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Source: (consider it)
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Thread: The Apostles
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pimple
Ship's Irruption
# 10635
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Posted
Who, why, what, where and when were they? Just after four in the morning and just over half way through the fourth gospel, I see trouble ahead and don't want to take the thread (on John) on too winding a diversion.
The bible includes books which, like all historical, epic, and mythical literature, make use of important lists. Lists of people, laws, genealogies, mighty works, teaching, miracles. The synoptic gospels all include lists of the twelve apostles. In Mark and John they are identical:
Simon (Peter); James and John, the sons of Zebedee; Andrew (Peter's brother); Philip; Bartholomew; Matthew; Thomas; James, son of Alphaeus; Thaddeus; Simon the Cananaean; Judas Iscariot. [Mark 3:13-19; Matthew 10:1-4]
Thereafter there are slight variations. Luke drops Thaddeus and adds another Judas - but the church has traditionally regarded them as one and the same person. There is no list in John; the largest group of them appears after the resurrection, when seven of the disciples five of them named, and not necessarily all of them apostles, go fishing with Peter.
If John is "economical" with the gang of twelve, just as he prunes the "signs" to seven, it is for a purpose, and I see no problem with that. But I think the apostles are interesting enough to have a thread of their own, both individually and as a group.
The synoptic lists seem to have been added half way through the process of describing Jesus' early ministry, and the calling of individual disciples. Some of them are hardly mentioned afterwards, so I wonder if the group as a whole has its own significance for the church - perhaps one which was more important to the church than it was to Jesus, in some respects! Would it be unreasonable to regard the church's veneration of The Twelve - in a non-pejorative way - as a cult
(just as we talk of the "cult" of Mary)?
[Added links to text. Mamacita, Host]
[ 06. August 2014, 16:44: Message edited by: Mamacita ]
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In other words, just because I made it all up, doesn't mean it isn't true (Reginald Hill)
Posts: 8018 | From: Wonderland | Registered: Nov 2005
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Trudy Scrumptious
BBE Shieldmaiden
# 5647
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Posted
It seems to me that there must have been a lot more than twelve -- given that the two lists of twelve don't include the exact same names, and lots of other people are described as following Jesus. One wonders, for example, why the Mary, Joanna and Susanna (Luke 8: 2, 3) are not referred to as the Three Women Apostles. And of course Jesus sent out either seventy or seventy-two of his disciples at one point.
Reading the gospels I always feel like the whole idea of "the Twelve" was something imposed later by the gospel writers because of the mystical signficance of the number. As if, in the later recounting of Jesus' ministry by those who'd been there, everyone agreed that there was a small core group of men who were with him most of the time for most of his ministry, "Well, Peter, James, John, of course, and wasn't Peter's brother Andrew one of those? Oh and Thomas ... what about Simon? Which Simon? Oh right...." I can almost hear people trying to put together the list and saying, "Well, it was about twelve, must have been twelve of them" and attempting to generate that definitive list of 12 ... but the gospel writers not even getting a list they could agree on between them.
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Books and things.
I lied. There are no things. Just books.
Posts: 7428 | From: Closer to Paris than I am to Vancouver | Registered: Mar 2004
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Callan
Shipmate
# 525
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Posted
Luke certainly considers "the twelve" to have been a sufficiently defined group to the extent that Judas' defection required a by-election between Ascension Day and Pentecost. Paul also refers to the twelve in 1 Corinthians suggesting that they were recognised as a definitive group by that stage. Whether they were the same twelve mentioned in the lists in the Gospels is anyone's guess.
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How easy it would be to live in England, if only one did not love her. - G.K. Chesterton
Posts: 9757 | From: Citizen of the World | Registered: Jun 2001
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Adam.
Like as the
# 4991
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Posted
Their twelve-ness seems to be linked to their roles as judges of the twelve tribes. If Jesus is reforming (and transforming) the Davidic kingdom, he needs "vice-regents" to rule the twelve tribes. I read an interesting article recently that made the point that we're pretty familiar with Son of David Christology (the article was about Luke in particular), but if our Christology is Davidic, our Ecclesiology must be in some way too.
The more interesting question to me would be, when did we lose the twelve-ness? Once we move to the second generation Church, there doesn't seem to be any institution which has an inherent twelveness.
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Ave Crux, Spes Unica!
Preaching blog
Posts: 8164 | From: Notre Dame, IN | Registered: Sep 2003
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pimple
Ship's Irruption
# 10635
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Posted
Thanks for not pulling me up on the obvious typo in the OP. It's the lists in Mark and Matthew which are identical.
In a sense, the church never lost the "twelveness", since it still clings to the (in my view) somewhat flimsy authority of the apostolic succession with regard to clerical approval/licencing etc.
People who were around at the time of Jesus' ministry were just as fallible as those before and after it, but we still have apostle spoons and carvings of the twelve (the original twelve?) on great churches and cathedrals.
The accession of Judas's successor in Acts look like a mere matter of administration, but I think it had greater significance than that, then. A gang of twelve feels more important than one of three or four or ten.
Individual apostles are interesting in their own right. Who was Bartholomew? Tradition has him flayed alive - with his ill-bred offspring, for insulting a Roman whose only fault AFAIK was to expect a polite answer to a polite greeting.
Was Judas (the other Judas) really the earlier-named Thaddeus - or a crisis management effort to divert attention from the fact that the betrayer, too, was an apostle? And on whose authority did Judas Iscariot lose that identity post-mortem?
There are various accounts of the travellings and doings of the apostles after the resurrection. Which is/are the most reliable? Do the naïve fairy-tales of the followers of Jesus in general, and the apostles in particular, add or detract from our ability to take seriously the accounts of the life of Jesus himself?
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In other words, just because I made it all up, doesn't mean it isn't true (Reginald Hill)
Posts: 8018 | From: Wonderland | Registered: Nov 2005
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