If Jesus celebrated the first Passover of his public ministry with his disciples (John 2:13, 17; 3:22), and that was prior to John’s imprisonment (John 3:23-24), then logic demands that Mark 1:16 had to have taken place before John was imprisoned and before that first Passover that both Jesus and his disciples celebrated. Mark 1:16-20 shows Jesus selecting his first four disciples, and he wasn’t finished selecting his apostles from among those disciples until Mark 3:19. Therefore, the block of scripture from Mark 1:16 to about Mark 3:19 must occur prior to John’s imprisonment, which Mark mentions at the beginning of his narrative (Mark 1:14).
Jesus was in Galilee, when he first began calling his disciples (Mark 1:16). Simon and his brother Andrew were fishermen, and they were fishing in the Sea of Galilee, when Jesus called them, saying he would make them fishers of men (Mark 1:16-18). So, they began following Jesus, and immediately after his calling Simon and Andrew Jesus, found James and John, the sons of Zebedee, who were also fishermen. They were in a boat mending their nets, when they left their father, his business and the hired help and followed Jesus (Mark 1:19-20).
When I was a child and first heard this story in Mark, I thought Jesus had some kind of magical power that mesmerized folks into doing as he wished, kind of like King Midas whose mere touch of an object turned it to gold. How did Jesus know these men? Did he know them prior to their being called? It was all a mystery to me back then, while growing up. Nevertheless, there is a logical context behind Jesus calling his first disciples, whom Mark merely mentions in his fast paced account of the Lord’s ministry.
It may have been that Andrew first met Jesus just after Jesus’ baptism. The Baptist pointed him out to Andrew, who had at that time been following John (John 1:35-40). Jesus was at that time (the day after his baptism) returning to Capernaum in Galilee, where he lived. After being with Jesus for about a day, Andrew immediately ran to get his brother, Simon, telling him that he found the Messiah, and, when Jesus met Simon, he told him he would be called Cephas, meaning Peter, a stone (John 1:41-42). So, John implies in his account of Jesus’ ministry that both Andrew and his brother, Simon / Peter, became acquainted with Jesus at this time, but we can’t be certain of this. The reason being, they were partners with James and John in the fishing trade (Luke 5:10), but why would this have any bearing upon their prior knowledge of Jesus?
The mothers of James and John and Jesus were sisters, Mary and Salome (John 19:35; cp. Mark 15:40). It seems as though Jesus and the Zebedee brothers had close physical ties, so there is no reason to believe they didn’t know one another. Moreover, since they lived in the same vicinity, they probably grew up together, or at least had many common childhood memories, even if they didn’t live in the same town. Therefore, if James and John were partners with Peter and Andrew, Peter and Andrew may also have known or at least been acquainted with Jesus long before Jesus called them. The point is, there was no Midas Touch going on in Mark 1:16-20. Some commentaries recount the calling of the Apostles in an almost abracadabra kind of way. It wasn’t. Jesus was not, nor should he be described as a kind of magician who had magical powers over men’s minds, knowing their thoughts etc. It wasn’t like that.
In other words, there is a logical context behind the whole event of the calling of these four men, and Luke removes the mystery even further in his account of why James and John were mending their nets when they were called (Luke 5:1-11). The group of men had fished all night without catching a thing, but when Jesus told Peter to cast his nets into the deep, Peter half-heartedly complied, but the catch was so great that his partners, James and John had to come with their boat to help them, and their net broke in the process. This is the actual context in which Peter and Andrew and the Zebedee brothers were called by Jesus to become his disciples.
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