Jesus Appoints the Twelve

By this point, Mark says, Jesus had a large following from Galilee and beyond (Mark 3:7–8). He went up the mountain, called to him those he wanted, and appointed twelve “that they might be with him, and that he might send them out to preach” and to cast out demons (Mark 3:13–15). Luke adds that he spent the night before in prayer, chose the twelve from a larger body of disciples, and named them apostles, that is, men who are sent (Luke 6:12–13).

The New Testament has four lists of the names (Mark 3:16–19) (Matthew 10:2–4) (Luke 6:14–16) (Acts 1:13). Simon, to whom Jesus gave the name Peter, always comes first, and with him stand his brother Andrew and the brothers James and John. Then come Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon, called the Cananaean in Mark and Matthew and the Zealot in Luke and Acts. Judas Iscariot, “who also betrayed him”, comes last in the three Gospel lists; the list in Acts, set after his death, has eleven names. The lists differ in one name: Mark and Matthew have Thaddaeus where Luke and Acts have Judas the son of James. Matthew’s Gospel identifies the apostle Matthew with the tax collector whom Jesus called from his booth (Matthew 9:9; 10:3); Mark and Luke call that tax collector Levi (Mark 2:14) (Luke 5:27). John’s Gospel gives no list but speaks of “the twelve” (John 6:67–71).

Mark tells that Jesus sent them out in pairs with authority over unclean spirits. They were to take no bread, bag or money, to stay in whatever house received them, and to shake the dust from their feet where they were refused (Mark 6:7–13). In Matthew’s account they are told to go only to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel” and to proclaim that the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matthew 10:5–15).

The number answers to the twelve tribes: in Matthew and Luke, Jesus promises that they will sit on thrones judging the tribes of Israel (Matthew 19:28) (Luke 22:28–30). Acts tells that after the death of Judas the group chose Matthias by lot to fill his place (Acts 1:15–26). Paul, writing in the 50s, already cites an appearance of the risen Christ “to the twelve” in a summary that he says he had himself received (1 Corinthians 15:3–5).

Later generations traced the ministry of the churches back to these men. A letter sent from Rome to Corinth near the end of the first century says that the apostles, sent by Christ, appointed their first converts as bishops and deacons (1 Clement 42). How that succession is to be understood is a question on which the churches differ; see Papacy and Church Order.