Who Were the Twelve Disciples?

The twelve disciples of Jesus are widely understood by Christians to have been Jesus’ closest companions in life, his inner circle, made up of fishermen and others who gave up family and career to dedicate their lives to following the man who taught radically about the kingdom of God.

Despite the familiarity of “the twelve disciples” among Christians, there is little doubt that most people couldn’t name all twelve off the cuff. It may surprise some to discover that even the texts of the Bible don’t agree on who made up this most distinguished group of men.

EARLIEST BIBLICAL REFERENCES

Among the texts of the New Testament, the seven or so authentic letters of Paul represent our earliest sources. In one of these letters – 1 Corinthians – Paul gives us our first Biblical reference to the twelve disciples:

1 Corinthians 15:5b - …[Jesus] appeared to Peter, then to the Twelve.

Outside of the Gospels, there is only one other New Testament reference to the twelve disciples, and that comes from the book of Revelation, where the writer refers to the “names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.” Revelation, of course, was one of the last books of the New Testament to be written, probably in the first decade of the 2nd century.

Despite only referring once to “the Twelve,” Paul does mention two disciples by name: Peter and John. Peter is referenced a number of times in 1 Corinthians and Galatians, and John is mentioned one time in Galatians.

Interestingly, Paul never tells us explicitly that either of these men was a disciple of Jesus. Of course, the recipients of his letters would have known who they were, so it stands to reason that he doesn’t go into any biographical details.

Still, if one only had the letters of Paul to go by, we would have an idea that there was a group of twelve people who played some central role in the resurrection, but we would not know who they were. In fact, if we had only the letters of Paul to go on, we would no doubt conclude that Peter was not among “the Twelve,” since his role in the resurrection is separated from the Twelve, as indicated in the quoted passage above.

THE GOSPELS

The majority of what we know of the twelve disciples, of course, comes from the four Gospels of the New Testament. These texts were all written in the 1st century, but the earliest of them was written after the letters of Paul.

Mark

In Mark, the first of these Gospels to be written, the writer is kind enough to give us an actual list of names:

Simon Peter
James son of Zebedee
John the brother of James
Andrew (Mark notes elsewhere that Andrew was the brother of Peter)
Philip
Bartholomew
Matthew
Thomas
James son of Alphaeus
Thaddaeus
Simon the Canaanite
Judas Iscariot

Simple enough on the surface. But there is at least one internal trouble spot. Before providing this list of names, Mark had described a scene in which Jesus dines at the home of a tax collector named Levi, and the text tells us that Jesus called on him to “follow me” – a command Levi obeys. That, of course, is the same formula used elsewhere when Jesus is calling his twelve disciples. It seems clear that Levi is one of the “twelve,” yet he does not appear in Mark’s list in the next chapter.

Complicating that issue even further is the fact that Mark refers to Levi as the “son of Alphaeus.” You will notice that one of the disciples on Mark’s list is also the son of Alphaeus, but it’s a man named James, not Levi. No indication is given by Mark as to whether this is the same person, they are two brothers, or they are unrelated and just happen to have fathers by the name of Alphaeus.

If Mark was our only source for the disciples, we would no doubt conclude that James son of Alphaeus was, in fact, Levi the tax collector.

Matthew

Moving on chronologically through the Gospels, we come next to Matthew. The writer of this Gospel used Mark as a primary source, and also provided a list of the twelve disciples:

Simon called Peter
Andrew the brother of Simon Peter
James son of Zebedee
John the brother of James
Philip
Bartholomew
Thomas
Matthew the tax collector
James son of Alphaeus
Lebbaeus Thaddaeus
Simon the Canaanite
Judas Iscariot

You will notice first that the disciple Matthew is now noted as a tax collector – something not mentioned by Mark. Furthermore, when the story of Levi son of Alphaeus is retold in the Gospel of Matthew, Levi’s name is changed to Matthew, and “son of Alphaeus” is eliminated completely. The writer of Matthew seems to have seen the problem with Mark’s text regarding Levi, and simply fixed the problem by asserting that Levi and Matthew were the same person (and not Levi and James son of Alphaeus). The name “Levi” is never actually mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew.

The other noticeable difference between the two lists is that the Gospel of Matthew notes that the disciple Thaddaeus’s name was actually Lebbaeus.

Luke

We come next to Luke. Luke, like Matthew before him, used Mark’s Gospel as a source. However, where Matthew regurgitates something like 90% of Mark, Luke only uses about 60%. And it is when we look at Luke’s list of disciples that we begin to see more prominent discrepancies.

Here is Luke’s list:

Simon Peter
Andrew the brother of Simon Peter
James
John (Luke notes elsewhere that James and John were brothers and the sons of Zebedee)
Philip
Bartholomew
Matthew
Thomas
James son of Alphaeus
Simon called the Zealot
Judas James
Judas Iscariot

To begin with, Luke follows Mark in regards to the Levi/Matthew issue. When Luke tells the story of the tax collector, he calls him Levi (although he leaves out “son of Alphaeus”), and he never mentions that Matthew the disciple is a tax collector. Like Mark, if we had only the Gospel of Luke to go by, we would have no way of knowing what become of Levi the tax collector who became a disciple of Jesus but was then left off the official list of twelve.

Second, Luke changes Mark and Matthew’s “Simon the Canaanite” to “Simon called the Zealot.” Some textual scholars have attempted to connect the two Greek words in question (Kananaios and Zelotes) with Aramaic roots, but these arguments are tenuous and speculative at best. What is clear is that this disciple’s name seems to have varied in both oral and textual tradition from region to region.

Finally, and most significantly, Luke omits the disciple Thaddaeus all together, and adds in a man named Judas James. Depending on which English translation of the Bible you read, this name is given as “Judas brother of James” or “Judas son of James.” In both cases, it’s just a textual guess. The original Greek doesn’t indicate whether this Judas was the son or the brother of James, who this James was, or whether Judas James was simply known by two names (like Simon Peter).

What is clear is that we now have three different accounts of this disciple’s name. Mark calls him Thaddaeus, Matthew calls him Lebbaeus Thaddaeus, and Luke calls him Judas James. While it’s reasonable to assume Matthew and Mark were talking about the same person, it seems that Luke is thinking of someone else entirely. It’s possible, of course, that Lebbaeus Thaddaeus was also known as Judas (son of/brother of) James, but it seems like a stretch. Of course, if it wasn’t the Bible we were discussing, but instead some random ancient text, no one would question at all whether the texts contradicted one another – it would be taken as a given.

Regardless of one’s personal theological perspective, what is clear is that this disciple – like Simon the Canaanite/Zealot – was known by many different identities in both oral and textual tradition during the 1st century.

