| 75. The Rest of the Twelve, and the Seventy Disciples. | ||||
The second quaternion in all the four catalogues begins with Philip. The three first Gospels know nothing more of him than his name. The fourth alone gives his birth-place, Bethsaida, and narrates his vocation (i. 44 f.); in this gospel he is more than once {P.354} an interlocutor, but his observations are founded on mistakes (vi. 7; xiv. 8); and he perhaps appears with most dignity, when the Greeks, who wish to see Jesus, apply immediately to him (xii. 21). | ||||
The next in the three Gospel lists is Bartholomew; a name which is nowhere found out of the catalogues. In the synoptic Gospels Bartholomew is coupled with Philip; in the story of the vocations given by the fourth evangelist (i. 46), Nathanael appears in company with the latter, and (xxi. 2) is again presented in the society of the apostles. Nathanael, however, finds no place among the twelve, unless he be identical with one otherwise named by the synoplists. If so, it is thought that Bartholomew is the most easily adapted to such an alias, as the three first Gospels couple him with Philip, just as the fourth, which has no Bartholomew, does Nathanael; to which it may be added that "bar" is a mere patronymic, which must have been accompanied by a proper name, such as Nathanael. But we have no adequate ground for such an identification, since the juxtaposition of Bartholomew and Philip is shown to be accidental, by our finding the former (Acts i. 13), as well as the latter (John xxi. 2), linked with different names; the absence of Bartholomew from the fourth gospel is not peculiar to him among the twelve; finally, second names as surnames were added to proper as well as to patronymic names, as Simon Peter, Joseph Caiaphas, John Mark, and the like; so that any other apostle not named by John might be equally well identified with Nathanael, and hence the supposed relation between the two appellations is altogether uncertain. | ||||
In the catalog-uc given in the Acts, Philip is followed, not by Bartholomew, but by Thomas, who in the list of the first gospel comes after Bartholomew, in that of the others, after Matthew. | ||||
Thomas appears in the fourth gospel, on one occassion, in the guise of mournful fidelity (xi. 16): on another, in the more noted one of incredulity (xx. 24. ff.); and once again in the appendix (xxi. 2). Matthew, the next in the series, is found nowhere else except in the story of his vocation. | ||||
The third quaternion is uniformly opened by James the son of Alpheus, of whom we have already spoken. After him comes in both Luke's lists, Simon, whom he calls Zelotes, or the zealot, but whom Matthew and Mark (in whose catalogues he is placed one degree lower) distinguish as the Canaanite. This surname seems to mark him as a former adherent of the Jewish sect of zealots for religion, a party which, it is true, did not attain consistence until the latest period of the Jewish state, but which was already in the process of formation. In all the lists that retain the name of Judas Iscariot, he occupies the last place, but of him we. must not speak until we enter on the story of the passion. Luke, in his filling up of the remaining places of this {P.355} quaternion, differs from the two other evangelists, and perhaps these also differ from each other; Luke has a second Judas, whom he styles the brother of James; Matthew, Lebbeus; and Mark, Thaddcus. It is true that we now commonly read in Matthew, Lebbeus, whose surname was Thaddeus; but the vacillation in the early readings seems to betray these words to be a later addition intended to reconcile the first two evangelists; an attempt which others have, made by pointing out a similarity of meaning between the two names, though such a similarity does not exist. | ||||
But allowing validity to one or other of these harmonizing efforts, there yet remains a discrepancy between Matthew and Mark with their Lebbeus-Thaddeus, and Luke with his Judas, the brother of James. Schleiermacher justly disapproves the expedients, almost all of them constrained and unnatural, which have been resorted to for the sake of proving that here also, we have but one person under two different names. | ||||
He seeks to explain the divergency, by supposing, that during the lifetime of Jesus, one of the two men died or left the circle of the apostles, and the other took his place; so that one list gives the earlier, the other the later member. But it is scarcely possible to admit that any one of our catalogues was drawn up during the life of Jesus; and after that period, no writer would think of including a member who had previously retired from the college of apostles; those only would be enumerated who were ultimately attached to Jesus. It is the most reasonable to allow that there is a discrepancy between the lists, since it is easy to account for it by the probability that while the number of the apostles, and the names of the most distinguished among them, were well known, varying traditions supplied the place of more positive data concerning the less conspicuous. | ||||
Luke makes us acquainted with a circle of disciples, intermediate to the twelve and the mass of the partisans of Jesus. He tells us (x.1ff.) that besides the twelve, Jesus chose other seventy also, and sent them two and two before him into all the districts which he intended to visit on his last journey, that they might proclaim the approach of the kingdom of heaven. As the other evangelists have no allusion to this event, the most recent critics have not hesitated to make their silence on this head a reproach to them, particularly to the first evangelist, in his supposed character of apostle. | ||||
But the disfavour towards Matthew on this score ought to be moderated by the consideration, that neither in the other Gospels, nor in the Acts, nor in any apostolic epistle, is there any -,..'e of the seventy disciples, who could scarcely have passed thus unnoticed, had their mission been as fruitful in consequences, as it is commonly supposed. It is said, however, that the importance of this appointment lay in its significance, rather than in its effects. As the num- {P.356} ber of the twelve apostles, by its relation to that of the tribes of Israel, shadowed forth the destination of Jesus for the Jewish people; so the seventy, or as some authorities have it, the seventy-two disciples, were representatives of the seventy or seventy-two peoples, with as many different tongues, which, according to the Jewish and early Christian view, formed the sum of the earth's inhabitants, and hence they denoted the universal destination of Jesus and his kingdom. Moreover, seventy was a sacred number with the Jewish nation; Moses deputed seventy elders (Num. xi. 16, 25); the Sanhedrin had seventy members: the Old Testament, seventy translators. | ||||
Had Jesus, then, under the pressing circumstances that mark his public career, nothing more important to do than to cast about for significant numbers, and to surround himself with inner and outer circles of disciples, regulated by these mystic measures? or i'ather, is not this constant preference for sacred numbers, this assiduous development of an idea to which the number of the apostles furnished the suggestion, wholly in the spirit of the primitive Christian legend? This, supposing it imbued with Jewish prepossessions, would infer, that as Jesus had respect to the twelve tribes in fixing the number of his apostles, he would extend the parallel by appointing seventy subordinate disciples, corresponding to the seventy elders; or, supposing the legend animated by the more universal sentiments of Paul, it could not escape the persuasion that to the symbol of the relation of his office to the people of Israel, Jesus would annex another, significative of its destination for all the kindreds of the earth. However agreeable this class of seventy diseiples may have always been to the cliurcli, as a series of niches for the reception of men who, without belonging to the twelve, were yet of importance to her, as Mark, Luke and Matthew; we are compelled to pronounce the decision of our most recent critic precipitate, and to admit that the Gospel of Luke, by its acceptance of such a narrative, destitute as it is of all historical confirmation, and of any other apparent source than dogmatical interests, is placed in disadvantageous comparison with that of Matthew. We gather, indeed, from Acts i. 21 f. that Jesus had more than the twelve as his constant companions; but that these formed a body of exactly seventy, or that that number was selected from them, does not seem adequately warranted. {P.357} | ||||