Approaching the Evidence
Did Jesus have a special group of twelve disciples or apostles who were set apart from the rest? Certainly the existence of a group known as ‘the Twelve’ in the early Church is undisputable: independent attestation is found in Paul’s letters (1 Corinthians 15:5), in Mark (especially 3:13-19), in John (e.g. 20:24), and possibly in Q (Matthew 19:28 = Luke 22:30). So there can be no real doubt as to the existence of this special group at some point early on in the history of Christianity (note also Revelation 4:4, with its reference to 24 elders, presumably representing the tribes of Israel and the Twelve apostles). If we can conclude with reasonable certainty that this group was appointed by Jesus himself, this will be more than an interesting tidbit of historical information. The number twelve was of great symbolic importance within Judaism, and thus Jesus’ choice of twelve disciples would indicate certain things about his understanding of his mission. The very fact that we are not told precisely what they were chosen to do apart from being an inner circle of disciples perhaps suggests that the group was chosen precisely for what the number would symbolize: a renewed and regathered Israel. But we shall return to this point once we have tried to examine the traditions about the Twelve skeptically, so that we can determine the measure of plausibility of any historical reconstruction that appeals to the evidence of the existence of ‘the Twelve’ to determine Jesus’ own aims and self-understanding.
The earliest reference to a special group known as ‘the Twelve’ is 1 Corinthians 15:5. Without reference to the Gospels, Paul’s language in 1 Cor.15 and in Galatians could suggest that ‘the Twelve’ was a group formed by being called to be apostles just as he was, i.e. by a commissioning by the risen Jesus. This would explain why Paul and others continue to refer to ‘the Twelve’ – there were at this time still twelve of them! If one later committed suicide, it may have been then that the legend of Judas’ betrayal of Jesus arose to explain why one of this inner circle of Christian leaders killed himself. The argument frequently adduced, that no one would make up a betrayal of Jesus by one of the Twelve, does not deal with two things that may have worked together to motivate the creation of just such a story: it would explain his suicide (assuming he didn’t leave a note), and it would also distract attention from Peter’s failure when he denied knowing Jesus. The story of Peter’s betrayal circulated independently of Christian circles, and all the early Christians could do was to engage in damage control. The suicide of Judas, while itself problematic, would at least have distracted attention away from Peter.
This is nothing but a hypothesis, an attempt to see whether the available evidence can be explained in another way than the traditional one. This doesn’t make it true, or even likely; it is not, however, completely implausible. In Matthew we are not told when Judas went and hung himself – the assumption on the basis of Acts 1:16-19 that it was immediately after Jesus’ death ignores the reference to Jesus appearing to ‘the Twelve’ in 1 Corinthians 15:5, and the fact that two different stories circulated about precisely how Judas killed himself, suggesting the stories arose later and/or that there was no one official version of the story. And although Jesus supposedly knew he would be betrayed and by whom, he is also recorded as having predicted that the Twelve would sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. However, it should be noted that the latter may well have been a creation of the early Church, when the group of Jesus’ followers realized they would be around for a while and needed to organize the community, even if only for a brief interim period before the end. The saying has only a single attestation, namely in Q (Matthew 19:28 = Luke 22:30). Yet even there it is not an absolutely certain reference to ‘the Twelve’, since Luke omits this detail in his version. And so we must attempt to reconstruct the version that most likely underlies the two different versions in Matthew and Luke. Is it more likely that Luke removed the reference to ‘the Twelve’ or that Matthew added it? It would certainly be natural to extrapolate a reference to the Twelve from the reference to the twelve tribes of Israel. Yet the different contexts in which the two versions are found is also important: Luke, placing the saying in close proximity to a reference to Judas’ portrayal of Jesus, would have felt the difficulty of the reference to the Twelve (including Judas!) judging the tribes of Israel in a way that Matthew may not have. The tendency of the tradition is that early writers and sources seem to tend to have ‘the Twelve’, whereas Matthew and Luke often seek to correct this to ‘the Eleven’. And so the probability is that this saying in Q did refer to the Twelve sitting on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. This saying also has in favor of its authenticity the fact that the Twelve did not play such a significant role in the early Church, being eclipsed by individual figures like Peter, James, and Paul. Paul’s one reference to the Twelve refers to Jesus’ resurrection appearance, but when speaking of his own more recent visits to Jerusalem (Galatians 1:18-19; 2:6,9) he does not mention this group, although he may allude to them as ‘those reputed to be pillars (i.e. of the Church)’.