(One quick note on Matthew’s Lebbaeus Thaddaeus: if you read any English version other than the King James, you will find only “Thaddaeus” listed – no mention of “Lebbaeus.” The reason for this is because the King James was translated from a Medieval Greek text of the New Testament called the Textus Receptus, which many scholars believe is inferior due to its numerous textual discrepancies and questionable provenance. Other than the KJV, most modern English translations use a different textual tradition when creating their translations, and this different textual tradition does not contain the language about “Lebbaeus” in the Gospel of Matthew. More than likely, Matthew’s actual original text conformed to Mark’s original text on the name of this disciple. Luke’s text, however, most definitely deviated.)

John

Moving on to the last Gospel of the New Testament, we come to the book of John. Unlike the three Gospels that preceded it, John does not provide a list of Jesus’ disciples. The writer does refer several times to “the Twelve,” but never provides a complete list of their names. He does, however, refer to several disciples by name throughout the text. In order of appearance, they are:

Andrew
Simon Peter (John notes that Andrew and Peter are brothers)
Philip
Nathanael
Judas Iscariot, son of Simon Iscariot
Thomas called Didymus (Didymus means “the twin”)
Judas (John explicitly notes that this is not Judas Iscariot)
The sons of Zebedee (John only refers to them once, and does not use their actual names)

First, John never mentions anyone named Matthew, Levi, Thaddaeus (or Lebbaeus), Bartholomew, Simon the Zealot, Simon the Canaanite, or James son of Alphaeus.

Second, John tells us Thomas was known as Didymus, something none of the other Gospels mention.

Third, John agrees with Luke that there was a second disciple named Judas, though he doesn’t include any second name for him (i.e. Judas James).

Finally, he includes a disciple – Nathanael – that does not appear in any of the other Gospels.

NON-CANONICAL SOURCES

Most of our non-canonical Christian texts were written in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, well after the New Testament era. However, a handful of non-canonical writings may very well have been contemporaries of, or even in some cases predated, the texts of the New Testament. Most of the debates about the dating of these texts deal with the question of whether they are early (before the Gospel era) or late (right after the Gospel era). In either case, most scholars agree that these texts were at least contemporaries of some of the later New Testament texts, and so I will look briefly at what they have to say about the disciples.

The Gospel of Thomas

Some scholars date this text among our earliest Christian written sources. Indeed, there is a whole school of thought that puts Thomas as a contemporary of Paul’s letters, making it well earlier than any of the Biblical Gospels. Even those who are in the “late camp” on the Gospel of Thomas tend to date it around the same time as books like Revelation, 2 Peter, and Jude.

Regardless of your particular take on that issue, Thomas does mention a few of Jesus’ disciples by name. They are:

Didymus Judas Thomas
Simon Peter
Matthew
Mary
Salome

This is eye-opening, to say the least. First, the text agrees with John that Thomas was called Didymus (“the twin”). But it also calls him Judas, which causes one to wonder if there wasn’t some sort of general confusion in early Christianity about disciples named Judas. We now have three different men with that name among Jesus’ disciples in our various sources.

Second, of course, is the inclusion of two female disciples. While the Biblical Gospels seem to downplay the role of women in some cases, it is clear even from those texts that women played a significant role in the ministry of Jesus. All four Biblical Gospels, after all, agree that it was women who first experienced the resurrection. Additionally, Mark tells us that women traveled with Jesus and helped to finance his ministry. These Biblical texts, however, most definitely do not list any women among Jesus’ inner core of twelve disciples.

Yet the Gospel of Thomas does. The reference to Mary does not explicitly call her a disciple (nor does it imply which Mary we are talking about), but the only other people with speaking roles in this Gospel are Jesus or his disciples. Secondly, Salome – the other woman mentioned – is, in fact, explicitly called a disciple in the passage in which she speaks.

If the Gospel of Thomas is an early text (predating the canonical Gospels), this is highly significant. But even if Thomas comes from the late 1st or early 2nd century, it still shows that even in the New Testament era, some Christians believed that Jesus had included women among his inner circle of disciples. It is also worth noting that while none of our New Testament Gospels refer to any women as disciples, both Mary and Salome are mentioned as followers of Jesus by the canonical Gospel writers. Furthermore, Mary (assuming we are talking about Mary Magdalene) figures much more prominently in the canonical Gospels than many of the named male disciples.

The Gospel of Peter

Most experts agree that this Gospel is a work of the 2nd century, no earlier than 150 C.E., putting it well outside the New Testament era. However, a number of prominent scholars have argued that its writer used early sources that are not found in the New Testament. Since it potentially contains early Christian source material, I will include it here.

The Gospel of Peter is only a fragment of a much longer work, but in the existing text, the following disciples are mentioned:

Simon Peter
Andrew (who is noted to be Peter’s brother)
Levi son of Alphaeus

The interesting reference, of course, is the last one. Recall that Mark first tells the story of Levi son of Alphaeus, calling him a tax collector who becomes a disciple of Jesus. But Mark then fails to include him later on his list of disciples. Luke follows him in this, but omits the “son of Alphaeus” phrase. Matthew, on the other hand, used Mark’s story of Levi, but changed his name to Matthew, and also didn’t include the “son of Alphaeus” phrase. The writer of the Gospel of Matthew essentially connected Mark’s Levi the tax collector with the disciple Matthew.

Remember also that all three of those Gospels included another disciple named James son of Alphaeus.

In the Gospel of Peter, we again see Levi son of Alphaeus, and again he is clearly one of the twelve disciples.

The Didache and the Egerton Gospel

Just a brief note here. Like the two preceding Gospels, the dating of these two texts is hotly debated. Some very prominent scholars, however, have argued that these two documents may represent our very earliest Christian writings, predating even the letters of Paul, and dated somewhere within 10-15 years of Jesus’ death. The Didache is a short series of Christian teachings, and the Egerton Gospel is just a fragment with four brief stories – two that have loose parallels in the canonical Gospels, and two that are completely unknown in any other source.

Since these texts might represent early Christian material, it is important to include them in this survey. The only thing that need be noted, however, is that neither text names any disciples. The Didache, in fact, doesn’t even use the name of Jesus, but instead refers to him as “Lord.”

WHO WERE THE TWELVE DISCIPLES?

