The Disciples - Christ's failures

[outhouse]

What I was getting at is that there seems to be no substance to the Apostles in the sense of traditions created by actual works.

What ? There were many different traditions, many legends. They just did not become orthodoxy.

We have hundreds of years of diversity where Apostles each had their own little following who claimed their Apostle was the one to carry the movement after Jesus death.

Before orthodoxy it was a wild west. We don't learn about the Apostles with the text we have, it only gives us a glimpse at the diversity and belief of the different types of followers.

Judas had a complete gnostic tradition

Paul had multiple, look at the traditions behind Paul and Thecla.

Simon the magician.

Maybe defining "actual works" would help

Perhaps they all stayed in Israel

We can guess all you want.

Best bet, is just to admit we do not know, because their actions have no real historicity.

It is my guess the Aramaic Jewish apocalyptic movement was over the day Jesus was crucified. The gospels portray them as cowards. And the only people writing about them were Hellenist far removed from their lives, far from the geographic location in question, and knew next to nothing about their reality, nor did they care. Mythology and traditions regarding them grew from death forward.

[steve43]

Jesus ran a very sophisticated outfit in his latter years. Thousands would some to see and hear him. .

That is well know rhetoric to compete with the Emperors divinity.

Luke in ACTS writes about Jesus having advance men, who were later elevated to disciplehood status. Even today, faith healers can draw huge crowds. Human nature at work.

[outhouse]

Jesus ran a very sophisticated outfit in his latter years. Thousands would some to see and hear him. .

That is well know rhetoric to compete with the Emperors divinity.

Luke in ACTS writes about Jesus having advance men, who were later elevated to disciplehood status. Even today, faith healers can draw huge crowds. Human nature at work.

That is well know rhetoric to compete with the Emperors divinity.

Do you understand what the above sentence even means?

[andrewcriddle]

Interesting that Mark does not state that Andrew was Simon Peter's brother, as Matthew and Luke do. Andrew's name appears fourth in Mark but second, after Peter, in Matthew and Luke. Should we care about this elevation of Andrew's position?

See Mark 1:16

Now as he [Jesus] walked by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers.

Andrew Criddle

[ficino]

Maybe what's interesting is that Matthew and Luke identify Andrew in their lists of the Twelve as Peter's brother, although they had already identified him as Peter's brother in the Calling the Disciples pericope. But maybe it's not interesting except that it's another point where Matt and Luke are linked against Mark.

[outhouse]

where Matt and Luke are linked against Mark.

This can play out a few ways, or both.

One is, what are you thinking? they both used Mark as a foundation to there beliefs so they obviously were not against him.

Second is, they found his work incomplete without the little stories their community believed in, that they had to rhetorically and fictionally and allegorically add to it.

If you follow Markan primacy

[steve43]

That is well know rhetoric to compete with the Emperors divinity.[/quote]

Luke in ACTS writes about Jesus having advance men, who were later elevated to disciplehood status. Even today, faith healers can draw huge crowds. Human nature at work.[/quote]


That is well know rhetoric to compete with the Emperors divinity.

Do you understand what the above sentence even means?[/quote]

Well known rhetoric? Emperor's divinity?

Sounds like something out of the Jesus Seminar.

OK. Educate me.

[outhouse]

OK. Educate me.

One should have this problem handled before they post on topics they know little about.

[rakovsky]

Ehrman goes on to say that its twelve because each will rule one of the twelve tribes of Israel in the apocalypse.

It does pay to check references, I looked them up and listed them off and only found a second Judas in Luke, whereas in John there is a Nathaniel and the famous disciple Jesus Loved - he was either gay as suggested in the "Secret Gospel of Mark" which I take to be a hoax, or more likely it was Mary Magdalene.

The Beloved Disciple I believe is John, one of the main reasons being the identification in John 21 (about meeting the risen Jesus by the Sea of Galilee) :

7. Therefore that disciple whom Jesus love says to Peter, It is the Lord. Now when Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he girt his fisher"s coat to him, (for he was naked,) and did cast himself into the sea.
[Next, Peter meets and talks with the risen Jesus.]
20. Then Peter, turning about, sees the disciple whom Jesus loved following; which also leaned on his breast at supper, and said, Lord, which is he that betrays you?21. Peter seeing him says to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do?22. Jesus says to him, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to you? follow you me. 23. Then went this saying abroad among the brethren, that that disciple should not die: yet Jesus said not to him, He shall not die; but, If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to you?
24. This is the disciple which testifies of these things, and wrote these things: and we know that his testimony is true.

Since this is the Gospel of John, it seems that the Beloved Disciple is John the apostle, whom Paul associated with Peter when he wrote in an epistle that Peter, James, and John were the three pillars of Jerusalem's church.
The Golden Chain commentary says that John recognized Jesus because of John's penetrating nature, and that Peter was naked just for work:

CHRYSOSTOM: The recognition of Him brings out Peter and John in their different tempers of mind; the one fervid, the other sublime; the one ready, the other penetrating. John is the first to recognize our Lord...

BEDE. The Evangelist alludes to himself here the same way he always does. He recognized our Lord either by the miracle, or by the sound of His voice, or the association of former occasions on which He found them fishing. Peter was naked in comparison with the usual dress he wore, in the sense in which we say to a person whom we meet thinly clad, You are quite bare. Peter was bare for convenience sake, as fishermen are in fishing.

THEOPHYLACT. Peter"s girding himself is a sign of modesty. He girt himself with a linen coat, such as Thamian and Tyrian fishermen throw over them, when they have nothing else on, or even over their other clothes.

I suppose that the nakedness could have had some metaphorical meaning, although I don't know what. The youth in the tomb in Mark 16 seems to have a white garment on as representing heavenly resurrection flesh.

Like Peter's nakedness in this passage, the love for the Beloved Disciple doesn't have to be sexual. The NT Greek has different kinds of love, like Agape love, which is like "Platonic" love. I love my cousins and plenty of people love their favorite bands and celebrities and heroes, but it doesn't mean it's sexual. Love is one of the main Christian and NT themes, like God's love to the world.