Who [else] has made the claim that the Beloved Disciple is a new Benjamin?
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The short answer is: NONE.
This is what Dr. Brant Pitre himself said in his 2018 Jesus and the Jewish Roots of Mary book, Chapter 7 (The New Rachel) section "Mary the New Rachel", subsection "The Mother of Jesus and the 'Beloved' Disciple" (emphasis mine):
The third and final connection between Mary and Rachel may be the most subtle of all, but it is also potentially the most significant. Although I do not know of any New Testament scholar who has recognized the parallel, I would suggest that Mary is also being depicted as a new Rachel in the Gospel of John, insofar as she becomes the mother of the Beloved Disciple through her suffering at Golgotha.
...
Perhaps most intriguing of all, if Mary is being depicted as a new Rachel and the apostle John as a kind of “new Benjamin,” then this would provide an explanation for the otherwise baffling question of why the author of John’s Gospel refers to himself as the “Beloved Disciple” (cf. John 13:23; 19:26; 21:7; 21:20). For decades, contemporary scholars have struggled to come up with a convincing explanation for why John refers to himself in this enigmatic (and seemingly prideful!) way.26 ...
I also consulted the (obligatory) treatment on the identity of the Beloved Disciple in the "Introduction" chapters of the following well-regarded commentaries on the Gospel of John, but none of them offers a theory that frames the Beloved Disciple as the New Benjamin:
- D.A. Carson, Pillar NT Commentary (Eerdmans, 1991)
- J. Ramsey Michaels, New International Commentary (Eerdmans, 2010)
- Craig R. Koester, The Word of Life: A Theology of John's Gospel (Eerdmans, 2008)
- Craig Keener, 2-Volume Commentary (Baker, 2012)
- Andreas J. Köstenberger, Baker Exegetical Commentary (Baker, 2004)
The "Beloved Disciple" entry of the popular Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (IVP, 2nd Ed, 2013) also does NOT mention Benjamin at all even though that dictionary series is well known to summarize the latest research on a topic.
Why this connection has not surfaced until now? My guess is that it's due to:
- The explosion of Second Temple Judaism research which just started in the recent decades now that the 1940s Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi findings have been completely catalogued and published for everyone to study.
- Renewed appreciation of Talmudic, Coptic, and Syriac literature to shed light on the thought background of New Testament authors.
- Post-modern climate of wanting to find fresh perspectives on text.
- Assistance with the larger historical enterprise that focuses on social history: how actual people lived, not just major figures / ideas that exerted society-level change.
- More studies on how other religious traditions interpreted the OT and used the apocrypha, especially the early Rabbinic Judaism, the shamefully neglected Syriac & Coptic Christianities, and even Islam.
- The rise of Biblical theology (instead of older systematic theology) which in turn demands new research to reconstruct the world behind the text using new data.
We will see what future commentaries on the Gospel of John will say about Dr. Brant Pitre's findings.
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