The short answer to that question, of course, is that we do not know for sure. Putting together all lists from all available sources, we get the following (the number of sources attesting the name is given in parentheses):

Simon Peter (7)
Andrew the brother of Peter (5)
James son of Zebedee (4)
John son of Zebedee and brother of James (5)
Philip (4)
Bartholomew (3)
Nathanael (1)
Judas James (2)
Judas Iscariot (4)
James son of Alphaeus (3)
Matthew (4)
Levi son of Alphaeus (3)
Simon the Canaanite/Zealot (3)
Thomas (5)
Thaddaeus (2)
Mary (1)
Salome (1)

If we cull this list down based on the most source references, it seems clear that Jesus’ inner circle included Simon Peter, his brother Andrew, the brothers James and John sons of Zebedee, Thomas, Philip, Judas Iscariot, and Matthew.

That’s eight that we can say with a fair amount of certainty, historically-speaking.

More than likely, we can add James son of Alphaeus to that list, as well as Simon the Canaanite (Luke’s slight change of name notwithstanding).

After that, it gets foggy. Church doctrine has long paired Nathanael with Bartholomew, Levi son of Alphaeus with Matthew, and Judas James with Thaddaeus. Mary and Salome, of course, have never even been considered by the Church.

The arguments presented for these pairings go from fairly reasonable to fairly unreasonable. Nathanael is paired with Bartholomew primarily because of his association with Philip and because of the issue between first names and last names. In Mark, Matthew, and Luke, Philip and Bartholomew only appear in the official “lists.” However, they are always listed one after the other. This has led to the argument that they were understood to be a “pair.” In John, we have no Bartholomew, but we do have a Nathanael, and he is paired together with Philip in a story where Philip meets Jesus, then goes and tells Nathanael about him and brings Nathanael into the fold, as it were.

The argument against this theory is simply that it is looking for connections where none really exist. Matthew and Luke pair Philip and Bartholomew together because that’s what Mark did, and they were using Mark as a source. Furthermore, the disciples Thomas and Matthew are always paired together in Mark, Matthew, and Luke, and no one supposes that they were a “pair.”

The second argument in regards to Nathanael and Bartholomew deals with first names and last names. Nathanael is a first name, while Bartholomew is a last name – it literally means “son of Ptolemy.” The argument suggests that John used Bartholomew’s first name (Nathanael), while the other Gospel writers referred to him by his last name. Thus, his name may have been Nathanael son of Ptolemy.

In regards to Levi and Matthew, the primary reason for identifying these two people together is because the writer of the Gospel of Matthew did it himself. When copying Mark’s Gospel, he changed the name of Levi to Matthew and went on to note that the disciple Matthew was the same tax collector who had been called earlier by Jesus. Remember that in Mark and Luke, Jesus calls Levi the tax collector, but then Levi is not listed among the twelve disciples. It is accepted that the “son of Alphaeus” designation given by Mark and the Gospel of Peter is accurate, but simply not mentioned by the other Gospel writers.

Judas James is identified with Thaddaeus because those are the only two apostles left. Mark and Matthew name Thaddaeus. Luke and John mention a second Judas (with Luke adding James to the name).

In all three of these scenarios, and especially the last one, it appears that two differently named people are being equated with one another simply in the service of Biblical literalism. Since it is not possible that the Bible contains errors, these problems must be reconciled. In the case of Thaddaeus in particular, how someone can be known as Thaddaeus, Lebbaeus, Judas, and James, all at once, is simply glossed over.

Thus, we get the official Church list:

Peter
Andrew
James son of Zebedee
John son of Zebedee
Philip
Nathanael Bartholomew
Levi Matthew son of Alphaeus
Thomas the Twin
Judas Iscariot
Lebbaeus Thaddaeus Judas James
James son of Alphaeus
Simon the Canaanite/Zealot

Mary and Salome have easily been rejected by Church tradition because they are only named disciples by the Gospel of Thomas, a text that itself was long ago rejected by the Church as heretical (no doubt, in part, because it did things like claim women were disciples).

It is interesting to note, however, that if we include the four Gospel references to Mary Magdalene as a close follower of Jesus, and add to that the reference from the Gospel of Thomas to Mary as a disciple, Mary is testified as often in our earliest sources as Andrew, Thomas, and James son of Zebedee, and more often than any remaining disciple except Peter (who leads the pack with testimonies in all of our earliest sources).

Even regarding Salome, if we count her reference in Mark (where she is referenced twice), and add that to the reference in Thomas, Salome – a name most Christians have probably never even heard in regards to Jesus – is mentioned as often as Thaddaeus and Judas James, and more often than Nathanael. The fact that Salome is mentioned by name twice in the same Gospel (Mark) also puts her head of most of the other disciples, who are typically only mentioned once – in the official “list” – and then never heard from again.

As to the question of whether James son of Alphaeus and Levi Matthew son of Alphaeus were brothers, Church tradition has left that question unanswered. They have, however, connected James son of Alphaeus to James the Just and James the Lesser. James the Just is noted by both Paul and Luke to have been the leader of the Church in Jerusalem during the first generation of Christianity, and also the brother of Jesus. How the brother of Jesus could have been the “son of Alphaeus” is anyone’s guess, but the Catholic Encyclopedia makes the claim regardless. James the Lesser, on the other hand, is mentioned in the Gospels as the son of one of the several Mary’s who followed Jesus. It is not unreasonable to connect James son of Alphaeus to this person, but there is certainly nothing in the text to imply the connection.

Lebbaeus Thaddaeus Judas James, on the other hand, has been connected to the writer of the letter of Jude. That text starts out with the assertion that it is being written by “Judas brother of James.” In this case, “brother of” is explicitly stated in the text. However, this letter is generally dated to the early part of the 2nd century, making it far too late to have come from a disciple of Jesus, and the writer even refers to the disciples in the third person (“…remember what the apostles of our Lord Jesus foretold…”).

And just to make it a bit more confusing, he is referred to in Catholic circles as St. Jude – to ensure you don’t confuse him with Judas Iscariot.

So now it’s Lebbaeus Thaddaeus Judas James Jude.

I hope you’ll forgive me if I’m skeptical.

CONCLUSION

Many scholars over the years have argued that the Gospel depictions of Jesus surrounded by an inner circle of twelve disciples is likely legendary. They point out that twelve was a sacred number to ancient Jews, a number strongly associated with God, representing the original twelve tribes of Israel, the original Jewish patriarchs who fathered God’s people. It would be easy to see how Jewish followers of Jesus may have begun to imagine an inner circle of twelve disciples, twelve men symbolizing the original Hebrew fathers, twelve men representing the new covenant God was making with humanity, twelve patriarchs going out into the world to father a whole new flock of God’s people.

Such arguments draw evidence from the points I have outlined above. While most of the names of the twelve disciples are generally agreed upon among our earliest sources, there is a clear sense of variation in the earliest oral and textual traditions that informed our existing documents. No fewer than five of the twelve disciples have name variations among our sources. At least three of those twelve have names that are explicitly opposed from text to text. One disciple has a different name or a name variation in all four sources he is mentioned in, and has been given a fifth name by Church tradition.