And so we must also take into consideration the fact that the Twelve disappear from the scene and from any sort of prominence in the early Church. Legends appeared suggesting that they had gone to the ends of the earth as missionaries, to places like Romania, India, China. These legends may have some historical kernel of truth behind them, but they are not particularly early or reliable. The easiest explanations are either that some died and were not replaced, or that they did not do anything of any significance, or that they indeed left to or remained in other parts of the world. There is no indication (apart from Acts) that the Twelve ever led the church in Jerusalem. And so perhaps most of them remained in Galilee. If we really want to be skeptical, we might suggest that perhaps they fell away from faith after Good Friday, and never came back, and that the reports of appearances to ‘the Twelve’ was an attempt to counteract this fact. But of course, for this latter suggestion to make sense, one would have to conclude that the Twelve was a significant group before Easter, precisely because they were not a significant group within Christianity after Easter.
In view of the evidence it would certainly be precarious to conclude that Jesus himself taught a ‘restorationist eschatology’ based on a renewed and regathered Israel solely on the basis of a supposed group of ‘the Twelve’. It is not impossible that the early Church formed this group so as to deal with the problem of the ongoing existence of the Church in the ‘interim’ between Easter and the end. In this case, the restorationist eschatology symbolized by the Twelve may belong to the weeks immediately after Easter rather than to the teaching of Jesus in the months and years before Easter. On the other hand, if other evidence from Jesus’ teaching requires this sort of conclusion, then the idea of ‘the Twelve’ (with some ambiguity about who one of them was) can be traced back to the historical Jesus without reservation. Certainly those were known as ‘the Twelve’ or who came to be called by this phrase were sufficiently well-known and widely recognized as having been part of Jesus’ inner circle that the tradition became universally accepted. Thus, if not traced back to the historical Jesus, one would have to suppose a smaller number of ‘inner circle’ disciples who then added other long-term followers to make a council of ‘the Twelve’. It is interesting that rabbinic tradition records Jesus as having had five disciples, a number which the early chapters of John’s Gospel would also support, although the rabbinic tradition is late and is not necessarily an independent witness.
We have seen that it is certainly possible to give an explanation of the evidence in a way that does not require Jesus himself to have chosen a special group of the Twelve. Yet we have also seen that the idea of ‘the Twelve’ is attested early and independently. It is thus probably advisable to include this element as part of our reconstruction of the mission and teaching of the historical Jesus if it fits coherently with other information we can ascertain with reasonable certainty about him. If we take this approach (and we shall have to give our sources the benefit of the doubt for the moment, until we have looked at other pieces of the puzzle), then what do we find? First, the lack of agreement on one of the names simply indicates that in the early Church there may have been a fluctuating group of ‘Twelve’ – Acts 1:15-26 also indicates that the early Church replaced Judas, and so it may be that there were other similar occurrences. But the fact that there was uncertainty about the exact identity and names of at least one of the Twelve may do nothing more than indicate that it was the number rather than the individuals that were really significant. If this is the case, then by attributing the choice of Twelve disciples or apostles to Jesus tells us that he understood his mission in terms of a restoration of Israel. This gives us important indications about his probable self-understanding and eschatological beliefs.
