H. Choosing the Twelve (6:12–16)
H. Choosing the Twelve (6:12–16)
12. Once more the time reference is vague (In these days). Luke is not giving attention to exact sequence. Jesus was facing a momentous decision. The preceding incidents have shown that his enemies were increasing. One day they would kill him. What was he to do? Characteristically Luke tells us that he prayed. Then he chose a little band of men who would carry on his work after him.
13. At daybreak Jesus called his disciples. This will be a group of people who had attached themselves loosely to him. A disciple was a learner, a student, but in the first century a student did not simply study a subject; he followed a teacher. There is an element of personal attachment in ‘disciple’ that is lacking in ‘student’. From this larger number of adherents Jesus chose … twelve. This is the number of the tribes of Israel, a number which indicates that Jesus was establishing the true Israel, the people of God. In Jesus and his followers ‘people could see a dramatization of the Old Testament picture of God bringing the twelve tribes of Israel to the promised land’ (Tinsley). Jesus never set up an organization. These twelve men represent the total of his administrative machinery. Some of them were clearly outstanding men, but on the whole they seem to have been no more than average. Most have left very little mark on church history. Jesus preferred to work, then as now, through perfectly ordinary people.
These twelve Jesus named apostles. The term derives from the verb ‘to send’ and means ‘someone sent’, ‘a messenger’. Luke uses it six times (with twenty-eight more in Acts), whereas each of the other Evangelists has it once only (Mark may have it twice, depending on the solution to a textual problem). In the Gospels the group is usually referred to simply as ‘the twelve’. Mark explains that Jesus chose them ‘to be with him, and to be sent out to preach and have authority to cast out demons’ (Mark 3:14f.). This brings out the notion of mission and the centrality of preaching in their function.
14–16. There are minor variations in the order, but if we divide the names into three groups of four the same names occur in each group in all our lists. The same name heads each group, though the order within the groups varies. The first name in all the lists is Simon. Jesus gave him another name, Peter, which means ‘Rock’. From this point on Luke always uses this name, not Simon as hitherto. He does not say when the name was given (see John 1:42). The later Simon is called the Zealot. He may have belonged to the radical group of ‘Zealots’ who were notorious for their violent resistance to Rome, or the name may suggest that he was characterized by fiery zeal. For Judas the son of James (again in Acts 1:13) Matthew and Mark have Thaddaeus, which appears to be another name for the same man. All three finish with Judas Iscariot and mention his betrayal, but only Luke says that he became a traitor. Apparently he was faithful at the beginning. Iscariot probably means ‘man of Kerioth’, a town in Judea (Josh. 15:25) or Moab (Jer. 48:24). If so, Judas was the only nonGalilean in the twelve.