Did John 19:27 actually happen?

Last year, I wrote about the implications of John 19:27 for Mary's influence on the apostle John, the church of Ephesus, and other sources. But what reason do we have to think John 19:27 is historically accurate?

We can start with the general historicity of the fourth gospel, which we've argued for in various posts in our archives. For books addressing the subject, see Craig Blomberg, The Historical Reliability Of John's Gospel (Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2001); Lydia McGrew, The Eye Of The Beholder (Tampa, Florida: DeWard, 2021). Regarding the common objection that John is too different than the Synoptics to be historically credible, see here.

If the events of the John 19 passage involved the author of the document, as Christians have traditionally argued, then the credibility of the account is significantly increased. See here regarding the implications of John 21:24 for the document's authorship by the Beloved Disciple. And this post collects links to the posts we've written on the best and earliest evidence for the traditional authorship attributions of the gospels. The post here responds to Richard Bauckham with regard to whether the John who wrote the fourth gospel was the son of Zebedee. Though a good case can be made for the historicity of John 19:27 without acceptance of authorship by John the son of Zebedee, my response to Bauckham underscores the large amount of internal and external evidence we have for who the author was, who happens to be the son of Zebedee.

We also need to consider the nature of the John 19 account itself. It's highly unlikely to have been fabricated in light of how embarrassing it is to some of the foremost leaders of the early church. As I've written elsewhere, "Put yourself in the place of the wife, son, grandson, or friend of one of Jesus' brothers, such as James. If he had been a faithful follower of Jesus, would you want him remembered as somebody who had been so unfaithful for so long, somebody who had been judged to be so incompetent to take care of his own mother that she was entrusted to John instead?" And see the post just linked for other reasons to conclude that the unbelief of Jesus' siblings, including their unbelief at the time of the crucifixion, wasn't fabricated. Margaret Wesley writes:

Their [Jesus' brothers'] absence from Jesus' execution does not augur well for them….

It is certainly significant that John mentions the presence of Jesus' mother [at the cross] but says nothing about his brothers. The possibility that they may have been there, unmentioned by John, is negated by the fact that they also play no part in Jesus' burial. The burial of a brother was a sacred duty, as discussed in chapter 7 [of Wesley's book], yet they are nowhere to be seen….

Their absence at this most crucial moment in their brother's life cannot be without significance….

This [the giving of Mary to John] was certainly unusual since "the ordinary procedure followed by the eldest son of a widow would have been to ask one of his other brothers to look after their mother at his death. Jesus does not do that. He asks the beloved disciple to take care of Mary, which means that Mary is introduced into the fellowship of God's spiritual family."…

Carson claims that there is no significance in the absence of Jesus' brothers from the burial since they would have been refused an audience with Pilate if they had been the ones asking for his body. This is true, but even if they could not personally take care of every detail they would be expected to be there. This is also true of Jesus' sisters, but since the sisters are not mentioned in this Gospel their absence here is not so conspicuous.

(Son Of Mary [Eugene, Oregon: Wipf & Stock, 2015], approximate Kindle locations 5732, 6778, 6858, 6998)

There's also the fact that living with John consists of much more than a brief event at the time of the crucifixion. If the claim of Mary's residing with John was incorrect, it would have been more falsifiable accordingly. If Mary didn't live with John, a lot of people would have been in a position to know it and to know it easily (relatives, neighbors, and others associated with Mary, associated with the individual[s] other than John with whom she actually lived, and associated with John). We need to keep in mind how public and falsifiable the claim in question is. The author's willingness to make the claim and the early acceptance of its historicity make more sense if what the passage reports is accurate.

Keep in mind, also, the evidence discussed in the post I linked at the beginning of this one. In the early second century, Ignatius not only brings up Christmas issues more when writing to the Ephesian church than when writing to anybody else, but also mentions Mary more prominently in particular. The historicity of John 19:27 and the widespread early reports that John lived in Ephesus help explain why Ignatius did that. So, the historicity of the John 19 passage also meets the criterion of coherence in that manner.