First, note that he himself is not one of the Twelve. This may seem obvious, but what it indicates is that he does not see himself as one of those who will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. He presumably did not see his disciples as replacing him, and so this fact probably indicates that he saw himself as having an important role even greater than representing or judging any one of the tribes of Israel. Those who see Jesus as essentially a non-Messianic and non-eschatological figure would have to either deny the authenticity of this saying altogether, or accept Luke’s version and perhaps suggest that Jesus considered that his disciples (of an unspecified number) would share together with him in judging the tribes of Israel, not necessarily in the near future in connection with an apocalyptic inbreaking of the Kingdom of God. It is true that the idea of Christians sharing in being enthroned with Jesus occurs elsewhere in early Christian literature (e.g. in Revelation 2:26; 3:21). But Q is essentially devoid of messianic and eschatological concerns anyway, and since it is a collection of Jesus’ teaching on ethics and discipleship, this may be due to its genre rather than due to Jesus having actually had no interest in either messianism or eschatology. Yet once again we see how it is essentially impossible to make any decision about the historical Jesus based on one piece of evidence. The reference to disciples sitting on thrones, taken on its own, does not (unless the original version specified twelve thrones) unambiguously indicate Jesus’ messianic self-understanding. However, if this Q saying is taken together with the fact that he was crucified for the crime of claiming to be ‘king of the Jews’, and his ride into Jerusalem on a donkey, assuming the latter can be demonstrated to be historical, then this saying about judging on twelve thrones may become an important piece of evidence concerning not only the structure of the community gathered around Jesus, and not only Jesus’ aims and eschatology, but also about whether he understood himself as in some sense ‘king,’ and if so in what sense precisely. But as already suggested, having studied this piece of evidence, we must now set it to one side, to return to it once we have evaluated other relevant pieces of the puzzle and are ready to attempt to put them together.
Did Jesus send the Twelve on a mission, as reported in Mark 6:7-13? The story is unlikely to have been created after the story of Judas’ betrayal of Jesus and subsequent suicide became well known, and so the account must be early. But how early? The clearest indication that this story does in fact tell us about an event in the life of the historical Jesus is the fact that we have no evidence subsequently of any similar activity by the Twelve. Peter, for the most part, becomes a leader in the church in Jerusalem and does not appear to travel in anything like the manner Paul does, although 1 Corinthians 9:1-6 may suggest it. Yet this latter saying shows that Peter was able to leave his work altogether and rely on church support, which is not exactly the same as taking no money and relying on hospitality. So the sending out of the Twelve as itinerant missionaries fits better the period of the historical Jesus. John Meier (in the third volume of his excellent A Marginal Jew) notes precisely this point, and links it to another saying that appears to be authentic: Jesus’ call to Peter and his brother to follow him and be made “fishers of people”. This phrase is not used in the early Church in any known source as a description of Christian mission or the apostolic calling. It is thus not a retrojection of later Church theology into an earlier period. The saying is enigmatic, a bit like a riddle, and this is precisely the sort of saying that one finds makes up the core of authentic Jesus tradition. And so here too we see evidence that Jesus sent twelve individuals as his apostles. The term apostolos in Greek (akin to shaliach in Hebrew) refers to an agent, one who is sent to represent another’s interest in another place. And so in view of Peter’s relatively sedentary and stationary activity after Easter, the sending of the Twelve as apostles and the calling to be fishers of people all should be traced back to the ministry of the historical Jesus.
Another tradition in the same vein that has independent attestation in the Synoptics and John is the idea that “Whoever receives you receives me, and whoever receives me receives the one who sent me.” In its earliest context in a written source, Mark 9:33-37, Jesus is presented as saying that the disciples must become like little children, and whoever welcomes a little child welcomes him… In Q (Matthew 10:40 = Luke 10:16) and in John 13:20 this saying is applied to those whom Jesus sends. If we presume that John’s version is independent, then we have two independent witnesses for the application of this principle to the disciples (and in Q to the Twelve in particular). It could easily be suggested that the version in Mark implies much the same thing: the Twelve are to humble themselves like children, and whoever receives a little child receives him. The reference in Mark is thus implicitly to the Twelve, as it is explicitly in Q.
