Let us assume (and these are reasonable assumptions as we will further explain) these things:

1) that Salome, the mother of John and James, the sons of Zebedee, was the Virgin Mary’s sister — an assumption reached by comparing three verses: Mark 15:40 and Matthew 20:20; 27:56.

2) that John and James, the sons of Zebedee, were not given the names “sons of thunder” to flatter them; but rather because they were hot-tempered (and therefore unlovable) and always jockeying for special favor with Jesus, presumably their cousin by virtue of Mary being Salome’s sister. Indeed, the other disciples are often shown grumbling that John and James persist in asking Jesus if they will find special favor in the world to come.

3) that the apostle John, the son of Zebedee, who is one of two candidates for the writer of the Gospel of John, which by default makes him one of two candidates for the scholarly third-person identifier “the disciple whom Jesus loved,” was a fisherman’s son from Galilee and not a scholar who lived in Jerusalem and knew the high priests Annas and Caiaphas.

4) that Mary Magdalene does not deserve to be identified as “the disciple whom Jesus loved” by virtue of the fact that she is not a man named John, who would have written the Gospel of John, and by virtue of the fact that she is seen in the company of “the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved” at the empty tomb with Peter.

5) that the home of John Mark and his mother Mary served as the home where the actual last supper took place — and, that this home was located near the Garden of Gethsemane, to which Jesus and Peter, James and John journey immediately following the last supper.

6) that when John and James flee the Garden of Gethsemane upon seeing Judas and the Roman soldiers arrive that they do not later become emboldened and proceed to Golgotha to witness the crucifixion of Jesus.

7) that John Mark of Cyrene knew Simon of Cyrene (as indicated by Mark’s naming of his two sons Rufus and Alexander), who helped to carry Jesus’ cross.

8) that the Virgin Mary would not have wanted to witness the torturous execution of her son Jesus.

9) that John Mark was a scholar, having been trained in Cyrene in north Africa to read and write classical Greek, Latin and Hebrew.

10) that John Mark wrote the Gospel of Mark.

11) that John Mark is the only man named John to be placed near Ephesus, according to a letter written by Paul to Timothy, who at the time was in Ephesus, near Patmos, where the book of the Revelation of Jesus was written by a man named John.

12) that the controversy of which man named John is the writer of the Gospel of John and therefore “the beloved disciple” has been a topic for debate even among laymen since the third century.

13) that Leonardo da Vinci, having had three years to paint The Last Supper (from 1495 to 1498), did not mistakenly leave in his painting a hand holding a dagger without an arm or person attached behind the back of Judas — something which the Da Vinci Code never addresses.