Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, Chapter 5

"The Twelve"

What are we to think of this group that seems to be around Jesus constantly, even while he has much larger crowds in his company? No doubt they are symbolic, in number, of Israel and pertinent to Jesus' mission in their calling. Bauckham takes their role a step further, positing that this body was the group that was authoritative over the body of Jesus traditions--teaching and actions.

The lists of the twelve reflect a post-history to Jesus. Just as a genealogy forms a pre-history to a person, so a list of disciples forms a post-history. Their teaching lives on. The lists of the twelve, with small differences, cannot be to introduce them in the gospels because so many of them never reappear in the gospels, but instead serve as the source of these teachings in general. Not one of them is responsible for the traditions, but as a group they are. As a result, all of their names are important.

But if they were so important, then why are their differences? Well, suggests Bauckham, the differences are really quite minimal. All the lists (he gives a table with lists from Matt, Mark, Luke, and Acts) have three groups of four, all headed by the same name (Peter, Philip, James son of Alphaeus). Three of the four lists end with Judas--a sign that this list was developed post-mission. There are, however, a few points of difference.

One such difference is that the lists from Matthew and Mark have Thaddaeus, while Luke and Acts have Judas son of James. Could these names have referred to the same person? While some suggest that this "smacks of harmonization," Bauckham thinks it very plausible. First, individuals often bore two names. Thaddaeus seems to be a Greek name (perhaps Theodosios, Theodotos, Theodoros) which has been shortened into an Aramaic name (Taddai) and then made Greek again, Thaddaeus. The above Greek names were popular with Jews because they contained the Greek word for God (Theo). Several ossuaries (bone boxes) held Palestinian Jews who had double names, and so it would not be out of the question for Thaddaeus to be both Thaddaeus and Judas. In this event, it makes sense that a man named Judas among the twelve would need to be distinguished from Judas Iscariot and that Luke, the historian, would have official lists of the twelve, Judas son of James, when this person was often simply called Thaddaeus among the twelve.

This notion is given more credence by the fact that many of the names in the twelve are distinguished from one another using some of the categories Bauckham mentioned last chapter. Simon is given a nickname, Peter, which helps distinguish him from Simon, the zealot. These distinguishing features seem to originate in the group itself. You have paternal lines added (e.g., James son of Zebedee); paternal lines subbed into a name (Bartholomew--not likely Nathaneal from John's gospel because what makes Bartholomew handy is that Tolmai (Tholomew) is a rare name, as is Nathanael. If his name was Nathanael, you wouldn't need to distinguish him from many people.); nicknames (Peter, Simon the zealot); nickname as a name (Thomas--"twin"; other non-biblical sources call this disciple, "Judas Thomas"); place of origin added (Judas Iscariot, meaning 'of Kerioth'); and occupation (Matthew the tax collector). This last example, however, brings us to another difficulty.

Why does Matthew's list have this piece of information about Matthew, but no one else? Could the story of Levi the tax collector be about the same person as Matthew the tax collector? Bauckham judges this to be implausible. While Matthew, Mark, and Luke have the story of a tax collector called, Mark and Luke refer to this man by the name of Levi. They do not connect him with the Matthew of their lists at any point. While they simply may not have known they were the same person, getting lists and eyewitness account from different sources and not connecting the dots, this is not likely because both Matthew and Levi were fairly common names. One does not find evidence of Palestinian Jews having two common names. Bauckham suggests that the person who collected Matthew wanted to give a calling narrative for the disciple whose accounts formed this gospel and so applied the narrative of Levi, which he knew from Mark, to Matthew. It's possible that the very simplicity of the calling of Levi the tax collector could be applied to just about any tax collector, which was, evidently, Matthew's occupation. If this is true, then the redactor of Matthew was not the disciple himself, as he could have simply told his own conversion narrative.