Lincoln, “John 21,” in The
Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries, ed. Helen K. Bond [London:
T&T Clark, 2020], 1:219, emphasis in bold added)