Whether Jesus actually had twelve disciples is ultimately impossible to prove one way or the other. My personal belief is that the number twelve is probably a later development (although fairly “early” in the post-resurrection Christian movement), and Jesus likely had a varying number of “inner circle” disciples that traveled with him throughout his ministry, including both men and women. Some were there among his closest companions for most of the time – Peter, Andrew, James, John, Mary, perhaps Thomas and Philip. Others may have come and gone – a Levi here, a Bartholomew there, a Judas here, a Salome or Joanne or Nathanael there. Very good arguments have been made suggesting that the entire character of Judas Iscariot is legendary, but I am undecided on that particular issue. I may share that argument in a later essay.

My personal feelings aside, the textual evidence suggests strongly that even the earliest Christians weren’t quite sure about the existence of the twelve, or were at the very least in disagreement about who they were.

The Epistle of Jude

INTRODUCTION

The Epistle of Jude is the last letter in the Christian New Testament, wedged between 3 John and Revelation. Only 25 verses in length, it is written not as a letter to a specific person, but rather to Christians in general. Clearly the author’s intent was that his text would be read and copied and passed from congregation to congregation. It may well be that the author himself made numerous copies from the start, sending them to all the churches he knew.

THE WRITER’S IDENTITY

The writer identifies himself as “Judas” – Ioudas in Greek, which is from the Hebrew name Yehuwdah (Judah). That our modern Bibles call him “Jude” is simply a tradition borne out of an effort to differentiate the writer of this letter from Judas Iscariot, the man who is the betrayer of Jesus in the four Gospels. In fact, the writer of the letter of Jude, and the betrayer Judas Iscariot, had identical names.

In addition to identifying himself as Judas, he also calls himself a servant of Jesus and a brother of James. It seems a reasonably certain fact that Jesus had a brother named James, who went on to become a prominent figure in the early Christian church, specifically as head of the Church at Jerusalem – home base for Christianity, as it were. The Epistle of James in the New Testament is traditionally attributed to him. Any religious reference by a 1st century Christian to “James” could well be referring to James the brother of Jesus. Therefore, in noting that his brother is James, the writer of Jude may also be claiming kinship to Jesus.

Both Mark and Matthew refer to Jesus’ brothers, and both include a James and a Judas. This may seem to support the idea that the writer of Jude was, in fact, Jesus’ brother. However, Church tradition has generally attributed this text to a different person – the disciple known as St. Jude (hence the name of the letter). St. Jude the disciple is referred to as “Judas, brother of James” in the Gospel of Luke. However, only Luke and John mention this disciple. The list of 12 in Mark and Matthew contains no “Judas, brother of James” as a disciple of Jesus. Instead, Judas is replaced in these two Gospels with a disciple known as Lebbaeus Thaddaeus. Traditionally, the Church has simply argued that Judas, brother of James, and Lebbaeus Thaddaeus were one and the same. Other than contradicting lists between Luke and the other Gospels, however, there is no evidence to support this assertion. Furthermore, the English translation “Judas, brother of James,” is probably inaccurate, as the original Greek grammatical context actually calls this Judas the son of James. Since the writer of Jude definitely calls himself a brother, and not a son, of James, it would appear that St. Jude and the writer of the Epistle of Jude cannot be the same person.

Most scholars in the modern world suggest that if the writer of Jude was attempting to call himself Judas the brother of James and Jesus, or if he was claiming to be St. Jude the disciple, then he was probably writing pseudonymously – that is, claiming to be someone else for the purpose of sounding authoritative. This is known to have been extremely common especially in the first few centuries of Christian history. Even Paul, the earliest New Testament writer, warns about people writing forged letters in his name (although this warning, ironically enough, comes in a letter than many scholars believe was, in fact, a forgery). On the other hand, it is not entirely clear that the writer of Jude was claiming to be Judas the brother of James and Jesus or St. Jude the disciple. He doesn’t identify himself as one of the 12, after all, and he certainly doesn’t claim to be Jesus’ brother. It may be that he was just an anonymous Judas, who had a brother named James, and therefore referred to himself as such. This, however, would cast doubt on the authority of the text itself, and there can be no question that the early Church councils of the 4th century, who ultimately decided on which texts to include in the canon, included Jude out of the belief that it came from St. Jude the disciple, and was therefore authoritative.

Such is the tenuous nature of the origins and authority of the texts we call Scripture.

TEXTUAL STYLE

As for the letter itself, many scholars have noted the chiastic form of the text. “Chiastic” writing is a poetic form of writing wherein the wording of successive phrases is reversed: “He climbed up the hill, and up the hill climbed she.” In its more complex form, a succession of entire topics will be followed, and then reversed. Outlined, it may look something like this: A, B, C, D, C, B, A.

Scholars have argued that Jude is written chiastically, with five opening sections, a pinnacle, and five closing sections that reverse the five opening sections.

A1. Assurance for the Christian.
B1. The Believer and the Faith.
C1. Apostates Described.
D1. Apostasy in Old Testament history.
E1. Apostates in the Supernatural Realm.

F. An Ancient Trio of Apostates.

E2. Apostates in the Natural Realm.
D2. Apostasy in Old Testament prophecy.
C2. Apostates Described.
B2. The Believer and the Faith.
A2. Assurance for the Christian.

(Source: Coder, S. Maxwell, “Jude: The Acts of the Apostates.” Chicago, Moody Press, 1958, p. 6.)

WARNINGS AGAINST FALSE TEACHERS

After identifying himself, the writer of Jude opens his short letter with a warning to Christians about false teachers, a problem that seems to have become epidemic by the start of the 2nd century when the writer of Jude was probably composing his letter.

By this time, Christianity had spread far enough that many people in many different areas were teaching and practicing varying forms of Christianity, some of which were so different as to almost be separate religions. Debates raged among these congregations about the nature of Jesus, the nature of God, Jesus’ relationship to God, the meaning of Jesus’ life and death, the meaning of the resurrection, which apostolic tradition was primary, and so on. In short, all the things that many Christians are still debating and discussing today!

In verse 4 of his letter, Jude says: “For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.”

To a modern reader, this may seem to be a simple reference to an unbeliever – a non-Christian. However, taken in its historical context, it is a clear reference to a style of early Christian faith known as Docetism.

