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The
Historical Jesus
The Twelve Apostles
Commentators on the gospels over the decades appear to
have struggled with references to "The Twelve". This is because the evidence is
inconsistent about
exactly who they were and how many there were .
A very early Christian manual (dating from about 96) is called The Lord's
Teaching According to the Twelve Apostles. The existence of the Didache
(as it is known) indicates that from the earliest times Christians have thought
of "The Twelve" as a distinct group of men.
Even earlier than that,
according to Luke's The Acts of the Apostles, at least one group of early
Christians preserved the tradition of The Twelve as originally including Judas.
When he died, Matthias was appointed in his place to make up the original number
(Acts 1.15-26) and he "was added to the eleven apostles".
Mark's Gospel is generally thought of as the earliest of the four. Matthew and
Luke used him as a reference. So the question
is, can Mark's list be relied on as good history - that is, as "what
really happened". For a source to be good history, it usually has to conform to
certain standards. In this case, Mark's list needs
independent,
witnesses for the names of the apostles, as confirmation that there was
actually a distinct group which was called "The Twelve". And because the New Testament writers use the Old Testament to validate
theological points, if this sort of reference is
present (as in the Acts passage), one needs to take it with a pinch of salt. This is not to say
that dishonesty is involved, but rather that the gospel authors thought of history
very differently from us. If other good sources don't mention
such a list which is
potentially so important to our assessment of the later life
of the Church then one needs to regard Mark's emphasis
on "The Twelve" with a tinge of scepticism.
Mark's list is suspect on all the above grounds:
Matthew's (10.1-4) lists the same individuals as Mark (3.14-19) though
in a different order. Most commentators think that Matthew used Mark as his
source.
Luke's Gospel (6.12-16) replaces Thaddeus with a second Judas (son of James).
John has no list as such - though he mentions ten of the traditional names (including "the beloved disciple", whoever he
was) in various places. None of our other
primary sources have such a list.
The title of the Didache is generally thought to have been a later
addition. Ignatius, the second (or third, according to one source) Bishop of Antioch (35-107), does not
mention "The Twelve" in his letters to various churches of his
time. One would expect this mention is so early a source. Because of the strong theological
significance of the Twelve Tribes of Israel in the Old Testament, we have to be cautious
about the number of the "twelve" apostles. It seems to have been important to the
early Church - probably still closely connected with the Jewish
religion and establishment - to establish and preserve a strong
connection between their new religious direction and older
Jewish traditions. There is good evidence that reference to "The
Twelve" didn't appear in the
earliest parts of the material common to Matthew and Luke (usually called
"Q"). This indicates that it may have been a later tradition,
since Matthew's Gospel was not written until around the year 80.
Paul writes of the "Twelve" (1 Corinthians 15.5) only once
and then names only Peter in this
context. In Galatians 2.1-10 Paul talks of "the leaders" (in
Greek the "pillars") and "those who seemed to be the
leaders",
in this context mentioning James, Peter and John.
Paul's leadership was clearly widely acknowledged
in the early Church. Even he had no direct contact with the Jesus of history he
nevertheless thought of himself as an "apostle to the
Gentiles" just as Peter was made an "apostle to the Jews". His
apostolate, he says, was derived "by God's will" not from Jesus or by election
as was Matthias.
It seems quite likely that some of the followers
of Jesus - particularly
Peter - became important in the very early days of the Church. The others seem to have faded
away, though James and John are mentioned by Paul and by Luke in Acts. Scraps
of evidence and tradition indicate that other Christian leaders may have
travelled across the Roman Empire to found local churches as far afield as
Britain.
The primacy of Peter as one of "The Twelve" has become a
cornerstone of the Roman Catholic Church's theology of authority.
For example, John Meier in his A Marginal Jew [1]
allots no fewer than 160 pages to arguing for the existence and nature of
"The Twelve". He thinks that some of those whose conclusions about
"the Twelve" are negative hold this view because they argue from a
modern presupposition of egalitarianism. Meier concludes that the weight of
evidence supports the existence of the Twelve Apostles as a group commissioned
by Jesus himself.
To sum up: We can be certain that Jesus had
followers, perhaps quite a number of them. The very early tradition that some of these followers
were more important than the others is clear. But we mustn't conclude that there were twelve
of them. Nor can we be
absolutely sure just what all their names were.
The early Church's conception of and need for
history as we know it was non existent. So by the time of Paul the tradition of
"The Twelve" was already well on the way to becoming "fact".
In later centuries the fact hardened into a doctrine which now supports the type
and degree of authority to which 80 percent of all Christians nominally submit.
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[1] Doubleday, 2001
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