According to some versions of the Acts of John (c. 3rd c.?), the apostle John experienced a post-mortem assumption, a legend which arose possibly owing to Jn 21.20-23. In most versions of the account of John’s death, his disciples dig his grave, he climbs in, removes his garments and lays them down as if they were bedding, and prays some words of farewell and then lies down and gives up his spirit (Acts of John 111-15). Augustine reports a tradition that the apostle was not dead, but asleep in his grave (tract. Ev. Joh. 124.2). But in later expansions of another ending of the Acts of John, called the Metastasis, the disciples find the next morning (or after three days) that John’s body has disappeared, though his sandals remain. Other versions held that a dust or manna with miraculous powers, stirred up by the breath of the sleeping apostle, poured out of the grave. (Daniel A. Smith, The Post-Mortem Vindication of Jesus in the Sayings Gospel Q [Library of New Testament Studies 338; London: T&T Clark International, 2006], 90)
For more ancient traditions of the assumption/translation of John, see:
