The Historical Apostles, Transcript

Transcript:

(00:01) our topic tonight is the historical apostles so we've had a lecture the most popular lecture so far this year was on the historical jesus and a lot of people have written in and asked okay we've kind of set that groundwork of kind of establishing kind of the baseline the existence of the historical jesus and let's say the minimum component of the story of which there's a historical consensus what we can say for sure about the historical jesus and we gave a couple of the um the the multiple defensible academically

(00:39) defensible models we cited several of those that different scholars have constructed based on that uh initial foundation but several people have said well what about some of the other characters uh in the story in the new testament story um and so i thought well a a good place to start might be to look at uh the apostles and to try to reconstruct them and to see what historical basis we have for apostles in general for and for individual apostles in particular so let me begin in northwestern spain in the capital of the region of galicia

(01:22) santiago de compostela is a cathedral with the shrine and the tomb of santiago so as early as the 11th century this was a blockbuster destination pilgrims from all over western europe streamed on pathways across the purities into spain to make their way to this shrine the camino de santiago as it's called the way of saint james as we call it in english continues to this day it's a unesco world heritage site and so forth it attracts some 200 000 pilgrims per year now here's a if you can see it anyway kind of a map of the northernmost part of

(02:14) spain with the route of the pilgrimage through all of these sort of ancient christian medieval uh centers and of course along the entire pathway which is marked you know there's little shrines that are historic that go all the way back to the middle ages little and big shrines because uh it was such a let's say what we might even call a tourist route it was a pilgrimage route but our modern um our modern tradition of tourism actually directly evolves out of the medieval practice of pilgrimage you might remember that in the early middle ages

(02:51) when um the shrine here got going uh christian christian kingdoms in in spain were kind of uh scattered up this way because most of spain was in muslim hands and in fact was having kind of this um golden age of under the sea of southern uh muslim spain all right so the tomb of santiago the original attraction that got this pilgrimage thing going and has kept it going is the tomb of santiago the apostle so santiago is galician for saint jacob or as the name is very confusingly rendered in english saint james so everywhere although we we in the in the

(03:38) um as a result of the translation into the king james bible um uh in the in the old testament in the hebrew part of it the name jacob is translated as jacob as in the patriarch jacob and so forth but everywhere in the new testament i mean the translation comes from the greek or through the greek um uh the king james translators rendered the name jacob as james um you know to gain favor of the king right and so anyway as a result of that english has this strange um phenomenon where we call anyway saints like jacob

(04:15) iago we say james so according to the lists of the 12 in the synoptic gospels this james the son of zebedee is one of two apostles named james the other being the son of alphaeus and thus this one is called james the great and then there is another figure as we'll see called james the less who is sometimes conflated with this other apostle james son of alphaeus we'll talk about that later so this is the tomb right the tomb of an apostle and not just a little apostle this is james the great so how did one of jesus apostles end up

(04:59) in galicia of all places so according to the book of acts of the apostles in the new testament james was part of the jerusalem church until herod the king by which it's meant um herod agrippa we can tell from johesiphus history until herod agrippa the first executed him so according to medieval galicians his body was then taken by angels who placed it into a rudderless boat that was unattended by any humans and that boat made its way through divine means all the way to the shores of galicia where it was then moved and brought to a

(05:41) shrine inland uh not shrine it was buried in what later became a shrine so his tomb was then rediscovered in the year 814 by pelagius the hermits the local bishop galicia theodomirus of irea told king alfonso ii of asturias and galicia about the find and a shrine was then built to welcome pilgrims as they started to want to see this great wonder of the discovery of the tomb of one of jesus's apostles important apostles so later legends told of how saint james had actually been the first christian missionary to come to galicia

(06:29) prior to his execution back in in judea palestine but uh anyways he went to galatia's established church there went back where he got executed according to this tradition but there are no sources for these traditions earlier than the 700s and thus although it's an old tradition you know over a thousand years old here it doesn't have any historical basis it doesn't take us all the way back to um the time of james six or seven hundred years out of uh before it created six or seven hundred eighty years later okay there is though context for the

(07:05) shrine's invention so while there's no associations in galicia with saint james prior to the 700s finding his tomb fits the period in which it's found so at this time in the central and then the later middle ages as western christians began rebuilding after the decline of late antiquity in the early middle ages what sometimes we think of as the dark ages when there was so little building happening of any kind as uh as the roman government was replaced with uh the local different germanic kingdoms and so forth relics and saints i'm sorry bodies of

(07:44) saints were essential for new churches holiness and christians all across europe competed to buy or in some cases create and in other cases actually even steel relics and so for example venetian sailors famously stole the body of saint mark saint mark the evangelist that was traditionally understood to be housed in alexandria where there's a patriarchate the patriarch or pope as he's sometimes called of alexandria uh to this day considers himself to be the successor of saint mark they stole that body uh and brought it

(08:27) back to venice where they built saint mark's basilica uh in venice to house it this magnificent place on the on the pla piazza venice and um uh and as a result of that um venice is even called the republic of saint mark in other words mark st mark becomes the the patron of venice relics associated with characters in scripture were very potent so in other words mark here is associated with mark the evangelist that's why you would want his shrine in his body thus for example the monks of santa knee which is the uh an abbey just to the

(09:10) north of paris where the uh royal crypt of the french kings is housed um those monks forgot that their abbey was named for denis or in greek dionysius a third century gallic bishop and instead they began to associate the name of their monastery denis with denis the areopagite areopagite a character in the book of acts so less ambitious than galicia which very little place out the very fringes of europe which decided that they were going to pull off claiming that they have the uh tomb of one of the major apostles

(09:54) and again less than i mean paris is picking somebody a small character like dionysius the areapogite is not a big deal a couple years ago we went and visited the city of verona and we found a shrine there that claimed to have the relics of the boy who supplied the loaves and fishes during the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand so in other words they got somebody not a major character from the new testament the guy doesn't even have a name in the new testament but you know essentially during a major miracle uh

(10:27) everybody needs to be fed uh jesus asked well what do we have and there's a kid who has some pieces of bread and some fish that kid according to the tradition in verona grew up and eventually made his way to verona and they have his relics there so you can see how there is a context for finding these kind of connections believing that you have the relics or bodies of characters from the new testament okay so when we're doing history and we're talking about historicity historicity is not about proving uh something impossible

(11:07) so non-historians may respond they often respond the fact that none of the sources we have for galicia show associations with st james that doesn't prove that angels could not have brought the body there in a rudderless boat and so they might say well i therefore believe that the tomb contains his body so the response to that is you can believe obviously people can believe all the things they want to believe that's fine but there is no historical basis for this belief that belief can said to be false from a historical perspective

(11:41) because we can date the beginning of when the narrative happens we can date the context for that narrative and we can show that this association does not go all the way back to the first century where james is like i say much later claimed to have been the first founder of christianity in the area right okay that should be no detraction from a thousand plus year tradition you know so the non-historicity of the tomb does not detract from the living millennium old tradition of hiking the camino de santiago i perfectly do not believe that the body

(12:21) of st james is in that tomb and i would still really like to do this um this pilgrimage if i had the time to do it it would be um it's a wonderful amazing thing that people find meaningful so it's a spiritual practice that has potential to be like a once-in-a-lifetime even a life-changing experience it could connect you with fellow pilgrims with friends or family that you bring along with your historic roots with people of the past with your faith with the divine with god there's all kinds of different ways different things that

(12:55) this spiritual practice could still be employed by it's not the historicity of the tomb is not relevant to that right so i want to talk about that in general as we do this so living tradition versus and scripture versus history so we've made the distinction between the living tradition of jesus christ in christianity the christ of theology the jesus of scriptures and the historical jesus and likewise in this presentation we will look at the distinctions between the traditions about the apostles stories in scripture about the apostles

(13:39) and what we can say about the historical basis of each of the apostles the apostles and each thereof that we'll talk about okay so we'll begin with a question how many apostles were there and if we had a audience here we'd have we didn't used to before all the pandemic people could be raising their hands and and and wondering am i trying to ask them a trick question is this a trick question so should be um uh one of the the things about apostles is there's a particular number that is associated with apostles so was the trick question was i trying

(14:18) to say oh well no no it's only 11 because judas iscariot the apostle who betrayed jesus was kicked out no no no because according to the book of acts judas got replaced by a guy named matthias about whom we know nothing else than than just that snippet that is mentioned in the book of acts so in other words there's 12 even after after judas so the answer though is no it's not just 12.

(14:46) in fact there were many many more than 12 apostles in the first generations of christianity in fact the 12 are a subset of a much larger group of apostles so that is much more than i have joined in the schematic the schematic here is just meant to say many there's many apostles other than the 12 the 12 are also understood to have been a group within that set apostles a subset so for example um one of the ones we should know here i'm just highlighting one of these apostles who's not in the 12 but is in the group of apostles paul

(15:27) so paul is arguably the second most famous of the apostles after peter and probably the most influential of the apostles including peter and paul though was never one of the twelve so what does it mean apostle them what is apostle the title apostle apostolos in greek literally means the one who is sent off in the sense of a messenger an ambassador and so forth and so we've done lectures before on the historical jesus and on the earliest christianities lost christianities and one of the [Music] one of the pictures that we have painted of what perhaps the

(16:17) earliest jesus movement or the historical jesus movement might have been a pre-christian movement still where the name christian has not even been applied to it at all yet it was a jewish sect that was centered on demand on a mendicant that is to say a begging for your daily bread spiritual group that renounced such worldly entanglements as property and so forth so then from that group which is kind of like a group that might be seen as a similar to being like a group of buddhist monks that are supported by the broader buddhist

(17:00) community around them because these these people who have renounced worldly entanglements and are you know like the buddhist monks are also living by um the donation of their food every day by the broader community and part of the reason for it is is that they're a a spiritual bridge for the broader community these are people that are removed from worldly entanglements and thus they're closer to god and and the spiritual world right buddhists are worrying about so much about god but anyway and they're more worried they're

(17:34) not worldly and their connection that way in this case and for christians is definitely his connection to god and so um and so at group then that central mendicant group would send out um what was messengers or ambassadors he said what are called apostles to share the group's message with sympathetic supporters living in the world and possibly also to gather donations to bring back to the group although we'll see how that works in terms of what the evidence is certainly paul is collecting donations on behalf of a group called the poor of

(18:16) jerusalem and it's one of the things that he is asking for for all of his church communities that he has planted among non-jewish greek-speaking christians who were much better off in terms of property and wealth and so on in the cities of the greek-speaking cities of the eastern roman empire greece and turkey and so forth and he's trying to collect alms in order to help support this central mendicant say franciscan or ban franciscan monk or friar-like um group that uh is existing in in jerusalem so in the gospels we have descriptions

(19:02) of the apostolic role so the gospel of mark which is the earliest of our four gospels that are in the canon to have been written has a description of jesus's instructions for sending forth apostles the q sayings gospel preserves a second set of these instructions so you're probably aware we've had a bunch of lectures where we talk about the synoptic problem how the gospels of mark and matthew and luke are related to each other it's mostly understood by scholars that mark is the earliest of the gospels that survives

(19:39) matthew and luke both use mark as a source but also have another lost source that they are using a source of jesus sayings that scholars call q so the q sayings gospel preserves a second set the author of matthew synthesized the two sets so they're pretty similar he takes the cue set and the mark set and brings them together whereas the author of luke actually includes both of them back to back so luke uses the first one from mark for the sending fourth of the first 12 apostles and then luke uses the second set of instructions for sending forth

(20:17) 70 more apostles probably originally in the manuscript it would have been 72 because 72 is a more holy number it's half of 144 which is 12 times 12. so you can imagine why anyway 72 is probably what most scholars think it should be although we use the word 70 in my denomination so we have in community of christ positions call of 412 apostles and then we have positions for the 70 and actually that's one of my roles so i'm of a calling as a 70 in community of christ okay so let's look at this uh first um uh description of what an apostle is to

(20:59) do this is found in mark chapter six he jesus called the twelve and began to send them out two by two and he gave them authority over unclean spirits he ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff so no bread no bag no money in their belts but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics he said to them wherever you enter a house stay there until you leave the place if any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you as you leave shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them so they went

(21:40) out and proclaimed that all should repent they cast out many demons and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them okay so let's look at a couple of the characteristics of what this is saying uh the role of apostle is so it's a spiritual emissary authorized by jesus so um they're authorized uh have to have authority over unclean spirits and they cast out demons which is one of the things that uh jesus is said to do and they also anoint with oil many who are sick and so they do faith healing so spiritual

(22:19) uh spiritual healings note here that these scent what part one of the details is they're sent out but they're sent out in pairs and one of the things that they are doing is proclaiming the message so repent turn your life around be be aware not of all of the things you think are important but of the spiritual truths that are really important in the world and so forth and then they're mendicant they're not to have property with a couple exceptions in other words you can have sandals you can have one tunic but you're not to bring a

(22:54) change of clothes even in other words on this thing you are to live by donations so there's you can have a staff but no bread no bag no money and so on and wherever you enter a house so in other words you you're not bringing a tent with you but when people when you're going around as a mendicant beggar you enter a community some people local people might invite you into the house and you stay in that house until you leave the place so it's not like um you start staying there because you that you know uh that seems like a pretty good place but

(23:28) later a much richer person who lives in the town says hey i've got a i've got a really great place for you to stay and you can have great food and so on you're not to do that that's not what this is about you know so as long as you're gonna be in that place you go to that first house you entered and so on okay so here's the second description uh the one that's found in luke so the author of luke more or less repeats mark's instructions to the apostles when sending out the 12th so that's in the preceding chapter luke 9 but then

(23:55) includes this account from the q saying source in chapter 10. so it reads in this part in luke he jesus said to them the harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few therefore ask the lord of the harvest to send out laborers into this harvest go on your way see i'm sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves and so that's kind of the preface from luke but then here's the instructions carry no purse no bag no sandals and greet no one on the road whatever house you enter first say peace to this house and if anyone is there who shares in

(24:37) peace your peace will rest on that person but if not it will return to you remain in the same house eating and drinking whatever they provide for the laborer deserves to be paid do not move about from house to house cure the sick who are there and say to them the kingdom of god has come near to you excuse me so let's look at the small contradictions in the instructions so this is a place where both mark and q are both repeating something that comes back to what's presumably kind of a common traditional tradition that's not literarily

(25:29) dependent on each other but in other words they're both preserving um there's an earlier tradition and tradition that's talking about this practice even pre-christian practice in the jesus movement of mendicant apostles so in mark there was no bread no bag no money no second tunic no looking for better accommodations but yes you could have a staff and sandals yes you're supposed to declare repentance and cast out demons and heal the sick in luke there's no bag there's no purse which is more or less the same as no money

(26:05) sorry no sandals no greeting people on the road and no looking for better accommodations you're supposed to eat what's given you so that's kind of an as opposed to saying no bring bread in other words you're eating what the people are giving you and one of the things the message here is is sharing peace and also declaring the message the kingdom of heaven is at hand the kingdom of god is at hand and of course yes there's also the curing spiritual healing curing sick people there are additional attestations of

(26:35) this apostolic role so the gospel of thomas we've had a whole lecture on this an important early witness has similar instructions for mendicant apostles attributed to jesus in saying 14 4 where we read when you go in any region and walk about in the countryside when people take you in eat what they serve you and heal the sick among them so this again he's saying this to the apostles and giving them this idea that they're to walk around that's itinerants they're mendicants they're begging you get you eat what you um

(27:12) are being provided what the other people what the people are providing and you are serving as a spiritual conduit right so you are um you are free from these worldly attachments and as people are in need of spiritual healing and even physical healing as i understand it um you are that conduit for that we have another really um interesting and important uh description from a text called the dedicate so the dedicate is another really key early christian text outside that has you know been kept outside of the canon

(27:50) so it's called the teachings subtitled the teachings of the twelve apostles so it dates from either the first or maybe the very early second centuries and so therefore again one of the very early chris earliest christian writings it includes um some of the first descriptions of christian institutions things like sacraments and how they're to be um how you're to do them so kind of rules and so it's kind of a practical rule book and so on uh things like priesthood different kinds of roles and offices including rules concerning apostles

(28:28) and so in chapter 11 it talks about apostles and prophets so some of these early in the jesus movement with the wages of jesus movement is understood things that fall out in the later in the second century so these cease to be part of later christianity and so this is that one of the ways we know this is an early description so we read there whosoever then comes and teaches you all these things aforesaid receive him so they just have had a whole list of what uh doctrine should be and so if they're teaching you

(29:05) that kind of doctrine okay receive them but if the teacher himself be perverted and teach another doctrine to destroy these things do not listen to him but if his teaching be for the increase of righteousness and knowledge of the lord receive him as the lord and concerning the apostles and prophets act thus according to the ordinance of the gospel let every apostle who comes to you be received as the lord but let him not stay more than one day or if he need be a second as well but if he stays three days he is a false

(29:41) prophet and when an apostle goes forth let him accept nothing but bread till he reach his knight's lodging but if he asks for money he's a false prophet do not test or examine any prophet who is speaking in the spirit for every sin shall be given this is quoting um uh from a saying of jesus every sin from every sin shall be forgiven but this sin shall not be forgiven but not everyone who speaks in the spirit is a prophet except he have the behavior of the lord from his behavior then the false prophet and the true prophet shall be known

(30:23) and no prophet who orders a meal in the spirit shall eat of it otherwise he is a false prophet and every prophet who teaches the truth if he do not what he teaches is a false prophet but whoever whosoever shall say in a spirit give me money or something else give me something else you shall not listen to him but if he tell you to give on behalf of others in want let none judge him so you can kind of see how this idea of a tradition of wandering apostles and prophets you can see on the one hand what they do and you can also see by the time we're

(31:01) getting here to the like i say the late first century the second generation of uh of what's now christianity um they're they're having to make rules for uh people who are gaming the system right and so there's a lot of concern here with false prophets and so false prophets are people who are asking for money people who um want to keep who are not going to keep going around who aren't going to go around and beg in other places but they they want to keep living with you after three days and so on um people who are um preaching false

(31:33) doctrine as far as the uh understanding of the decay's understanding of doctrine is so they have all of those kind of things as ways and rules to start regulating these mendicant apostles who are going around and continuing to speak in the spirit at this time but you can see uh you can kind of see on the one hand what the what they would have been doing and also how some of the excesses can happen and why ultimately early christianity decided to to phase out this and so ultimately as the as the communities become more

(32:11) established and they become led by um like say bishops who have authority over the community when a prophet or an apostle wanders in uh for a couple days and starts preaching all kinds of crazy things from the spirit and so forth in a lot of cases maybe that don't seem like they're uh uh you know in line with the doctrine as understood by the community as regulated by the bishop and so on you can see that at a certain point the bishops aren't as interested in in that that kind of spirituality kind of reckless chaotic

(32:45) spirituality from the perspective of the institution and so at that point um and as the this kind of piety evolves the bishops are successful in getting um this kind of piety transferred into uh the idea of monasteries and so ultimately if you were feeling this kind of spiritual connection wouldn't it be better instead of wandering around and begging wouldn't it be better if you all lived in a monastery under the control of the bishop where you're not where you're not messing around with all of the the faithful in the congregations so

(33:21) this is why ultimately the age of apostles ends and of course there have been revivals so i've met talked about in a way how the franciscans uh the dominicans both wandering mendicant orders who go around and again live by begging and so on are out preaching um they were a part of a great revival in the central middle ages of this kind of piety but it was also um very dangerous for the institutional church they were able to co-opt those two but some of the other uh more radical mendicants who are preaching extreme poverty and things like that

(33:54) were condemned as heretics from the church by the church who found them threatening so okay another characteristic of the original apostles does seem to be that they were both male and female we've talked before that one of the characteristics of the jesus movement and some of its errors anyway in early christianity was inclusiveness of women including in major roles in leadership roles so both women and men filled the role of apostle and indeed the whole idea of sending apostles in pairs may have originated as a result of the

(34:31) need for male and female pairings and generally speaking a married couple apostles and so for example whereas it would have been very possible for a single man in the greco-roman world to go around traveling and be a preacher a medical preacher and things like that for a single unaccompanied woman or maybe in a pair of women it was much less possible women had to have essentially legal protection and even other protection and so probably in order to allow female disciples and apostles to travel through the roman world legally

(35:12) the apostles were here would have been paired like that male and female so in uh this is described a little bit in in by paul when he himself is kind of defending his claim to be called an apostle he's writing to a community that he himself had founded the corinthians the corinthians have had connection with apostles who have been authorized by um by people in james's group the jerusalem group um people who can trace their tithes back to the historical jesus um paul doesn't have that authorization connection his source of authority as he

(35:57) tells everybody all the time is that he has had a vision of the risen christ um he is not actually um he wasn't one of jesus apostles at the time the historical jesus apostles and so and that that made it so that people kind of wondered well wait a second where where is your authority coming from and he had to sometimes describe it and explain why he does things a little differently than some of the other apostles and so he writes to them am i not free am i not an apostle have i not seen jesus our lord so he's seen

(36:29) a vision of christ the risen christ are you not my work in the lord in other words i i planted this community you didn't exist there was no church in corinth before i converted all of you if i am not an apostle to others at least i am to you since you are my converts for you are the seal of my apostleship in the lord this is my defense to those who would examine me do we not have the right to our food and drink people are giving the apostles food and drink do not do we not have the right as apostles do we not have the right to be

(37:08) accompanied by a believing wife as do the other apostles and the brothers of the lord and cephas or is it only barnabas and i who have no right to refrain from working for a living so he's asking look if you look at these other apostles from jerusalem the brothers of jesus like james and so on who are leaders of this poor of jerusalem community cephas which is another name for peter they are all taking accompanying uh in their missionary journeys they're being accompanied by a believing wife right and so and so paul even though his tradition is

(37:50) that he himself is doing it a little differently he's traveling with male companions he indicates that many of uh the male apostles in the established community have wives as their companions paul explicitly may address such a pair in his letter to the romans chapter 16 he says greeting andromuchus and junika my relatives who were in prison with me they are prominent among the apostles and they were in christ before i was so here he's talking to a couple in the roman church the relatives of paul's at least it's a man and a woman junior

(38:29) and both of them are known as prominent apostles according to paul and actually that they were christians before paul converted so they're very early christians and indeed we also know from the gospel descriptions that peter is depicted as having a wife as well so between between paul's kind of description here about cephas being accompanied by a believing wife and and also the fact that peter is described as being married and so forth in the in the gospel accounts we have this impression that uh peter and his wife may be may

(39:05) have been apostles together so there's a bunch of other missionary pairings um we just mentioned a couple of them here although not explicitly called apostles another pair of married christian missionaries were priscilla and aquila they're mentioned four times in the new testament so paul refers to them as fellow workers in jesus christ and although as we said the historical paul traveled with male companions later tradition paired him with a female apostle named thekla and there's a whole apocryphal books of

(39:39) the acts of paul and thecla which is a really great um greco-roman uh romance novel but not not romance in the sense of their having a romance but in the sense that it's an action adventure kind of story and so forth women speaking by the spirit as described in the dedicate part of the role of the apostle is to speak by the spirit so there's an example of this type of practice from the gospels that includes the prophet anna who testified by the spirit as the infant jesus was presented in the temple and luke as luke often does pairs a male

(40:19) and female pairing in terms of the stories presented and so luke pairs anna's prophecy in the temple with that of simeon a male who is also speaking in the spirit at the time jesus is presented so just with all of that then and this is kind of a summary of the idea and role of apostles in the jesus movement and the earliest christianities so apostles are men and women sent forth in pairs they're mendicant so they are begging for their food and they are not to have more than you know any of the barest minimum of property and

(40:58) they are not to take pay they are to live on the believer's charity and so there is a broader community who have not done all of this renunciation of property who are not sent forth who are not apostles but they are let's say members of the christian communities that are being visited and ministered to by the apostles and they are also providing the kind of the daily uh living support for the apostles to be able to continue their work when they're in places one of the things the apostles are doing is prophesying by

(41:34) the spirit and so again they're a connection between the other world and the regular people who are ensconced in this world they're also sharing the gospel they're bringing good news they're explicitly said to the kingdom of heaven isn't near they're sharing the peace of jesus they're acting as spiritual healers but as the ditica says they got to travel if there's been more than two days in your house a false prophet they need to get out of there so so move along uh mendicant itinerant um you know sort of proto monk

(42:12) preachers okay so now i want to look at having looked at what apostles are i want to look at individual historical apostles so as we talked about our earliest christian author whose work survived paul he identifies himself as an apostle so paul is a known historical figure and therefore he is a historical apostle in the early christian period and so are apostles and companions that he names in other words we know paul is a historical figure we have many of his letters are are all scholars agree are authentic and

(42:46) are written by him he is talking to um people some of whom he calls apostles like adronicus and junia some of whom he talks about as companions that he is traveling with like barnabas and aristarchus silas timothy ephifras and luke et cetera so in other words in those kind of letters we're going to have people who we can say pretty clearly are you unless you don't believe a word that paul says and you think that he's i don't know whatever nobody believes that so in other words it's all historians to conclude that those then would be

(43:19) historical apostle figures um that is not going to be the same is not going to be true just because there are mentions in the in the book of acts which is the second half of the book of the gospel of luke or in the gospels uh alone so just because um you might be mentioned as a missionary companion an apos apostolic companion of paul in the book of acts and there's stories about it the book of acts is not um not historical in the same way right so it is a it is a uh scriptural document it is written by an evangelist for an evangelical purpose

(43:59) and it's not written by a historian and just in the same way that the gospels contain historical data that can be mined by historians but are not eyewitness accounts the same is true for the book of acts which is the continuation of luke okay so what we can we say beyond paul so paul didn't know the historical jesus as we say so what can we say though about apostles who did know the historical jesus so in galatians 2 9 paul tells us that he personally met three apostles who'd known the historical jesus and these are james the brother of jesus

(44:39) cephus which is aramaic for rocky peter is greek for the same so this is a nickname uh for a person whose birth name was simon so very the most famous of the apostles the apostle peter and john whom paul identifies these three james peter and john as quote the acknowledged pillars is his term for that the leaders of the church the poor of jerusalem this central mendicant community that paul is attempting to appease and to maybe get into good graces with who he occasionally fights with because these um leaders especially

(45:22) james are are very much they very much are of the belief that all members of christianity need to be keeping a kind of jewish law the way they do so they have not come to this place that paul has argued for that gentile converts that non-jewish converts into christianity did not have to maintain the law because the law has been fulfilled in christ that's something that paul is promoting and the jerusalem group which obviously has the historical connection to jesus including familial connection the actual brother and so forth the chief disciple peter

(46:05) there they and paul are not always in agreement on this so paul's testimony though that these historic apostles uh it those that's better by multiple attestation and other early sources we have for james we saw how that's in josephus how james peter and john are in and so many other early texts so that establishes those three fairly conclusively so lacking other eyewitness accounts so we have paul and paul's a historic figure he has met those guys as he testifies the new testament texts attributed to jesus and the

(46:46) apostles aren't written by them as we've seen in much of our lectures so lacking other eyewitness accounts pretty much every other name has to come with a degree of uncertainty some stars as we kind of say well maybe maybe not as the evidence uh must be weighed on each case so um what about the rest of the 12 is the idea of there being 12 apostles is that or 12 special special subset of 12 is that even historic so paul does confirm the 12 existed certainly early on in early christianity and presumably therefore back to

(47:26) the time of jesus since it's not something that is maintained in later christianity so paul writes again to the corinthians i handed on to you as of first importance what i in turn had received that christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures and then this is the part where we we kind of see the beginnings of going from the jesus movement to earliest kinds of christianity so the risen christ appeared to cephas and then

(48:03) to the 12 then he appeared to more than 500 brothers and sisters at one time most of whom are still alive though some have died then he appeared to james then to all the apostles last of all as to one untimely born he appeared also to me so there's a lot of groups here that are having experiences with the risen christ right so he appeared to cephas then to the 12 and then he appeared to james then to all the apostles so paul here is making a distinction between the twelve and all the apostles and although elsewhere in his account of

(48:44) the jerusalem church james takes precedence over cephas peter paul associates cephas with the twelve and james with all the other apostles and indeed that quotation i've used in a bunch of different lectures and sermons and so forth that kerygma as it's called most scholars believe that paul here is passing on a kind of a pre-christian or i'm sorry pre-pauline testimony that even predates him so this is an understanding that the earliest christians have of how they are experiencing the risen christ okay and so what then

(49:26) was the historical jesus's purpose of setting peter and the twelve apart from all of these other apostles that we're hearing about that we see this role of in other words we have a role of uh what regular apostles are about what's the role of the twelve so paul doesn't really give us any further information about the 12th and so among our earliest understandings of the 12's purpose is found in that lost cue saying source but in parts that are preserved in matthew and luke variants and so this is a very again early source so in matthew

(50:03) 19 we read peter said in reply look we have left he's talking to jesus look we have left everything and followed you what then will we have jesus said to them to the twelve truly i tell you as the renewal of all things when the son of man is seated on the throne of his glory you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of israel so here's luke's version of that so in luke 22 we read jesus said to them the kings of the gentiles lorded over them and those in authority over them are

(50:45) called benefactors but not so with you rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest and the leader like one who serves for who is greater the one who is at the table or the one who serves is it not the one at the table but i am among you as one who serves you are those who have stood by me in trials and i confer on you just as my father has conferred on me a kingdom so that you may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom and you will sit on thrones judging the 12 tribes of israel so so between these two the historical

(51:27) jesus seems to have called 12 individuals to serve as sort of judges for a spiritually renewed 12 tribes of israel the 12 tribes of israel hadn't existed since all the way back to the destruction of the northern kingdoms the northern kingdom of israel by the assyrians so even way before the destruction of the first destruction of the temple by the babylonians but anyway now there is an understooding of a restored spiritual israel here and jesus has 12 individuals among his disciples 12 apostles who are sort of stand-ins for

(52:10) those tribes so understood through the apocalyptic lens of the cue saying source these 12 are to fulfill a role in judgment day judging the 12 tribes on thrones and so forth however it's also possible we could speculate that the 12 symbolically might represent for jesus a new spiritual israel so that's if you didn't uh if it was being understood without the kind of lens of apocalypticism that we find in q it's sort of speculative but in any event this is a we don't have too much idea of what the actual purpose of the

(52:45) twelve is so who were the twelve the first list we have of the twelve by name comes from our earliest surviving gospel mark and we read in mark chapter three jesus went up to the mountain sorry jesus went up the mountain and called to him those whom he wanted and they came to him and he appointed 12 whom he also named apostles to be with him and to be sent out to proclaim the message and to have authority to cast out demons so he appointed the twelve simon to whom he gave the name peter james son of zebedee and john the

(53:27) brother of james to whom he gave the name uh boyanergies that is sons of thunder and and by the way the name peter really sticks but this name boyanerges does not stick it only exists here in in in matthew so even i'm sorry in mark so even though um uh james and john are end up being major major figures that nickname doesn't stick with them anyway but continuing on and andrew and philip and bartholomew and matthew and thomas and james son of alphaeus and thaddeus and simon the canaan canaanian and judas iscariot who betrayed him and so

(54:11) that's mark's list the earliest list and since mark is a source for matthew and luke matthew and luke both had access to that they used that list they edited it the way they each like to edit mark and then there's also not a list but there are some of these characters developed in the gospel of john with even more though variations than what the variations are between matthew and luke from mark so just quickly i made a little bit of a chart here of the list of the 12 that we kind of have in the gospels they're listed

(54:48) anyway in matthew i'm sorry mark matthew there's a list in luke and there's a list in acts but they're quite similar the two lists because uh luke and acts are two halves of the same book and then i have apostles as kind of seen here in john and each one of these in this chart in these of 12 is going from at the top the best attested all the way down to the least right and so at the top we have mark calls simon who is given the name peter and that's that's why he's also referred to in matthew and luke uh in the gospel of john he's called

(55:27) simon peter in some places else he's called cephus just the way paul calls him cephas and so forth then we have john and we've had in mark here this boanerges uh sons of thunder nickname that that he jesus gives him according to mark so john in matthew that nickname is not preserved and instead he's just referred to as john the son of zebedee he's called john in the book of luke and acts and in the gospel of john the sons of zebedee are are both are are called at so called anyway the two sons of zebedee but they aren't individually

(56:06) named so we're not hearing john's name um we'll talk about the john and the beloved disciple and the gospel of john the confusion there when we get to john anyway the second one is james it's just to say john's brother also son of zebedee and so forth the next most well-established one is judas iscariot as mark said the one who betrays him that continues to be existing in both matthew and carried over in luke in acts of course he's dead and so they talk about at the beginning of acts that judas is replaced by a guy named

(56:42) matthias of whom we know nothing else he's called judah's son of simon iscariot in the gospel of john then we have to the thomas it's called thomas and thomas it's also known as didymus according to the gospel of john thomas is the aramaic word for twin and didymus is the greek word for twins so sometimes it's called thomas the twin as a result of that we have andrew who is peter's brother and then we have philip who's at least attested in all four of these gospels and then simon the candidate canaanian who matthew

(57:22) changes uh corrects the name calls of simon the canaanite luke gets rid of this whole canaanian thing and calls him simon the zealot doesn't appear in john mark lists a guy named matthew he also has a story about not an apostle of levi the publican matthew the gospel of matthew changes the name of levi the publican and so as a result people have conflated matthew and matthew the publican and that happens in matthew again luke just continues to call that one matthew um there's my that that chart is wrong there so it's not that should be not not figuring

(58:03) into john it's not simon peter so that's anyway so it's another it's not matthew doesn't exist in the john gospel so then uh james the son of alphaeus james's son val phase again not in john bartholomew it's not in john there's a instead there is a guy named nathaniel that gets conflated with bartholomew and then thaddeus uh the last of mark's at least attested is continued in matthew but luke replaces him with a guy named judas son of james and people equate that judas the apostle judas with somebody in an apostle in the

(58:38) gospel of john who is called judas but obviously not the iscariot so uh there's two judases in in luke's and uh john's list but you have to differentiate between essentially judas the bad and judas not the bad all right so i want to look at each one of these um in a little bit of detail so that we can kind of talk about which of these you know we can we say have any kind of real historic basis in which really don't and so at that bottom of the list where we just have names um [Music] whether whether the names have any

(59:13) historicity you know is very very debatable and in any event since nothing historical is known about any of them it it's pretty much irrelevant so at the bottom of the list we really just have names and so thaddeus uh mark's list includes thaddeus and matthew following mark i'm sorry mark's list includes thaddeus and then the gospel of matthew follows that with mark but luke as i said replaces the name thaddeus was somebody who's called jude of james or judas of james and there's also as i said an apparent apostle in the gospel of john who is

(59:49) called judas but not judas the iscariot so like i say later tradition then kind of wrongly conflates all of these and so they kind of creates a conglomerated character called jude thaddeus the brother of jesus by also even included by conflating even the character from the book of jude who is jude the brother of james and james is the brother of jesus and so therefore jude thaddeus becomes brother of jesus and so forth okay so what about thaddeus so later tradition that doesn't again have any historical basis imagine that thaddeus

(1:00:29) preached in syria and then mesopotamia and libya before facing martyrdom in beroot so along with another very obscure apostle bartholomew he has become the patron of the armenian apostolic church the iranian church traditionally understands itself to be the very first of the national christian churches predating constantine's conversion and so forth and then certainly right around the same time so it is a very old and ancient uh christian tradition and so the fact that they've kind of claimed let's say the two most obscure apostles is uh way less

(1:01:09) hubristic than the people often compostela did when they when they went and got james the greater so his remains are either supposedly in armenia or there in the vatican where there is a shrine where thadius is said to be buried with another apostle together in the same kind of uh shrine simon the zealot who we'll look at later okay so that's the least the next one's also still just a name bartholomew the apostle there's really no biblical stories for bartholomew his name means son of talmai so if you think of simon barjona that means like the bar

(1:01:50) here is the um aramaic four son of the hebrew is ben right so if you're and and the arabic is ibn so you can kind of see the all of these the patronymic here for the related semitic languages of aramaic hebrew and arabic we were pretty used to having people be named you know ben-gurion or ibn kaldun you know and all these different you know for the arabic names and anyway bar is the aramaic one so and we have a lot of names like bartholomew where where the bar is like that so bar son of tall valley he's conflated as i said with nathaniel

(1:02:30) who is a character in john's gospel nathanael of cana later tradition assigns him mission to armenia india and sometimes to arabia and ethiopia his body is supposedly in benevento italy although uh the cathedral in frankfurt germany thinks that they have a part of his skull at least and apparently one of his arms is in canterbury england so anyway people were very interested in getting relics of various apostles if they could in the middle ages okay the next one still just a name here too james the son of alphaeus

(1:03:07) and who sometimes called james the less but also uh james less is actually also a named character uh in the new testament who is presumably a different character actually so it's pretty amazing if you actually make it on the list of jesus's 12 apostles and you're still primarily known for being less than another apostle named james but because there are so many jacobs in the new testament james's and mary's you have to really try to figure out which james or which mary you're talking about so even though this apostle is known as james the less

(1:03:44) like i say that's a conflation so the apostle james son of alphaeus is traditionally identified with his other james and this is a guy who's called in the gospel of mark james the younger and it's been translated james the less and that guy is only mentioned because they use him to identify a disciple named mary and because there are so many marys who actually often all get conflated or many of them which get conflated in the new testament this mary is always identified as being mary the mother of james the less in

(1:04:20) order to differentiate her from the other mary's in other words james the less is not an important figure it's it's this mary the mother of james the last that is and then um there's no particular reason and when in fact we shouldn't identify a hymn with uh james son of alphaeus who's a different just simply a different james so what about these guys these two guys so like thaddeus and bartholomew james the son of alphaeus is just a name with no biblical stories mark also talks about a publican a tax collector named levi

(1:04:52) who is also said to be son of alphaeus and since alphas is a rarer name it's completely possible here that uh that james and levi are brothers and then because the levi's story is conflated in the gospel of matthew matthew changes levi's name to matthew james is then i'm sorry matthew is conflated with levi the publican and so then james is somehow thought to be matthew's brother but that last association is again no good so later tradition puts james's ministry in egypt and it states that he was crucified in the town of

(1:05:34) ostrakinae so matthew as we're rounding out here the um the the names of the apostles of whom we know the least so even though the name matthew is very famous because of the gospel of matthew the evangelist is who's actually famous the original matthew on mark's list is neither a publican a tax collector nor is he an evangelist he's just an anonymous name essentially not anonymous but anyway just an a name about which nothing is known on mark's story the author as i say of the gospel attributed to matthew changed the name

(1:06:14) of a character in mark and thus matthew became connected with this idea of lehi the public and son of alphaeus and then later tradition conflated matthew the publican with matthew the apostle and then wrongly identified him as the author of the gospel of matthew which is why matthew seems like such an important apostle that he shouldn't be so low on this list right here so the gospel of matthew though i'm sorry the gospel attributed to matthew was an anonymous tax written by a jewish christian around the year 80 or 90

(1:06:52) of the first century the superscription according to matthew was added to the manuscripts sometime in the second century a.d however there was a statement by a very early bishop in egypt papayas around the year 125 and because of this statement that he made that um where essentially he claimed that matthew arranged the sayings of jesus in aramaic first um this has led whatever papayas means it has nothing to do with the text that we now call the gospel of matthew and so uh it though because people wrongly assumed that it did the gospel

(1:07:40) of matthew we can say for sure does not it was not originally written in aramaic and then translated in greek it is originally written in greek so it is not what papayas is talking about and so therefore all of the ideas that people have about matthew being the first gospel or matthew being originally written in greek matthew is not the first matthew is working for mark and so forth we just have to ignore um this statement by papayas who which has really confused people for up to the present day even so anyway so matthew

(1:08:14) the evangelist the apostle this conflation character uh he's supposedly buried in this magnificent uh norman cathedral built by robert giescard in southern italy in the city of salerno okay so as we're looking at the 12 here i've now knocked off the bottom four which is to say the least known of the four and the ones for whom they're really just names that mark could have you know made up for all we know because there's really no traditions attached to them that are that are in the gospel stories or anything before that there's

(1:08:51) traditions that get attached to them after that but anyway that don't have a much historical basis these later traditions okay the next one up the list simon the canaanite zealot so mark anachronistically calls this simon to differentiate him from simon called peter he calls him a canaanian which matthew corrects to canaanite so it's anachronistic because um you know if mark is sitting around reading uh the old testament the greek septuagint um there is a big long series of fights between canaanites and israelites but that term canaanite is no

(1:09:31) longer you know present and in use um you know which is why some of the other gospels will say things like serio phoenician which is to say local um semitic speaking peoples uh of kind of the lesser syria area that and phoenicia area that are not um adherence to judaism so they're uh you know and are not samaritans so those are the kind of uh anyway that was what that kind of would mean but anyway mark is calling that canon a in here so luke changes that just gets rid of that altogether and calls him simon the

(1:10:08) zealot um referring to a one of the kind of sects within judaism the zealots so while again this simon has no biblical stories he does make his way into some of the apocrypha and one of them in particular kind of a fun uh book of apocrypha is uh an arabic infancy gospel where simon is a child who's been bitten by a snake and then jesus as a boy heals him uh of the poisonous snakebite and then goes on to predict simon's future discipleship so later tradition has simon sent around various locations in the middle east

(1:10:55) north africa spain even all the way to britain uh before being martyred by being sought a half in half either in persia or georgia there's a lot of gruesome iconography of this there at a certain point became all the kinds of different ways that the each of the apostles were facing martyrdom so jesus is crucified but many others are either in this case sought in half or beheaded or crucified in weird ways upside down or sideways and so forth so other traditions though have him crucified so while he was serving as a bishop of jerusalem or

(1:11:34) dying peacefully in the city of odessa in mesopotamia or syria um his remains are supposedly at this point in a monastery in mount athos in greece okay so going up to the next one of these philip the apostle so with philip we actually come to the first of the apostles who have new testament stories so he's not even though he's on the list in the synoptic gospels there's not synoptic stories but john's gospel states that he's from bethsaida which is the same uh town in galilee that andrew and peter are from he attends the wedding feast at canna he

(1:12:14) uh he's at the feeding of the 5000 and jesus asks him how is he gonna how are we going to feed the five thousand he's also at the last supper and at the last supper philip asks jesus to show him the fun to show them to show all the disciples the father nevertheless scholars identified john as probably the least historical of the gospels and the most literary and in almost all of these cases philip's role is pretty literary so you know he's asking jesus a question about showing us the father so that jesus can that sets up a

(1:12:52) um a teaching that jesus is going to have that explains um the connection between jesus and god right and so um and so in that sense it's it's part of the literary creation of the gospel of john and not so much we can't actually even find out so much about philip here however he did is the source of lots of later legends and he figures into apocryphal texts including there's a second century letter from peter de philip and a fourth century gnostic gospel that purports to tell the acts of philip and during this these acts which are again kind of

(1:13:33) uh exciting and and and so on he gets into a magic duel with the sorcerers of pharaoh of all things i mean you can imagine there are no pharaohs in in the christian age anymore but nevertheless uh the pharaoh and his sorcerers had been part of the old testament story in the old testament serves as a source for many christian texts and so he gets in this duel with the sorcerers before getting himself beheaded and other traditions have him crucified sideways or upside down his remains are also supposedly in rome in the basilica

(1:14:04) of the santi apostoli but another tradition has a tomb of his in hierapolous turkey so now moving up the rung to ones that are better known peter's brother andrew the apostle andrew um is known pretty much only as the brother of simon and peter so he figures into the story of peter being called to being apostle as he's right there with peter and goes along with him so the brothers are fishermen from the town of bethsaida in galilee and so galilee we kind of have to note is kind of a mixed region so some of the

(1:14:42) people there are practicing jews who speak aramaic some of the people though are greek speakers and others are aramaic speakers who you know are are of the old gods and so forth that are not uh practicing jews and there's also um samaritans nearby to the south of them so the fact that it's such a cosmopolitan it's caught some of the cities anyway there would have been greek cosmopolitan cities but the fact that it's such a mixed region is highlighted by the fact that andrew's name very unusually is greek so not hebrew

(1:15:18) like his brother simon's name and so anyway the family at least for some reason you know is picking names from both of the languages and traditions so jesus calls the brothers from their fishing nets saying in mark 1 17 rather than being fishermen i will make you fishers of men he's going to make them apostles and missionaries that are bringing people into the into the community so in the rest of the gospels andrew pretty much fades into the background as peter takes the spotlight but he nevertheless inspired an apocryphal

(1:15:55) gospel an apocryphal book of acts unfortunately both of those were declared heretical and as with so many heretical texts they were burned and lost and so we don't actually know what they we don't have the text of those but later traditions find andrew running around in georgia and malta and cyprus across slavic lands and even all the way to scotland and his remains are actually pretty much everywhere from greece to poland to scotland and his uh legendary crucifixion on a kind of a x kind of cross is what inspires the cross of saint

(1:16:30) andrew if you know the flag of scotland which is a blue field with a white x across it that forms part of the um the british union jack which combines the cross of saint george the cross of saint andrew and an invented but anyway cross of st patrick in order to have a union between england uh scotland and ireland in the flag northern ireland so thomas the apostle king up now to uh once again apostles who have more stories and even more more and more fleshed out stories in the new testament thomas as i said means twin in aramaic and he's also

(1:17:12) called didymus which is the word for twin in greek so he's known as the apostle in john who initially doubts that jesus has been resurrected so he's often called doubting thomas and so as we talked about in our uh lecture on the gospel of thomas this may reflect something that the community is sometimes called the johannine community the community that is creating um the texts that become known as the gospels of john and the epistles of john and so forth they may be disagreeing with ideas held by other christian communities that

(1:17:48) claim thomas as their authority so sometimes what you do you know with rivals rivals say well i'm doing this with the authority of peter and so forth well then you make a story where peter denies christ or so on and there was where he's where peter is taking down a peg and so forth um that may well be a story that goes all the way back but i'm just using that as an example in the same way thomas doubts the resurrection and maybe that's casting aspersions on christian other christian communities that are are claiming to act in thomas's

(1:18:21) authority so there were several that are doing that because we have in addition to the gospel of thomas there's also an infancy gospel attributed to thomas 2. so the sayings gospel though attributed to thomas that exists we have a little bit of it it's originally in greek and we have a little bit of it in greek but we have most of the text preserved in coptic that was rediscovered in egypt at the nagamati library buried library it's really among the most important christian texts that are outside the canon in its present form

(1:18:58) the gospel of thomas we've had a lecture on this it begins these are the hidden words that the living jesus spoke and didymus judas thomas wrote them down so so thomas is at least by the in the the authority that the community um that compiled the gospel of thomas in its the latest form that we have it uh in any way then put that saying at the beginning of it and attributed the gospel to that so as i say um the gnostic christians uh that were uh had that owned that library even if the even if thomas whether or not thomas uh

(1:19:38) the gospel of thomas as we have it is a gnostic or just simply a proto-gnostic text it was popular with people who are interested in narcissism in general and gnostic christians continued to um have thomas as one of the uh figures that uh they were in favor of they didn't like peter they do like thomas and mary magdalene and so forth and as they later understood it and gay and kind of their mythology increased about what who thomas was they understood thomas to be the twin of jesus and very much akin to um kind of

(1:20:18) these hellenistic uh stories of of of divine human pairings of twins so castor and pollock so one of them is a god and the other one is mortal and same thing hercules has a uh as a mortal twin and so forth there's these kind of pairings and so thomas is just like jesus except for he's the mortal one and jesus is is uh the god the divine one so in addition to being adopted by the gnostic community um there are associations with thomas all across the east and mission to the east and especially in india in india in the province of kerala in

(1:21:00) southwest india there's home to a very ancient christian community um we have we have sources for it that go maybe dated all the way back to the third century um there to this day now known as st thomas christians they have associations with the churches of the east you know which are even you know the churches that are further east than eastern orthodox and so on although they're now their own uh independent community so the the adherents there in kerala definitely believed that thomas himself was their founder

(1:21:34) and and and i you know can at least say that just like with even even more that's even a more ancient association than santiago has and it's certainly a very ancient tradition even if it's very very unlikely not even if it's not history so that takes us all the way up through let's say the lowest ones of these that are that are least known uh that we'll just more or less have names to the middle bracket where we have names and stories and it really brings us to the last four the ones that we know the most about

(1:22:06) and have the most stories about judas iscariot james the son of zebedee john the son of zebedee and simon peter so judas iscariot is an interesting one of course because judas is the bad guy judas is the one who betrays jesus and um he is that way already in the um in the very first list so even as we read the list in mark we have the very last one named is judas iscariot the one who betrayed jesus and and jesus is also very clearly judas as a betrayer is also very clearly embedded in the passion narrative so as

(1:22:52) they're having the last supper and jesus is saying one of you one of you is going to betray me one of the twelve here it is definitely within the context of understanding one of the twelve and specifically um judas as uh as uh as a betrayer and as being part of the twelve and there is also um a very earth so that's very early it's um associating with the twelve in both the mark and passion narrative which is the earliest passion narrative we have but that is also found in the uh the passion narrative that we have in

(1:23:26) the gospel of john and it's the two of those is one of the one of the still outstanding kind of problems or conf or issues that we have as we are understanding uh the christian tradition the synoptics are uh matthew mark and luke are are so together on everything that we had to explain literary dependency whereas most of the gospel of john is just crazily different from all three of those until you get to the very end and then suddenly in the passion narrative so many elements overlap including ideas with judas and so forth

(1:24:03) and so again it seems to be um early many scholars posit that there is a um a pre-mark in passion source that's lost that mark is using as the source for the passion and that also maybe the author of john has that as well in any event it does seem like judas and the betrayal are very early it's also it's also seemingly in paul as another another level of attestation because paul when he's talking about the institution of communion as a sacrament he talks about jesus in doing this on the night that he was handed over

(1:24:46) and so the implication is again that there was that this uh handed over to the romans and betrayed and so forth uh and so and so we have what is what is uh kind of an early multi-attested tradition with judas and then we can also tell for example in the same way in that synoptic problem that luke and matthew the authors of luke and matthew are working for mark as their source mark doesn't uh conclude the story you know there's not a it's not a um happy ending where where the trader uh gets his uh desserts and so forth and so