DOCETISM

Docetism was a fairly widespread and popular form of Christian practice in the first three centuries of the common era, and was ultimately outlawed as heretical by the Church councils of the 4th century. It involved the belief that Jesus had not really been human, but had instead simply been a spirit who only appeared human. This belief was based on two things: first, the idea that the “flesh,” that is, humanity, was fallen and sinful and beneath God; second, the idea that Jesus was God. If Jesus was God, and if humanity was beneath God, then God could not have become a human being, because the divine cannot become un-divine, the supernatural cannot become natural. Therefore, Jesus must have simply been the spirit of God appearing as a human. This naturally led to different ideas about Jesus’ death and resurrection as well. Jesus had only appeared to suffer and die on the cross. In fact, as the perfect spirit of God, he had not suffered and died at all, as that is only something that happens to human beings.

This may seem outrageous to any modern self-respecting Christian, but that is only because we now have 1600 years of post-Constantine Christian history behind us. As I noted above, throughout the first few hundred years of Christianity, Docetism was very common and widespread among Christian believers. Historians such as Charles Freeman have even argued that Docetic forms of Christianity constituted the primary form of Christian belief throughout most of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. The enormous time and effort spent by New Testament writers and early Church fathers to counter Docetic beliefs testify to its popularity among average Christians.

But this very tendency among the New Testament writers to denounce Docetism is one that may offer an interesting clue into the mindset of the earliest Christians and how they viewed Jesus.

JESUS: HUMAN OR DIVINE?

I have already noted that Docetists believed that Jesus had been God. It was Jesus’ humanity that Docetists denied, not his divinity. So when New Testament writers such as Jude referred to Docetists as people who “deny Jesus Christ,” they were suggesting that a denial of Jesus’ humanity constituted a denial of Jesus. For these New Testament writers, Jesus’ humanity was an incontrovertible truth; to deny it was not only absurd, but even heretical.

Yet these same New Testament writers rarely, if ever, refer to Jesus and God being one and the same – something that was foundational to Docetic belief. Instead, these Christians believed that Jesus’ divinity was a phenomenon that was bestowed upon Jesus upon his resurrection from the dead. Paul says this explicitly in the first chapter of his letter to the Romans: Jesus Christ was “declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead” (1:4). Thus, Jesus was a human man, “born of a woman” as Paul says in Galatians 4:4, who became divine – the Son of God – by his resurrection.

In this context, it is easy to understand why writers such as Jude viewed a denial of Jesus’ humanity, and a suggestion that Jesus and God were one and the same, to be heretical – to be equal to “deny[ing] Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.” The Trinity doctrine of the 4th century, which attempted to connect Docetic beliefs about Jesus’ divinity with Orthodox beliefs about Jesus’ humanity, was still 200 years in the future for the writer of Jude, who would no doubt have viewed the Trinity doctrine with the same level of suspicion with which he viewed Docetism.

APOCRYPHAL IMAGES

The writer of Jude devotes about half his letter to berating the Docetists, calling them, among other things: “clouds without rain,” “autumn trees, without fruit and uprooted, twice dead,” and “wandering stars for whom blackest darkness has been reserved forever.”

In his diatribe against Docetism, however, there are several curious references that would no doubt confuse the average Christian reader. These include:

Verse 6: And the angels who did not keep their positions of authority but abandoned their own home – these he has kept in darkness, bound with everlasting chains for judgment on the great Day.

Verse 9: But even the archangel Michael, when he was disputing with the devil about the body of Moses, did not dare to bring a slanderous accusation against him, but said, “The Lord rebuke you!”

Verses 14-15: Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied about these men: “See, the Lord is coming with thousands upon thousands of his holy ones to judge everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of all the ungodly acts they have done in the ungodly way, and of all the harsh words ungodly sinners have spoken against him.”

What is the writer of Jude talking about in these passages? Angels bound in everlasting chains? A dispute over the body of Moses between the archangel Michael and Satan? A prophet named Enoch? These are stories and references that certainly do not appear anywhere else in the Bible, so just what is Jude referring to?

In fact, Jude is quoting from, and referring to, apocryphal books that are not actually included in the Christian canon of Scripture.

The Epistle of Jude is unique in the New Testament as being the only book that directly quotes another religious text that is not found in the Bible.

THE BOOK OF ENOCH

Verses 6, 14, and 15 come from a piece of Jewish apocryphal literature known as the Book of Enoch. This book has an interesting history. Written in five sections, like a 5-act play, it appears to be a conglomeration of earlier texts, which themselves were no doubt based on older story-telling traditions. Most scholars think the stories originated in the 2nd and 3rd centuries B.C.E., and were put together into what we know as the Book of Enoch during the late 1st century B.C.E. – that is, perhaps 50 years or less before the birth of Christ. Some historians date at least one section of Enoch as late as the 1st century C.E., into the Christian era. The stories claim to be written by Enoch, who is named obliquely in the Old Testament as one of the ancestors of Adam (the 7th generation after Adam, as noted by the writer of Jude). They entail visions Enoch was shown as he toured heaven and hell.

This book was very popular among both Jews and early Jewish Christians, and continued to be influential in Christian circles well into the Middle Ages. It was clearly considered authoritative by the writer of the Epistle of Jude, and its influences are seen throughout other New Testament texts such as 1 Peter and Revelation. Early Church fathers such as Tertullian and Iranaeus believed it to be authentic, and it is referenced as authoritative in several non-canonical early Christian writings such as the Epistle of Barnabas. Even much later, its influences are seen widely in Dante’s famous work “The Divine Comedy” – which itself has become a much stronger source for modern concepts of hell and damnation than anything contained in the actual New Testament. To this day, the Book of Enoch is considered canonical by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, which also claims to have the original copy written by Enoch himself (incidentally, this church also claims to have in its possession the Ark of the Covenant).

However, outside of Ethiopia, the text is not considered authoritative by any modern Christian denomination, and was rejected by the 4th century councils who created the Christian Bible. The primary reasons the book was rejected included its ambiguous and certainly pseudonymous origin, and the fact that it includes scenes that were too vicious and outrageous even by 4th century standards (fallen angels with horse-sized penises having sex with human beings, God slaughtering children born of fornication, etc.).

For this reason, inclusion of the Epistle of Jude into the Christian canon was met with much debate in the 4th century Christian councils. How could the Church include a text in its canon which quoted another text that had been justifiably rejected from the canon? If the Book of Enoch was not authoritative, how could the Epistle of Jude be authoritative, considering that it quoted the Book of Enoch?

THE ASSUMPTION OF MOSES

To compound these matters, the Book of Enoch was not the only non-canonical work referenced by the writer of Jude. Verse 9, quoted above, which references a story about the archangel Michael in a dispute with Satan over Moses’ body, comes from another work of Jewish apocrypha called The Assumption of Moses. This text is a bit harder to pin down, as only one copy of it exists – an incomplete 6th century text discovered in the 19th century. This particular copy, in fact, does not even contain the scene referenced by the writer of Jude. It is assumed that the scene comes from the portions of the text that are missing. The only reason, in fact, that historians have long been aware that the Jude reference comes from The Assumption of Moses is because several early Church fathers made note of it in their writings.