Yet we must also at least consider the possibility that the saying may represent something that Jesus originally said regarding children, which was later applied to the Twelve. On the one hand, there is sufficient independent attestation between Q and John to show that the form that is applied to the Twelve/the disciples is early. On the other hand, one can imagine that Markan version being transformed and applied to the Twelve, whereas the reverse process is unimaginable, and so either Jesus said something like this on two different occasions in two different forms, or Mark’s version has an added argument in favor of its authenticity and originality. At any rate, the principle of agency expressed here is also known from the Rabbinic literature, and thus appears to have been a widely known and generally accepted principle regarding agents. Its appearance in the Jesus tradition suggests that little children are in some sense his agents, and thus Mark is probably right to suggest that this was a metaphor, and had some application to the Twelve as ‘missionaries’. To compare leaders to children and suggest they need to humble and humiliate themselves was a difficult, counter-cultural idea in the context in which Jesus and his earliest followers lived, and so it is unlikely to have been invented by the leaders themselves, or by any who respected them as leaders, and so once again its likely source is Jesus himself. Thus the idea that Jesus had ‘agents’ whom he sent out, and that there was at least one group known as ‘the Twelve’ who were considered such agents, is very plausible and a strong case can be made in favor of the authenticity of these traditions.
In addition, the Q material on the sending out of the Twelve (Matthew 10 = Luke 9:1-6; 10:1-16) includes Judas engaged in a mission that involved performing miracles and casting out demons. His involvement in this mission will surely not have been invented after his betrayal of Jesus and his suicide became widely known. And so this provides yet another argument in favor of the historicity of this mission of the Twelve during the time of the public ministry of the historical Jesus, and thus this implies the existence of the Twelve at that time.
I have attempted to give examples of both skeptical and sympathetic readings of the evidence, in order to show the different ways one may argue, and the different evaluations that may be given of the available sources and evidence. The different approaches and presuppositions are one reason why proponents of differing hypothetical reconstructions of the life and ministry of Jesus often find each other’s views implausible. Conservatives will respond to suggestions that the Twelve were not a group chosen by Jesus prior to Easter by saying “But the Bible clearly says…” Skeptics will counter with a sneer, “And what makes you think the Bible is telling the truth.” Neither approach is wrong, but it is important to remember that, working as historians, it is our responsibility to treat the sources fairly. This does not mean that we accept whatever they say at face value. But neither should we treat them with a level or degree of skepticism that we would not apply to other sources. The challenge is to walk the tightrope between these two extremes, recognizing that the New Testament sources clearly do have a theological axe to grind, and their conviction that Jesus is still teaching them and with them may have led them to read their later experiences and revelations into the lifetime of the historical Jesus. Yet the sources also agree on many points, and there is much evidence to support the conclusion that the early Church did not simply rewrite the life, teaching, and story of Jesus to suit their needs. They were confronted with difficulties, like Judas’ suicide after having been followed to Gethsemane by the ‘police’. Did they know for certain that he had in fact intended to lead them there? Did Judas remain part of the group for a while afterwards? Do our sources turn Old Testament passages into prophecies which can then be turned into historical narratives? These are serious questions that a historian must face when dealing with sources like the canonical Gospels. Perhaps the best approach to balance the two extremes and find a middle ground is simply to try to come up with as many different explanations of the evidence as one possibly can. Explore all the permutations, being as creative as you can. But then turn your critical eye onto all the explanations, even your own creative ones. Focus on the question: which explanation does the best justice to the state of the sources, to all the evidence as we now have it? Which explanation can best explain both what the earliest sources say and the directions in which the later tradition developed? By being equally skeptical of both the Bible’s accounts and the alternatives that have been suggested ensures a measure of fairness. But once this has been done, if there is no other explanation that better accounts for all the evidence, you are certainly justified as a historian in accepting, as least provisionally, the Biblical account of what happened. When it comes down to it, the aim is not to be credulous or skeptical of what the Bible says, but simply to study historical events that lie behind written documents, using the methods of historical criticism, and to do so as fairly as possible.
A page skeptical of what the canonical Gospels say about the betrayal of Jesus by Judas:
http://www.geocities.com/paulntobin/Judas/jesus.html