The Beloved Disciple, A Fisherman

I've addressed this subject in the past, but Lydia McGrew has a fuller and better treatment of it in her new book on the fourth gospel:

Then there is the story of the disciples rowing across the Sea of Galilee…According to John 6.19, it was "about twenty-five or thirty stadia," which is simultaneously more precise than the Synoptics and also not hyper-precise. It is, in fact, just what one would expect from someone who was there, was capable of estimating distance under the unpropitious circumstances of a storm at night, and had a mind that tenaciously retained such details.

The mention of the Sea of Galilee relates to another matter: The Beloved Disciple does not seem to be a landlubber. Not only does he know multiple names for the Sea of Galilee (6.1), he has a good idea of how far the disciples had rowed when they were about halfway across it. Even more striking, when Peter decides in 21.3 to go fishing, the Beloved Disciple is one of six who immediately decide to go with him. While a normally stay-at-home Jerusalem disciple [like the one proposed by Richard Bauckham] probably would have traveled to Galilee to meet Jesus after the resurrection (cf. Matt. 28.10), it does not follow that he would jump at the chance to stay up all night fishing in Peter's boat [John 21:3-4]. Why would he? A "Beloved Disciple" from Jerusalem who was neither the son of Zebedee nor a traveler would presumably not be a fisherman and would have no particular reason to go on such an expedition. The disciples are not planning to see Jesus on this particular occasion nor expecting a miraculous catch of fish. They're just going fishing. It seems a reasonable inference from all of this that the Beloved Disciple was familiar with and comfortable on the Sea of Galilee, and even perhaps that he was familiar with fishing, which again does not fit well with the hypothesis that he was a non-itinerant Jerusalem resident. (The Eye Of The Beholder [Tampa, Florida: DeWard Publishing, 2021], 146-47)