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[ABOVE: Fresco of the Pentecost in the church of Agia Triada, Rethymno, Crete. Byzantine—C messier / [CC BY-SA 4.0] Wikimedia]

Jesus called them out of their livelihoods and out of other ministries. He appointed them as his key disciples, and later, apostles (messengers). He even gave some of them new names. Lists in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Acts give us their names, and John’s Gospel shows intimate stories of their encounters with Jesus. But who were these 12 men who walked with God incarnate and carried his gospel to the world—whose stories have fascinated and inspired Christians through both their great faith and relatable human weaknesses? 

SONS OF JONAH; SONS OF THUNDER

Simon Peter was a fisherman from Bethsaida on the Sea of Galilee. At times his blunt and bold actions revealed a conflicted follower trying to understand the ministry of Jesus. He saw Jesus walking on the water and requested to do likewise before sinking in fear. He impulsively cut off a soldier’s ear who came to arrest Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane. 

That very night he denied Jesus three times. He had objected to Jesus’s plan to go to Jerusalem and be arrested, leading Jesus to rebuke him, “Get behind me, Satan!” (Mark 8:33). At other times the dedicated disciple was affirmed. When Simon declared Jesus to be the Son of God at Caesarea Philippi, he was renamed Peter, “Rock.” The book of Acts tells of his Spirit-led leadership of the early church. He eventually died in Rome, martyred on Vatican Hill (see pp. 18–22). 

Andrew was Simon Peter’s brother, both a “Son of Jonah” and a fisherman. He could quite possibly be the first disciple of Jesus and was a former disciple of John the Baptist. The Byzantine tradition depicts him as the Protokletos, the “first called” (see pp. 24–26). Andrew was the disciple who wondered how the crowds could be fed with limited bread and fish before witnessing the miracle of the mass feeding. He and Philip coordinated a way for interested Greeks to see Jesus. Andrew’s ministry beyond the New Testament seemed to occur in Scythia around the Black Sea before he was martyred in Patras, Greece. 

James was likely the older of the sons of Zebedee because he is often listed before his brother, John. Jesus gave them both the additional names “Boanerges, which means, ‘Sons of Thunder’” (Mark 3:17), perhaps because of their request to rain down fire from heaven on the Samaritan villagers who would not host them. Both were fishermen when Jesus called them. Both unabashedly requested to sit enthroned on either side of Jesus in glory. However, while John was likely the longest living apostle, James was the first to die. Legends exist of him ministering in Spain, but it is more likely that only James’s bones are at the end of the popular pilgrimage route, the St. James Way, at the Cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

John seems to be “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 13:23), an attribution for the Gospel writer who does not provide his own name. He may have been the youngest of the 12 disciples. John shared the spotlight with his brother, James, in the events above and was also with Peter in Acts at the incredible healing of the lame man. Paul names him as a pillar of the church in Galatians. While church tradition tells of ministry stories across modern Turkey, he was most noted for his exile to the island of Patmos where he wrote his vision of Revelation. Three New Testament epistles are also generally attributed to him before he likely died of old age in Ephesus. 

STORIED CALLINGS

Philip was the other disciple of John the Baptist whom Jesus called alongside Andrew. He was also from Bethsaida. With Andrew he received the Greeks seeking Jesus and participated in the feeding of the crowd. He also invited Nathanael to come see Jesus, revealing a close network of some disciples at the time of their calling. It was Philip who asked Jesus in the Upper Room to show them the Father as the disciples attempted to navigate Jesus’s purpose. Scholars are divided around whether the Acts stories of Philip are about the apostle or a new deacon with the same name, but the great story of explaining the Scriptures to the Ethiopian eunuch may be his. Church tradition tells of Philip having an extensive ministry across antiquity before likely being crucified in Hierapolis, modern Turkey (see pp. 35–37). 

Bartholomew is named in all four New Testament lists; he also seems to be the Nathanael that Jesus encounters with prophetic acclaim under the fig tree. Several disciples fished with Jesus on the sea after the Resurrection, including a “Nathanael of Cana in Galilee” (John 21:2). The term “disciple” used there and his place of origin led the early church to deduce that Nathanael was Bartholomew. His sole biblical episode was when Philip told him of the Messiah, leading Nathanael to say, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (John 1:46) before being astounded by Jesus. The legend of his ministry spans widely across antiquity, including the possibility that he reached northern India, but a strong tradition of his influence comes from Armenia where he was likely martyred.

Thomas is forever remembered for doubting Jesus’s Resurrection after he was absent from Jesus’s Easter evening appearance: “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were…I will not believe” (John 20:25). Belief came immediately upon seeing Jesus three verses later, however, as he declared, “My Lord and my God!” He was impressive on two other occasions in the Gospels that are often overlooked. When Jesus was going to Bethany in the Lazarus account, Thomas says, “Let us also go, that we may die with Him” (John 11:16). In the Upper Room, Thomas admitted that they didn’t know the way to where Jesus was going, after which Jesus proclaims, “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6). Church tradition gives us a remarkable legacy of Thomas’s extensive influence in India, where four million today often call themselves “Thomas Christians” (see pp. 41–43). 

Matthew has one of the simplest but most powerful callings among the apostles. As a tax collector, he was sitting in his office when Jesus said, “Follow me”; he simply left all and followed (Matt. 9:9). When Jesus was at a banquet feast afterward, it was a gesture of humility that Matthew did not name the host, but Luke names him as Matthew himself. Still his dubious position of collecting Roman taxes from his own Jewish people surely caused moments of resentment among his peers (see pp. 38–40). In two Gospel accounts, he is given the Jewish name Levi. The early church claimed the first Gospel was written by him. Legend has him ministering in Palestine, around the Black Sea, and in Ethiopia, before his martyrdom, likely in modern Iran.

LESS ATTENTION, BUT NOT LESS

James, “Son of Alphaeus,” is so named in all four lists to distinguish him from the son of Zebedee. He is sometimes called “the Lesser” because less attention is shown to him. Church father Jerome thought that James’s mother, Mary of Clopas, and Jesus’s mother were sisters-in-law because of the common root of “Alphaeus” and “Clopas,” making James and Jesus first cousins (see pp. 38–40). Yet these facts are as uncertain as the facts around his legacy, which has him ministering in Egypt and around the Caspian Sea before his likely martyrdom in modern Iran. 

Likewise little information about Jude appears in the Gospels. Some lists call him Thaddeus and Labbaeus, associating the root “Theudas” with “Judas,” shortened to Jude to distinguish him from Judas Iscariot. In the Upper Room, this disciple asked Jesus why he did not reveal himself to the whole world. Jude has an extensive legacy of ministry in Syria, along with a Persian ministry where he may have suffered martyrdom alongside Simon.

Simon is noted in church history, with Jude, as participating in a dramatic exorcism story of demons around the sun and moon god in Persia before their deaths. Little is known of Simon, and the appelation “Zealot” is either due to a political affiliation or another ardent ideal that characterized him. One tradition says that he ministered in Britain but without significant historical evidence. 

Finally, Matthias is elected by the other apostles in Acts upon the death of Judas Iscariot. Their criterion was one “who accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us” (Acts 1:21), which means Matthias was an active disciple for three years (see p. 49) though not one of the original Twelve. Church father Origen claims he witnessed the resurrected Lord. One tradition has him imprisoned by cannibals around the Black Sea before his miraculous deliverance, with additional ministries in Syria, modern Iraq, and modern Georgia where he was likely martyred. 

While the identity of these individuals fascinates Christians, it is their collective commitment to serving the resurrected Lord that marks their legacy. These 12 normal disciples became 12 bold apostles as they took the gospel “as far as the remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). CH 

By W. Brian Shelton

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