Scholars who have studied the Moses text generally date it to the 1st century, meaning it would have been a rather “modern” text to the writer of Jude. It does not appear to have ever been considered for inclusion in any Christian canon of Scripture.

We won’t ever know with certainty exactly how the discussions played out, but the Epistle of Jude was ultimately included in the Christian canon, despite its overt references to other texts that were rejected for inclusion.

This, of course, brings up some bothersome issues – the same issues the Church councils no doubt debated heatedly in the 4th century: is Jude authoritative, despite referencing, and even quoting, non-authoritative texts?

JUDE’S DIVINE AUTHORITY

Modern evangelicals believe the Bible is the inspired and infallible Word of God. Everything in the Bible can be accepted as true and accurate representations of God’s revelation to humankind. The Bible is incapable of being wrong on anything. Yet God certainly did not fax the New Testament down from heaven (to borrow an image from Dan Brown in “The Da Vinci Code”). As I have noted, the New Testament as we know it was compiled from an array of available sources in a series of Church councils in the 4th century. Twenty-seven texts were included in the official New Testament canon, and as many or more were excluded.

As such, anyone who has faith that the Bible is the infallible, inspired, and complete Word of God must first have faith that these councils chose the right books to start with. It is a fact that the Book of Enoch and The Assumption of Moses were excluded from the canon. As such, they were deemed non-authoritative forgeries that contained unreliable information. Yet, it is also a fact that the Epistle of Jude quotes and relies heavily upon their content. As I have already noted, content from the Book of Enoch also served as a basis for content within several other New Testament texts. If the Book of Enoch and The Assumption of Moses are unreliable forgeries, does that not cast doubt on the claim of inspired infallibility for those books that rely upon them for content?

Stated a different way, if we take Jude as the inspired, infallible Word of God, we must assume that the archangel Michael had a dispute with Satan over Moses’ body. Yet this is a story that we know comes from a text rejected by the Church councils whom modern Christians believe were working on behalf of God in compiling our sacred scriptures. It would seem that we cannot have it both ways. The content referring to Michael, Satan, and Moses cannot be both authoritative and non-authoritative, inspired and forged, fallible and infallible.

It cannot be an unreliable forgery in The Assumption of Moses, but the inspired Word of God when copied into the Epistle of Jude.

THE “SCOFFERS”

After warning his readers against false prophets and “godless” men within their communities, the writer of Jude offers some words of encouragement. He reminds them that the apostles foretold that “in the last times there will be scoffers who follow their own ungodly desires” and that these people are the ones “who divide you.” The writer then encourages his listeners to stay strong in the faith as they await Jesus’ second coming.

Jude’s words here are interesting for several reasons. First, his reference to the apostles in the third person implies strongly that whoever this writer was, he was not St. Jude the disciple, nor was he attempting to forge a letter in that disciple’s name. Otherwise, why would he refer to the apostles as a group of people apparently separate from himself? This hasn’t, however, stopped Church tradition from attributing the text to St. Jude.

Second, Jude’s words in this passage help in the effort to date the text. His reference to the apostles seems to imply that they are men long dead, who foretold the events now playing out within the communities he was writing to. In fact, his phrase “in the last times there will be scoffers who follow their own ungodly desires” sounds a lot like a similar warning found in the book of 2 Peter, which of course is attributed to Peter the apostle: “In the last days scoffers will come, scoffing and following their own evil desires” (3:3b). 2 Peter, however, is regarded by most scholars to be a very late work – perhaps the latest work in the entire New Testament, written sometime in the first part of the 2nd century, and certainly not written by Peter. It may be that 2 Peter and Jude both referenced some other apostolic writing with a similar warning, or that the writer of 2 Peter – in an effort to bolster his claim to be Peter himself – borrowed the phrase from Jude, who had asserted it was an apostolic prophecy. More than likely, the texts are simply 2nd century contemporaries and were merely repeating a sentiment that was common in that time period.

Either way, the writer of Jude, like most of his fellow New Testament writers, clearly believes that he and his contemporaries are living “in the last times.” Like Paul, writing some 50 years earlier, Jude believed that the second coming of Christ was imminent, perhaps even something that would happen in his own lifetime. Paul had clearly been wrong in his own belief about this, but that did not stop later generations of Christians, like Jude, from believing the same thing. And, of course, such ideas have continued to exist in every generation of Christianity since that time. Even to this day, there are Christians who seem convinced that “signs of the times” suggest that Jesus’ return is near. There is nothing new under the sun in that regard – it is literally one of the oldest traditions in Christianity.

Another interesting phrase that comes from this passage is the one that follows the “scoffers” phrase. Jude points out that such men follow “mere natural instincts” and do not have the spirit of God. This may be a reference to Gnosticism, which was another branch of Christianity eventually deemed heretical in the 4th century.

GNOSTICISM

Related to Docetism in terms of being more mystically-oriented than Orthodox Christianity, Gnosticism asserted that the God of the Old Testament – Yahweh – was an evil god and that the real God of the universe decided to set things straight by sending Jesus as a sort of “emissary” to humanity. Jesus imparted secret knowledge to his various disciples before finally being crucified and taken back to heaven. This secret knowledge varied among Gnostic sects, but generally involved the belief that humans in their purest forms were perfect and godlike, but that worldly sin had corrupted them. The only way to attain salvation, then, was to get in touch with one’s own inner divinity, or inner light. Just how to go about this self-actualization was primarily what separated one Gnostic community from another, but in either case, Gnosticism in general was a much more mystical and personal form of Christianity than the Orthodox form, and focused far more on finding salvation for one’s self than on receiving salvation through the mercy of God.

This tendency among Gnostics to look inward for salvation rather than upward may be the idea behind Jude’s assertion that the “scoffers” were men who followed “mere natural instincts,” rather than the external spirit of God.

If this was indeed a reference to Gnosticism, then it also supports a 2nd century date for the Epistle of Jude, as Gnosticism did not really begin flourishing and spreading until about that time.

JUDE’S DOXOLOGY

The writer of Jude ends his short letter with a doxology that is perhaps one of the most beautiful from a literary standpoint in all the New Testament:

Now to him who is able to keep you from falling, and to make you stand without blemish in the presence of his glory with rejoicing, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen.

This passage demonstrates the highly literary Greek with which the entire text is composed. Such a learned style of prose may be yet another clue implying a later date (early 2nd century) for this text.

