Were the twelve apostles poor and illiterate? I was leading a Bible Study tonight when one of the people involved made the statement that the Twelve Apostles were probably mostly poor and illiterate. After all, they were fishermen and salt of the earth, and many people did not know how to read or write back then. But, is this an accurate statement of the probable situation of the Twelve Apostles? Well, I had the people go to a certain passage in the Gospel of John:
And Simon Peter followed Jesus, and so did another disciple. Now that disciple was known to the high priest, and went with Jesus into the courtyard of the high priest. But Peter stood at the door outside. Then the other disciple, who was known to the high priest, went out and spoke to her who kept the door, and brought Peter in.
This passage is obviously right after Jesus’ arrest. Read it again. One of the disciples is so well known to the high priest and to the guards at his place that he is able to walk right in without being stopped. And then he shows how well-connected he is by going back and giving the guard permission to let Simon Peter in. Now let’s review a bit what has happened. The priests and the Sadducees are so worried about crowd reaction to the arrest of Jesus that they arrange to arrest him late at night and secretly so that there will be no riot. In this type of setting, security would have been very tight at the high priest’s house. In fact, the Scriptures comment on how the high priest’s courtyard was crowded with guards and servants. This is not a setting in which just anyone can walk in. In fact, Simon Peter was stopped and prevented from entering, showing the elevated security level.
So, who is this disciple who is so well connected that even on a night of elevated security he can walk right in? This is the Apostle John, the brother of the Apostle James, one of the sons of thunder, whose father was Zebedee. But, this means that John and James bar Zebedee were not simple poor fishermen from the Sea of Galilee. You may wish to reread some of the Gospels. Notice that a couple of times, when they are shown fishing, there is more than one boat mentioned. Given the connection with the high priest, it is quite likely that James and John were educated and obviously able to travel in high society circles. Notice that while Simon Peter’s accent is pointed out, nothing is ever said about John’s accent or about his being a follower of Jesus. That is, John is placed high enough that neither the guards nor the serving maids feel comfortable hassling him. They do feel quite comfortable hassling Peter, who goes on to deny Jesus three times.
Have I begun to help you reevaluate your opinion of at least some of the Apostles? Well, there are other apostles that might surprise you, but that is for another post.
FIrst off “poor” is relative. To someone earning $8/hr at Wal*Mart and able to buy all the junk in the world I bet they all seemed rather poor. What was their own standing in their own community? We can’t know, I think. But from the texts alone, it seems evident that they had their own business and one of them, at least, owned a boat. Several of them had houses (one passage in the Gospel says something to the effect that Jesus, too, owned a home). The passage you cited indicates some political connections – as does even Judas’ betrayal. We know that several wealthy women bankrolled the ministry.
We also know that these were Jewish boys belonged to a culture where literacy was *highly* valued. For the largest majority some training happened at the local synagogue – illiteracy would not have been a problem although, shall we say, “Finesse” would not have been included in the rough training in possibly all three languages (Greek for the LXX, HEbrew & Aramaic for the scrolls).
How is poverty relative?
Awww, you spoiled part of my next post. GRIN.
I want people to realize how little most people notice the descriptions in the Gospels. We look for the pious interpretation or the theological point and miss the details that tell us so much about the people involved. As a result, we tend to build up some “interesting” ideas about the people involved, such as some of our ideas about the Apostles or about Mary Magdalene, or about . . .
Isn’t there some indication from the early centuries (as quoted by Eusebius, maybe) that John the Theologian (and therefore, presumably his brother James as well) were from a priestly family?
There are some indications. In fact, one passage records that Saint John began to wear both the mitre of a priest and to wear a chestplate with the twelve stones like the one that is spoken of in Deuteronomy.
Can someone provide a link to a document that says this? (St John or James wearing the mitre of a priest?)
In the second century, Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, says, “John, moreover, who reclined on the Lord’s bosom, and who became a priest wearing the mitre, and a witness and a teacher-he rests at Ephesus.” While there is some argument as to whether Polycrates was referring to John in Israel before he became an apostle or afterwards, most would say that Polycrates was claiming that John wore them as a Christian priest because otherwise the sentence makes no sense.
Both Eusebius and Jerome in the fourth century quote this passage of Polycrates.
But, there is an interesting side story. You may know that St. Paul’s tomb was opened last year. The bones were carbon dated and did date back to the first century. “The pope said that when archaeologists opened the sarcophagus, they discovered alongside the bone fragments some grains of incense, a “precious” piece of purple linen with gold sequins and a blue fabric with linen filaments.”
This does point towards a more liturgical Christianity than many Protestants are willing to admit.
The disciple with Peter was Joseph of Arimathia, a member of the Sanhedrin, who was an uncle to Jesus, which is why he was willing to be defiled and unable to take Passover after removing the body from the cross.
Unfortunately the stories of Joseph being related to Jesus date from medieval times. There are no early testimonies that speak of any family relationship between Joseph of Arimathia and either Mary or Joseph.
Matthew can be shown to have extensively used Mark as a source for his Gospel, but the numerous errors in Mark make it highly improbable that an Apostle would have placed such heavy reliance on such a poorly conceived work. Something is definitely remiss when it is recorded in the Catholic Encyclopedia, in a favorable evaluation of the clerical mindset, there ascends the Catholic Church, which admits that it does not know who wrote its Gospels or Epistles, confessing that all twenty-seven New Testament writings began life anonymously, “It thus appears that the present titles of the Gospels are not traceable to the Evangelists themselves… They [the New Testament collection] are supplied with titles which, however ancient, do not go back to the respective authors of those writings.” ~Catholic Encyclopedia, Farley ed., vol. vi, pp. 655-6.
Okay, I will bite. What does the relationship of Gospel of Matthew to the Gospel of Mark have to do with the point I was making? Second, your quote from the Catholic Encyclopedia does not mean that the Catholic Church does not “know who wrote its Gospels or Epistles.” It only says that it does not know who came up with the titles. That is a quite different matter, as even the most progressive of scholars would say that they know with a fair degree of certainty who wrote at least some of the epistles and which “schools” wrote at least some of the Gospels.
Well Luke was a physician (doctor)
Matthew 19:27-30
They left everything to follow…
True, but the point was not whether they left everything. The point was whether they were poor and illiterate, to begin with. They were not. Several of them had obviously well-off family connections. Judas could write and to mathematics well. Matthew was sufficiently informed on the law and mathematics to be a tax collector, which almost certainly meant he could read and write. It is a common, but mistaken, point to claim that Jesus picked the apostles from among the poor. He did not. He picked the apostles from several classes of people. They chose to leave home, family, and an income behind. But various of them had more advanced training and connections than one would expect if they were simple peasant folk.
I am surprised that the author somehow knows that this “other disciple” is the Apostle John. There is absolutely no Biblical evidence for this. It is just speculation and a bit of wish fulfillment.
It would extremely unlikely that a Galilean fisherman would be on good terms with the high priest in Jerusalem (a day’s travel plus from Galilee). And there is no Biblical evidence that this “other disciple” is the “disciple whom Jesus loved” (the Beloved Disciple). It could be any disciple.
Sigh, most blog posts cannot go into the type of detail necessary for a scholarly paper. Neither can this reply. However, “no Biblical evidence”? You do realize that Peter and John are paired in Scripture on a regular basis. We first see them in the quadrat of Peter, Andrew, James, John in their fishing enterprise. In the Last Supper, John is against Jesus’ breast and Peter whispers to him to find out who the betrayer will be. (That means Peter and John are sitting next to each other.) Peter and John ran together to the tomb, though John outran Peter, according to the account. After the Resurrection, on the Lake of Tiberias, Jesus takes Peter aside and John follows. This would be natural if they were “battle buddies” (to use Army terminology). In Acts 3, Peter and John went to pray in the Temple when they met the lame man. The story of the “another disciple” being with Peter and getting them in is told in the Gospel of John. This is a Gospel which has the characteristic that John refers to himself in an elliptical form quite often. Thus, that makes it even more likely that this is John referring to himself in the same way he did at the end of the Gospel, in an elliptical form. If you do a simple search in Google (or you can do an advanced search in scholar.google.com), you will find that this position is the quite commonly concluded position.
I have not even gone into Church Tradition. Your comments about “speculation and … wish fulfillment” are made with no scholarly backing, just a sweeping statement that you fail to back up. I would say that you are engaging in drive-by trolling.
This is an interesting post, and it is still getting occasional traffic, and trolling, a dozen years later! While it is hemmed around the edges with some speculative conclusions, they are not without merit. It is more likely than not that John and James were connected to the priestly family, may have even been related, and were sons of a successful businessman who, by Galilean standards, were at least a little better off than average. It is possible that Zebedee owned the boats that Peter and John used. He may have even been contracted by the Roman government to fish the lake. If so, they would have been much better off than the average private fisherman. One additional piece of evidence for the relative wealth of John was Jesus entrusting Mary into his care. Of course, this is only one aspect of the “why?” behind that move, but surely, the mother of our Lord deserved the best that could be shown to her in return for all she had shown to Him.
Thank you, that was good input. Like most writers, I look back at old posts and sometimes groan a bit.