Smoodock's Blog

According to my understanding, which I developed in my study of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus chose his apostles at the beginning of his public ministry, and probably on the Holy Day Sabbath, the Last Great Day, vis-à-vis the last of seven annual holy days, four of which occur in the seventh month of the Jewish calendar. Jesus spent his forty-day temptation in the wilderness of people (Ezekiel 20:35), during which time Jesus chose his disciples from the folk he knew or met, as he went about the synagogues of Galilee teaching and healing folks. The actual choice of the twelve men among the larger group of disciples, whom he named his Apostles, came at the climax of his temptation by the Jewish authorities. Jesus chose them on the mountain from which he preached what we call the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5, 6 and 7).

Therefore, when we read of Jesus calling his first disciples (Matthew 4:18-22), he wasn’t at that time calling them to be his Apostles or Ambassadors, whom he would later send out into the world on a special mission (Matthew 28:18-20). Their first calling was to follow him and become one of his disciples. Afterward, Jesus chose the twelve from the larger group of disciples, and their names are found in Matthew 10:1-4. Actually, there are four lists of the Jesus’ Apostles. The first list is found here in Matthew; the second is in Mark 3:13-19; the third list is found in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 6:12-16), and the final list is found, not in the Gospel of John, but in the first chapter of Acts (Acts 1:13).

Surprisingly, as least for me, a list is not contained in the Gospel of John. They are found only in the Synoptics and Acts. Instead, and just as surprisingly, the Gospel of John introduces us to the three heads of the Twelve. A comparison of the four lists of the twelve Apostles would reveal that the positions of the Apostles’ names vary within the lists, except for three men: Peter, Phillip and James the Less, called “son of Alphaeus” in the chart below.[1] They are invariably found in the first position (Peter), the fourth (Phillip) and the ninth (James the Less). What this, seemingly, does, through a study of all the texts, is that it shows Jesus divided the Twelve into three groups of four. The first group, Peter, Andrew, James and John, were those closest to Jesus. They decided who from the multitudes would have an audience with Jesus (cp. John 12:20-22), unless they were overruled by Jesus, himself, (Matthew 19:13). The second group, headed by Phillip seems to have had the authority to dispense with the group’s funds (cp. John 6:5-7), and the third group seems to have been responsible for the collection and protecting the group’s funds (John 12:6).

We are told in the text that Jesus bestowed upon his twelve Apostles authority over evil spirits (mental problems), diseases and sicknesses. The difference between disease and sickness may be that disease refers to a disability (blind, dumb, lame etc.).

[1] The calling of the leaders of the group is found in chapter one of the Gospel of John. However, this works out only if Nathanael (John 1:45-51) is James the Less. It is quite odd that Nathanael is called, but is never mentioned again in any of the Gospel narratives except in John 21:2, where, like two bookends, he appears with Jesus in the beginning and at the end, but is never mentioned again. The name James is Grecian for Jacob, and Jesus’ greeting of Nathaniel, using the angel metaphor reminds one of Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28:12. Moreover, in the Epistula Apostlorum, a 2^nd century document, Nathaniel is listed as one of the Apostles, and he is in the position in which James should be (the ninth). The argument can’t be proved, but it is a better one than the idea which many scholars accept, which is Nathanael = Bartholomew.