CONCLUSION

The Epistle of Jude is one that is frequently overlooked and understudied in many Christian circles. In three decades of association with various churches, I cannot remember any time ever hearing a sermon, or a Biblical reading, from this letter. This is, no doubt, due to a variety of reasons. First, the letter’s short length and non-primary authorship relegates it to second class status among the Pauls and Peters and Johns of the New Testament. Second, its content is comprised mostly of warnings against false prophets and encouragements to stay strong in the faith – topics covered in depth by other more prominent New Testament texts. Finally, its questionable authorship, and especially its references to non-Biblical content, have led to suspicion about the letter’s authority since its acceptance into the canon. Even Martin Luther and other Protestant reformers of the 16th century questioned whether or not it should remain in Protestant scriptures. This history of disputed authority, then, may also play a role in why the letter has traditionally been ignored in Christian circles.

Be that as it may, the letter, as I hope I have illustrated here, offers a great deal of insight into what was going on in the world of Christianity in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries.

The Etymology of New Testament Names

I am currently working on a short novel fictionalizing the birth of Christianity as it might really have happened, stripped of the mythology that strangles our common understanding of the event. It started as a short story, but as I have written more and studied more, I have decided that it would serve me better as a short novel. There’s too much I want to dramatize to fit it all into a short story.

In writing the book, I have decided not to use the common English names that we normally use to refer to the various main characters in the biblical stories. Thus, you won’t see names like Peter, Andrew, and Jesus in my story. Instead, in order to better ground the story in historical terms, I am using the characters’ transcribed Aramaic names. The apostle John, for instance, wasn’t really called “John.” That’s just an English version of his real Aramaic name. Aramaic, of course, does not use the Latin alphabet like English does (it was based on the Hebrew alphabet and was derived from Hebrew), so in order to write the real Aramaic names in English, I have to transcribe them into Latin characters. So while the spelling isn’t historically accurate, the way the name sounds will be as close to historical as I can get it. This involves not only researching the etymology of all the names of all the characters, but also coming up with a reasonable English spelling of the Aramaic name.

In doing this research, I’ve come across some fascinating tidbits. I’ll outline these below:

1. Jesus

As much as we identify with the name “Jesus,” this was, of course, not his real name – which sort of makes hymns like “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, sweetest name I know,” seem rather silly. If you listen to certain hymns, and listen to the way some people talk about Jesus’s name, it seems that a lot of people actually hold the name “Jesus” as somehow holy and spiritual. This sort of devotion to the name “Jesus” is reemphasized when we warn against “taking the Lord’s name in vain” or ending our prayer’s with “in Jesus’ name, a-men.” Indeed, Jesus’s name is an important and integral part of mainline Christian theology. Because of this, we easily forget and/or gloss over the fact that the enunciated name “Jesus” was not what Jesus was called. In fact, his real name doesn’t sound like “Jesus” at all. To his ears, the name “Jesus” would as been as foreign as calling him Billy or George.

In Aramaic, Jesus’s name was “Yeshua” – pronounced “yesh-wa.” That’s an English spelling, of course, but “Yeshua” is how it would have sounded to Jesus’s own ears. You can see that there is very little similarity between the two names. The interesting thing is that Jesus appears to have been named for the Old Testament figure of Joshua. Joshua was the successor of Moses, and is the one who actually led the Israelites into the Promised Land. As such, he is an important figure in Jewish history. In Hebrew, Joshua’s name was “Yehoshua.” When the Aramaic-speaking Jews of the 1st century (1,200 years after the time of Joshua) wanted to name their child for this important Jewish figure, they used the Aramaic version of the Hebrew “Yehoshua” and called their child “Yeshua.” Basically, they simply dropped the second syllable. So Jesus, then, was most likely named after the ancient Jewish military leader who led the Israelites into the Promised Land. Bearing that in mind, it is interesting that we end up calling the two figures by different names in English. The Hebrew “Yehoshua” leads us, etymologically, to “Joshua,” while the Aramaic “Yeshua” leads us to “Jesus,” despite the fact that the two names were linguistically equal.

2. Peter

Next to Jesus, Peter is probably the most important figure in the New Testament. Roman Catholics revere him as the first pope, and all Christians revere him as Jesus’s number one guy. Most biblical scholars agree that whatever the resurrection was, Peter was probably the first to recognize it and the first to spread the message to other people. If we have Jesus to thank for the message, we have Peter to thank for determining that the message was important enough to pass on after Jesus’s death.

The etymology of Peter’s name is interesting. “Peter,” as most of us familiar with biblical passages will know, was actually a nickname. His birth name was Simon – or, in Aramaic, “Shimon” (pronounced “shee-mone”). However, according to the Gospels, at some point during his ministry, Jesus gave Simon a nickname. Matthew’s gospel says that Jesus decided to call Simon “the rock” because he would be the rock upon which the church was built (thus the Roman Catholic claim to apostolic succession). This is how Simon ended up being called Peter.

The New Testament, despite describing people who were Aramaic-speaking Jews, living in Roman-controlled Palestine, was written entirely in Greek. “Peter,” then, is an English transliteration of the Greek name “Petros.” “Petros,” on the other hand, was a Greek translation of the original Aramaic nickname. In Aramaic, the word for “rock” was “keef” (again, that’s an English spelling...but it shows how the Aramaic word would have been pronounced). Thus, when Jesus decided to call Simon “the rock,” he began calling him Keepha (or Kifa, or Keefa, or any of another dozen ways you could spell it in English). The New Testament, as I said above, was written in Greek. So in a few places, the Greek writers of the New Testament transliterated “Keepha” into Greek, thus calling him “Cephas.” If you’ve ever heard of the name “Cephas” before, and wondered why that was an alternative to Peter’s name, this is why – it was a Greek transliteration of the Aramaic nickname (my grandfather had a brother named Cephas). However, in many places in the New Testament, the writers simply translated (not transliterated) the Aramaic nickname into Greek. Since “petra” is the Greek word for “rock,” they called him Petros, to denote that it was a male name. And then, from “Petros,” we transliterate it into English as “Peter.”

When you look at the etymology of this name, you begin to realize that “Peter” is probably the most nonsensical choice – historically speaking – of names to call this apostle. As illustrated above, it is a transliteration of a Greek translation of an original Aramaic nickname. It would make a lot more sense to simply call him “Petros,” using the translated Greek name that is most often used in the original language of the New Testament, call him “Keepha” in order to stick to the actual Aramaic name, or, at the very least, translate the name from Aramaic directly into English, instead of first going through Greek.

Of course, if we did that, then the father of the Catholic Church, and Jesus’s closest apostle, would be Pope Rocky.

