John the Apostle, Saint or St. John the Evangelist or St. John the Divine (fl. 1st century ad) One of the original Twelve Apostles of Jesus, traditionally credited with writing the fourth Gospel and three New Testament epistles. The book of Revelation was also traditionally assigned to him. His father was a Galilean fisherman. John and his brother James (see St. James) were among the first disciples called by Jesus, and John appears to have held a position of authority in the early church after the resurrection. Later accounts of his life are based on legend. He is said to have died in Ephesus, and his tomb became a site of pilgrimage. John’s Gospel, unlike the other three, presents a well-developed theological point of view, on a level with the letters of St. Paul. After a prologue in which he identifies God with the Word (Logos), he offers selected episodes from Jesus’ life and ministry. His explications of theological issues such as the significance of the Son of God greatly influenced the development of Christian doctrine.
John the Baptist, Saint (b. 1st century ad) Jewish prophet revered in Christianity as the forerunner of Jesus. Sources for his life are the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the historian Josephus. His mother, Elizabeth, was perhaps a relative of Mary; his father was the priest Zecha- riah. As a young man John lived in the Judaean desert, either as a hermit or as part of a Jewish monastic community such as the Essenes. He attracted much public notice c. ad 28 as a prophet in the Jordan Valley. He preached the imminent wrathful judgment of God and called on his hearers to repent and be baptized. Jesus himself came to be baptized by John and shortly afterward began his own mission. John was imprisoned for criticizing the illegal marriage of Herod Antipas and was executed after Herod’s stepdaughter, Salome, demanded his head as a reward for danc¬ ing for the king’s guests.
John the Deaf See John of Paris John the Good See John II (France)
Johns Hopkins University Private university in Baltimore, Mary¬ land, U.S. It was founded as a graduate school in 1876 through an endow¬ ment supplied by the Baltimore merchant Johns Hopkins (1795-1873). It became coeducational after a group of women, in 1893, provided funds for the creation of a medical school. Today its school of medicine and the affiliated Johns Hopkins Hospital constitute one of the nation’s leading
John Paul II, 1979.
LOCHON-FRANCOLON-SIMON/GAMMA-LIAISON
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Johns ► Johnson, J. I 993
medical research centres. Besides medicine, the university has schools of arts and sciences, engineering, public health, nursing, music, international studies, and continuing education.
Johns, Jasper (b. May 15, 1930, Augusta, Ga., U.S.) U.S. painter, sculptor, and printmaker. He began his career as a commercial artist, pro¬ ducing displays for New York City shop windows. In 1958 he had his first one-man exhibition, a rousing success. The paintings Johns went on to produce depict commonplace, two-dimensional subjects such as flags, targets, maps, numbers, and letters of the alphabet. He was able to raise these objects to the level of icons through his paint handling and manipu¬ lation of surface texture, which he obtained through the encaustic tech¬ nique. In their willful and ironic banality and their rejection of emotional expression, these early works were a radical departure from the then- dominant Abstract Expressionist style. Johns’s unabashed depiction of com¬ monplace emblems and objects was emulated by many Pop art artists. From 1961 he began to attach real objects to his canvases. In the 1970s he produced paintings composed of clusters of parallel lines that he called “crosshatchings”; in the 1980s he experimented with figuration.
Johnson, Andrew (b. Dec. 29, 1808, Raleigh, N.C., U.S.—d. July 31, 1875, near Carter Station, Tenn.)
17th president of the U.S. (1865-69).
Born in poverty, he never attended school, and he taught himself to read and write. After a short apprentice¬ ship as a tailor, he moved with his family to Greeneville, Tenn., where he opened his own tailor shop.
Before he was 21 he organized a workingman’s party. Elected to the state legislature (1835^-3), he became a spokesman for small farm¬ ers. He then served in the U.S. House of Representatives (1843-53) and as governor of Tennessee (1853-57).
Elected to the U.S. Senate (1857—
62), he opposed antislavery agita¬ tion, but, in 1860, after the election of Pres. Abraham Lincoln, he vehe¬ mently rejected Southern secession, a position he maintained even after Tennessee seceded in 1861. During the American Civil War he was the only Southern senator who refused to join the Confederacy. In 1862 he was appointed military governor of Tennessee, then under Union control. In 1864 he was selected to run for vice president with President Lincoln; he assumed the presidency after Lincoln’s assassination. During Recon¬ struction he favoured a moderate policy of readmitting former Confeder¬ ate states to the Union with few provisions for reform or civil rights for freedmen. In 1867, Johnson’s vetoes of legislation to establish a Freed- men's Bureau and other civil rights measures angered moderate as well as Radical Repubucans; in response, they united to pass the Tenure of Office Act (1867), which forbade the president from removing civil officers without senatorial consent. In 1868, in defiance of the act, Johnson dis¬ missed secretary of war Edwin M. Stanton, an ally of the Radicals. The House then voted to impeach the president—the first such occurrence in U.S. history. In the subsequent Senate trial, the charges proved weak, and the necessary two-thirds vote needed for conviction failed by one vote. Johnson remained in office until 1869, but he had lost the ability to lead. He returned to Tennessee, where he won reelection to the Senate shortly before he died.
Johnson \'yon-s6n\, Eyvind (b. July 29, 1900, Svartbjornsbyn, near Boden, Swed.—d. Aug. 25, 1976, Stockholm) Swedish novelist. He endured a grim boyhood of hard labour. His early novels evince feelings of frustration; Bobinack (1932) is an expose of the machinations of mod¬ ern capitalism, and Rain at Daybreak (1933) is an attack on modern office drudgery. Return to Ithaca (1946) and The Days of His Grace ( 1960) have been widely translated. Johnson’s working-class novels experimented with new forms and techniques; they also introduced new themes to Swed¬ ish literature. He shared the 1974 Nobel Prize for Literature with Harry Martinson.
Johnson, Frank (Minis), Jr. (b. Oct. 30, 1918, Halyeville, Ala.—d. July 23, 1999, Montgomery, Ala.) U.S. judge. After graduating at the top of his law-school class at the University of Alabama in 1943, he joined