Here's Johnny! Bible detective work is enough to give any scripture P.I. a major headache.

SOME PICTURES REALLY ARE WORTH A THOUSAND words. Take the photo of the "Afghan Girl." Back in 1985 the National Geographic Society photographed a 12-year-old refugee. Her face was surrounded by a ragged red headscarf, but you hardly noticed that. What you saw were those green eyes blazing with indignation. This girl wasn't asking for your pity. She stared straight out at you and demanded justice.

For 17 years the Afghan Girl's photo was reproduced all over. Everyone knew her face, but no one knew her name or her fate. In 2002 the now-adult woman was located in Afghanistan. Her name is Sharbat Gula; she is married and has three daughters. Until the day she was found, she had not seen the photograph that is famous worldwide.

Sometimes we catch a glimpse of someone we'd like to meet again, or we hear a snatch of a stranger's story and wish we could learn how it all turns out. Bible stories are often like that. A character emerges, plays a cameo role, and then vanishes into the shadows, never to be heard from again. In Bible study groups, people often ask what became of Joseph, husband of Mary, as if the unabridged story must be tucked away in a Vatican vault for safekeeping. They ask about the apostles: How did they die, and where, and when? Folks want the back story on Mary Magdalene most of all: Who was she really, and what happened to her outside the pages of the gospel? For most of the questions people ask, I have one answer: No one knows for sure.

BY BIBLICAL STANDARDS, LOCATING SHARBAT GULA WAS easy. She was simply hidden among 6 billion people, her trail a mere 17 years old. But the stories of scripture are behind us by millennia, which makes finding the history underneath the oral tradition rather challenging. Even with the knowledge of dead languages and all the crumbling documents of antiquity, you can't read the full biography of Jeremiah, John the Apostle, or Jesus, for that matter. If the truth is out there, it's buried in an undiscovered cave.

This doesn't imply that we should abandon the search for meaning, however. If we had never rediscovered the Afghan Girl, she would still be a piercing challenge to social responsibility. Knowing her name is almost less important than coming under the gaze of those unflinching 12-year-old eyes.

Take John the Apostle, for instance: He's listed among the Twelve in the three gospels that make such lists. Although some apostles suffer a serious lack of back story--who knows anything about Bartholomew or Simon the Zealot?--John has the opposite problem. So much has been said and presumed about him, it's hard to discover the truth that lies behind the image.

If asked about John, you might say: son of Zebedee, brother of James, fisherman, evangelist. Overachievers might add: the Beloved Disciple in John's gospel, who reclined on the bosom of Jesus at the Last Supper. Jesus entrusted his mother to that disciple as he died on the cross.

If you were able to come up with most of that, you've done well in recalling what many of us were taught. But as you've learned by now, not everything we were taught was correct. I remember Sister telling us in grade school that the apostle John never died, since Jesus says of the Beloved Disciple, "If it is my will that he remain until I come, what is that to you?" (John 21:22). This was taken as a sign that John would roam the earth until the end of the world. I've thought of John much like the Afghan Girl, out there among the 6 billion, with a heck of a story to tell if only he could be located.

If you want to follow John according to church legends, there's plenty to choose from. John, depicted as the youngest apostle (though scripture doesn't say so), has been identified in tradition as the groom at the wedding feast of Cana. And if you go that far, you'll be interested to know that his bride that day has also been determined: It was Mary Magdalene. (That gets Jesus off the hook with the Da Vinci Code crowd.)

Later legends describe how John and Mary Magdalene cared for the mother of Jesus in her old age. This was a family obligation, since Mrs. Zebedee, John's mother, was actually Salome, the Virgin Mary's sister. Thus John and Mary M. shared a house in Ephesus with Aunt Mary until her "dormition," when she fell asleep and was assumed into heaven. Some time later, we must presume, the Magdalene went off to do her penance, and John started his eternal wandering.

Or maybe not. Other legends insist John was martyred along with his brother James in the year 44. The Acts of the Apostles records James' death; no other apostle's death is noted in scripture. Other stories abound: John was boiled in oil by Emperor Domitian; he survived unharmed. John was also the victim of an attempted poisoning by a pagan priest in Asia Minor. Two convicted men drank from the tainted wine first and died. When John took the cup, the wine turned into snakes. He then revived the dead men.

THE MOST POPULAR TRADITION IS THAT JOHN WAS THE ONLY apostle not to die a martyr. He died at Ephesus at the ripe old age of 100. The idea that John ought not be martyred was based on the notion that he was Jesus' favorite. But was he?

The only reliable record we have is the New Testament. Mark, Matthew, and Luke all mention John by name. They call him a brother to James, son to Zebedee. Jesus called the brothers "sons of thunder"--temperamental. The Thunder Boys were, along with Peter, in a privileged circle of three that Jesus liked to have around. These three were present at the curing of Peter's mother-in-law and of Jairus' daughter, and at the Transfiguration and the agony in the garden.

In these three gospels it seems pretty clear that Peter is the favored disciple. When John is in the spotlight, it's not always for the best reason. Take that instance in Mark 9 when somebody across the street is driving out demons in Jesus' name. John insists the fellow stop this "unauthorized" ministry. In the next chapter both James and John ask Jesus for the seats of power on his right and his left--this, after listening to Jesus preach the upside-down way of the kingdom for months on end! In Luke's gospel the two brothers ask Jesus if they should call down fire from heaven on some inhospitable Samaritans. I guess when Jesus was giving those lessons on forgiveness, the Thunder Boys were out fishing.

In John's gospel there is a Beloved Disciple who is obviously not Peter because he's often with Peter. Because John's name is not used in this gospel, it could be John--although James and Matthew also go unnamed. But it sure seems awkward to write a gospel and call yourself "the Beloved Disciple," doesn't it? From the time of the Church Fathers, many have reconsidered either John's identity as the gospel writer or as the Beloved Disciple. Never mind the disputes about whether the gospel writer is also the same John of three epistles and the Book of Revelation. If this hasn't been sorted out in 2,000 years, another paragraph won't get us there.

WHEN BIBLE FACTS DON'T MATCH THE FIGURES AND MY brain is in a tangle, I always look for the clarifying story to fill in the gaps. There's one about an old, old John proclaiming the same short message every time he got up to preach: "Little children, love one another!" Someone finally suggested he might vary his homily a bit. He said in reply, "If we keep this command, we need no other." If we heard this one homily well enough, we'd all be beloved disciples.

By ALICE CAMILLE, author of Invitation to the New Testament and Invitation to the Old Testament, both from ACTA Publications.