(1:25:23) both matthew and luke create death stories for judas in the one he hangs himself and then the other he has an accident and you know and has disemboweled and because they're totally contradictory it also you know it's it also shows anybody who wants to read the bible as inherent literalistic history and not uh as as it has the trouble of it's internally contradictory the two stories are not reconcilable although people try um and so then judas will just say one more thing in terms of the extra legends um he he does have uh his own gospel a

(1:26:06) gnostic gospel where different christians have decided well he's he's been misunderstood and and give him uh his own perspective as well we already talked a little bit about james the great because we started this off by talking about santiago and the later tradition that at a certain point he's whisked away by the angels in a rudderless boat and makes his way all the way to galicia um uh he's definitely one of the apostles that figures into the synoptic narrative a lot and so there is a pairing that mark has of peter james and

(1:26:47) john uh and james and john in mark's understanding are uh brothers with each other and he gives them even uh this uh nickname uh the same way that peter has a nickname although it's a nickname that doesn't stick so the sons of thunder he doesn't explain i guess why that why that should be but he pairs them together and so this particular image is the event of the transfiguration vision jesus goes up on the mount of transfiguration with peter james and john he's transfigured before them and they see him in glory along with uh the

(1:27:26) vision of elijah and a vision of moses and so on um so the question i have though and i think that this is one of these coincidences that exists because there's so many of these guys named james and as you remember that's really jacob right but there's so many people named james and so we have if mark in order to get his some of his narrative is a familiar with paul and has been reading paul if you remember that the acknowledged pillars of the church that paul puts together are peter james and john but it's not

(1:28:03) james the great in paul in paul is remember it's james the brother of jesus not james the brother of john but i always wonder if um perhaps in writing his version of the story we aren't having a situation with mark where he is at odds with this group the poor of jerusalem he doesn't he wants to discount their authority as they have been led by james the brother of jesus and also by jude the brother of james the brother of jesus and so i wonder if paul if mark here the author of mark is deliberately replacing um as one of the central pillars

(1:28:50) one james with a different james and has therefore elevated a character here the brother of john so made another character the son of zebedee anyway that's my speculation it's really hard to um it's just an interesting thing that there are there's this peter james and john connection that is in paul but is maintained as a very different thing we also have in mark um many instances where jesus's brothers uh you know think that he's crazy they are not followers and so forth even though we know from the other sources that they are his

(1:29:26) followers at some point or other so so mark does seem to be trying to disparage anyway jesus's brothers next john the beloved john what's known as john the beloved uh actually john and the beloved so as we saw from paul this is one of the characters that we know is a historical figure this is somebody that paul met one of the acknowledged pillars of the church of jerusalem but as with so many characters this also becomes a bunch of conflated figures and so we've had a whole lecture for example on the science gospel where

(1:30:06) we talk about some of the issues of the authorship of the gospel attributed to john once again it's an anonymous text it's actually written in multiple stages there's at least two because the seams are so very obvious and so there's a final rejector editor who is actually not anywhere near as good as the middle writer and there may well be then a interior text we've talked about the science gospel that may well be the first or original component of that text none of these are said to be written by in within the text

(1:30:43) by anybody named john there is a place in the text where it says um we we are able to uh we are saying all these things because of the testimony of the beloved disciple but in fact the beloved disciple as a character who's a character throughout the gospel of john is not named and is not named john that is a later attribution and association and so the character in the gospel of john the beloved disciple there's no the connection or the conflation that with that character and the historical figure john has isn't

(1:31:24) particularly warranted at all and so this is a connection there's way less warranted connections to for example conflating john the uh the revelator john the apocalypticist uh the author of the book of revelation who is very clearly another guy named john who doesn't even pretend to be uh or write anything like the kind of greek that is in the uh the gospel of john or the letters attributed to john so in other words these are all different people some of whom are named john some aren't so the guy john the revelator john

(1:31:57) patmos is named john but he's just a different guy um but uh what we could say then about john the beloved is um there was a historical figure there is also a character of the beloved disciple these are wedged together and there becomes a community that acts in john's name the johannine community and then they have a tradition that uh john was the one of the youngest disciples and lived uh very long but again this doesn't um we're conflating a lot of things together to make that and it doesn't have as much it's some history there's

(1:32:40) some hints to that but and again is one of the most attested disciple up disciples there is a historical figure here at the root but what all the characteristics we can't necessarily say and that leads us to finally the most known and most attested of all the apostles guy who was born simon who got his name changed to the rock or rocky by jesus who somebody who continues to be one of the leaders of the early christian community who meets uh with paul several times um he is uh engaged in um we know that he's engaged in these apostolic

(1:33:20) uh kind of missionary journey plantings that that paul is also engaged in because paul talks about him being active in antioch which is the roman capital of syria and there is although we don't have um as much of the um let's say contemporary evidence as we would like there's ideas that is fairly early that he's martyred and there's some hints that it could be in rome the way christian tradition uh has it and so later christian tradition has him uh have his martyrdom on the vatican hill and then ultimately retroactively he's

(1:34:00) understood to have been the first bishop of rome the first pope of rome and people even think that they have like again his tomb because they found a very ancient tomb that is attributed to him um but again just we also have a very ancient tomb that's attributed to jesus and so forth in other words if it just gets back to within 200 years it's still not close enough to have it be the actual tomb um but in any event there was definitely a peter he is definitely a very important in the early part of this movement

(1:34:33) um but all the rest of the characteristics of what we can say out of it is we we have to um you know weigh within in the light of all of the the later tradition and so that's the uh my kind of my overview of what we can know and then also some of the traditions that developed afterwards um that continued to be celebrated and and lived out in the lives of uh christians locally all over the place where everywhere from salerno to uh saint andrews scotland people have um their own traditional anyway and to to india people have their own traditional

(1:35:11) um associations of apostolic founders and so forth the one other uh apostolic figures that i wanted to mention who which we've had a whole lecture on uh potentially apostolic is jesus's disciple mary magdalene and so especially in some of the later christian traditions the gnostics and so forth they see mary magdalene definitely as being one of the apostles hanging out with the 12 if not part of the 12.

(1:35:49) as we saw apostles can be female and male and and at least later because she's such an important figure in the canonical stories you know there's later gospels attributed to mary magdalene and so forth so at least later she is understood to be in what part of that apostolic group from what we have in the canonical gospels it's not as clear if that's the role that she has because i think that there's also another very important role in early christianity and one that was often held by uh women and it was even in paul's time

(1:36:26) too where wealthy women who are interested in the spiritual movement are the kind of um say backers who are able to support these mendicants and so forth and so that is described and mary magdalene is described as being like one of these women in the gospel of luke and so that would be the other possibility so either mary magdalene is emblematic of um women that are are able to be uh let's say wealthier supporters of the movement who are doing that or she may actually represent one who is uh who is more like an actual disciple

(1:37:08) of jesus who is functionally and maybe even did operate as one of the apostles not the 12. and so that is my survey of um of apostles the twelve their historicity what we can know of them what the role was about in antiquity in the earliest uh part of the jesus movement and then in early christianity and also why apostles were phased out by the church as it developed as an institution and so with that i think