Is John in the Bible? Yes: The Hebrew Yohanan, “Yahweh Is Gracious”

Yes. John is the English form of the Hebrew Yohanan, “Yahweh is gracious.” Five men in the New Testament are called John, among them John the Baptist and the apostle John, the son of Zebedee, whom tradition credits with the fourth Gospel, three letters and Revelation. In the Old Testament the same Hebrew name is spelled Johanan.

What does John mean?

The Hebrew Yohanan joins yo, a short form of Yahweh, the name of God, to hanan, “to be gracious” or “to show favor.” It means “Yahweh is gracious” or “Yahweh has shown favor.” The Greek of the New Testament wrote the name Iōannēs, Latin made it Iohannes, and English made it John. Some older Bible dictionaries give “gift or grace of God,” but the verb in the name means to be gracious.

Other languages keep their own forms. Spanish Bibles call him Juan, French Bibles Jean, German Bibles Johannes, and Chinese Bibles 约翰 (Yuehan). Johan is the Scandinavian and Dutch form, Johnny is an English pet form, and Ian, Sean and Evan are the Scottish, Irish and Welsh forms.

Is John in the Old Testament?

Yes, in its Hebrew form. English Bibles spell it Johanan, or Jehohanan for a longer form of the same name. Wycliffe’s Bible of the late 14th century already wrote John in the New Testament and Johannan in the Old. Bible dictionaries list more than a dozen Old Testament men of the name. The best known is Johanan the son of Kareah, an army officer who joined Gedaliah, the governor the Babylonians set over Judah after Jerusalem fell (Jeremiah 40:8). After Gedaliah’s murder, Johanan and the other commanders did not obey the Lord’s command to stay in Judah, and took the survivors, Jeremiah among them, to Egypt (Jeremiah 43:4–7). Others include Johanan, the firstborn son of King Josiah (1 Chronicles 3:15), and a high priest named Johanan (Nehemiah 12:22–23).

How many Johns are in the New Testament?

The New Testament names five men John:

• John the Baptist, the son of the priest Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth.
• John the son of Zebedee, one of the twelve apostles and the brother of James.
• John Mark, “John whose other name was Mark” (Acts 12:12), who went with Paul and Barnabas on their first journey and whom tradition connects with the Gospel of Mark.
• John the father of Simon Peter, known only because Jesus calls Peter “Simon the son of John” (John 1:42; 21:15).
• John, a member of the high priest’s family, who was among the rulers gathered with Annas and Caiaphas to question Peter and John (Acts 4:5–7).

The writer of Revelation also calls himself John, and tradition identifies him with the apostle.

John the Baptist

Luke tells how the Baptist received his name. An angel appeared to his father, Zechariah, in the temple and said, “your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John” (Luke 1:13). When the child was circumcised, the relatives wanted to name him Zechariah after his father, but Elizabeth said, “No; he shall be called John.” They objected that no one in the family had that name. Zechariah, silent since the angel’s visit, asked for a writing tablet and wrote, “His name is John” (Luke 1:59–63).

He is called the Baptist because he baptized. Mark introduces him “baptizing in the wilderness and proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4), and some translations call him “the baptizer,” as the New Revised Standard Version does in Mark 6:14. He baptized Jesus in the Jordan (Mark 1:9). When John saw Jesus, he said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29), and of his own work he said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). Jesus said of him, “among those born of women there has arisen no one greater than John the Baptist” (Matthew 11:11). Herod Antipas imprisoned John for telling him, “It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife,” and later had him beheaded (Mark 6:17–29). The Church keeps his birth on 24 June and his death on 29 August.

John the apostle

John and his brother James were fishermen, the sons of Zebedee, when Jesus called them from their boat (Mark 1:19–20). With Peter they were present at the raising of Jairus’s daughter, the Transfiguration and the prayer in Gethsemane (Mark 5:37; 9:2; 14:33). After the resurrection Peter and John healed a man lame from birth at the temple gate and were arrested for preaching (Acts 3:1–4:3), and Paul names James, Cephas and John as the “pillars” of the church in Jerusalem (Galatians 2:9).

The fourth Gospel never uses the apostle’s name. It speaks instead of “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” who reclined beside Jesus at the Last Supper (John 13:23) and stood by the cross, where Jesus entrusted his mother to him (John 19:26–27). The Gospel ends by saying that this disciple “has written these things” (John 21:24). Christian tradition identifies him with John the son of Zebedee. Catholics and Anglicans keep his feast on 27 December, and the Orthodox Church on 26 September.

Did John write the Gospel, the letters and Revelation?

Tradition says he did. Irenaeus of Lyons, writing around 180, says that “John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia,” and that John lived in Ephesus until the reign of the emperor Trajan, which began in 98. The books themselves do not name the apostle. The Gospel refers to the beloved disciple, 1 John gives no name, 2 and 3 John come from “the elder” (2 John 1; 3 John 1), and the writer of Revelation calls himself John, on “the island called Patmos” (Revelation 1:9), without saying he was an apostle.

Doubts are old. In the third century Dionysius, bishop of Alexandria, concluded from the ideas, words and arrangement of Revelation that it was written by a different John from the author of the Gospel and 1 John. He noted that there were “two monuments in Ephesus, each bearing the name of John” (Eusebius, Church History 7.25). Most modern scholars agree that Revelation and the Gospel had different authors, and many doubt that the apostle wrote any of the five books, though the traditional view still has defenders.

Why is John such a common name?

Christians were taking the apostles’ names early. Dionysius, in the same passage, says that many took the name John out of love for the apostle, “as many of the children of the faithful are called Paul or Peter.” According to Behind the Name, the name was at first more common among Eastern Christians and spread widely in Western Europe after the First Crusade. In England it was usually the most common name for boys from the 13th century to the 20th, and in the later Middle Ages about one English boy in five was named John. It was the most common name for boys in the United States until 1923 and ranked 23rd in 2025. Twenty-one popes have taken the name, most recently John XXIII (1958–1963).

Related reading

• Is James in the Bible? Yes, It Is the English Form of Jacob
• Were Jesus and John the Baptist cousins?
• Is Ian in the Bible? Yes, as John
• Is Your Name in the Bible? A Directory of 231 Names