3. Bartholomew

Bartholomew is one of the lesser known and lesser illustrated apostles in the New Testament. Other than being one of Jesus’s named apostles, very little is known of him or his life. In Aramaic, his name was “Bartolmay” – or, more accurately “bar-Tolmay.” That name literally means “Son of Ptolemy.” This was the form 1st century Jews used for their surnames. Jesus’s full name, for instance, would have been “Yeshua bar-Yosef.” In other words, Bartholomew is referred to in the New Testament only by his last name, for some reason. Perhaps it’s a situation similar to ones we have today – some people, for whatever reason, get called by their last name more than their first name. I have a friend who, to this day, I call almost exclusively by his last name. It just fits him. Perhaps that was the case with the apostle Bartholomew. Either way, its curious that we don’t ever get a clear picture of what Bartholomew’s first name was.

In the Synoptic Gospels – that is, Matthew, Mark, and Luke – Bartholomew is listed as one of the 12 disciples. Additionally, most every other reference to him in those gospels always has him paired with the apostle Philip. Thus, we have a lot of references to “Philip and Bartholomew.” Apparently they were bosom buddies – maybe even relatives – who both decided to follow Jesus around Galilee, but tended to stick together. In the Gospel of John, however, there is no reference to Bartholomew. This, by itself, is not necessarily noteworthy, as John never gives a complete list of the apostles, and there are several others who are never mentioned as well. However, there are a couple of references to someone who appears to be an apostle, and whose name is Nathaniel. There are no references to an apostle called Nathaniel in any of the Synoptic Gospels. The interesting thing is that John’s references to Nathaniel always pair him with Philip. Thus, stories about “Philip and Nathaniel.” This leads many scholars to think that “Nathaniel” may have been the first name of the apostle Bartholomew. If this is true, it means that Bartholomew’s Aramaic name was something like “Natanel bar-Tolmay” – that is, “Nathaniel, son of Ptolemy.”

4. Andrew

Andrew is noted in the gospels to be the younger brother of Simon Peter. Together, Peter and Andrew were fishermen in Capernaum, and both were called by Jesus to be apostles. The New Testament writers – writing, of course, in Greek – called Andrew “Andreas.” “Andrew,” then, is simply our English transliteration of the Greek name “Andreas.” However, it is almost certain that Andrew’s real name was not “Andreas” – a 1st century Palestinian peasant Jew, with a brother given a good Jewish name (“Shimon”), would almost certainly not have been given a Greek name. So while it is possible that Andrew’s real name was the Greek “Andreas,” it is unlikely. The problem, however, is that scholars apparently don’t know what the equivalent Aramaic name would have been for Andrew. I don’t know if this is due to etymological discrepancies with the Greek name “Andreas,” or some other reason, but it appears that his real Aramaic name has been lost to history. As such, unless I can do some more research and uncover something, Andrew will be the only character in my story whose Greek equivalent name is used, as opposed to an Aramaic name.

5. Judas Iscariot

There is a lot that can be said about Judas, even down to whether or not he was a real historical figure or a literary construct used in the Gospels to represent the Jewish people as a whole, but none of that is relevant to this discussion. Judas’s name in Aramaic was “Yehuda,” and it was a name that was basically equivalent to the name of the Jewish nation. It would be like someone in the United States being named Americus, or a British person being named Britannia (this, along with a number of other clues, is one of the reasons some scholars postulate that Judas was not a real person, but rather a metaphorical representation of the Jewish nation – that is, those who betrayed Jesus – thus, the derogatory idea of the Jews as “Christ-killers”).

The more confusing name is the surname – “Iscariot.” No one is quite sure exactly what this means. In 1st century Palestine, Jews didn’t just have random surnames that held no relevant meaning, the way people may have surnames now that don’t necessarily hold any relevance. The surname for a 1st century Palestinian Jew was a means of saying who they were, who their father was, what group or profession they belonged to, or what town they lived in. Thus, you have surnames like that of Bartholomew – i.e., “son of” somebody – or you might have surnames that indicated the place the person was from – for example, “Saul of Tarsus” or “Mary Magdalene” (the latter meaning that her name was Mary and she was a Magdalene – that is, from the town of Magdala). In the case of Judas Iscariot, historians and scholars are divided on just what “Iscariot” refers to.

There is a brief reference in the Old Testament to a Jewish town called “Karioth.” No one knows exactly where this town might have been, and other than one brief reference in the Old Testament, it is otherwise unknown to history or archaeology. It is not believed to have still been in existence by the 1st century. However, some scholars have postulated that perhaps Judas was from Karioth, or that his family was historically from this town, and thus “Iscariot” is a bastardization of that town’s name.

Still others look toward a 1st century group of zealots known as the “iscarii” (“iscarii” means something like “dagger-man”). The iscarii were a group of extremist Jews who were intent on using terrorist tactics to drive the Romans out of the Promised Land. They engaged in everything from inciting rebellions to committing political assassinations. They were basically 1st century Palestine’s version of the PLO or the IRA. The iscarii, however, were not known to be in existence in Roman Palestine until the 40’s or 50’s C.E. That would have made it impossible for the historical Judas – who, we are told, committed suicide shortly after Jesus’s death in the early ‘30’s – to have been a member of the iscarii. Despite that, many scholars believe that this is the basis of the name “Iscariot,” and that either the iscarii, or some related group, were around earlier than we previously thought, or that perhaps the betrayal and suicide stories surrounding Judas were not true, and perhaps Judas, later in life, became part of the iscarii. If that were the case, it would mean that when the gospel writers were writing their stories many decades later, they were drawing on several layers of common knowledge and mythology – that is, they describe Judas as killing himself in the 30’s C.E., but still use his surname “Iscariot,” even though that wouldn’t have been a valid surname for him until long after his supposed suicide. Still other scholars suggest that “Iscariot” – derived from “iscarii” – might have simply been used by the New Testament writers as a derogatory reference – suggesting that Judas, the man who betrayed Jesus, was like a terrorist or extremist. In my opinion, that is probably the most reasonable conclusion.

One final, interesting point is the case of Simon the Zealot and Judas (or Jude) the Zealot. Simon the Zealot is the name of another of Jesus’s disciples about whom very little is known, and Judas the Zealot is another name for the apostle we know as James the Lesser, or St. Jude. The Zealots in 1st century Palestine were related to the iscarii, but were not necessarily assassins or terrorists. They were simply intent on driving the Romans out of the Promised Land, but not necessarily through violence (although this may have been part of their efforts as well). Some suggest that “Judas Iscariot” is simply another name or reference to either Simon the Zealot or, more likely, Judas the Zealot. This, of course, is rejected strongly by many Christian theologians, as it would imply that Jesus’s betrayer was the same person as the apostle James the Lesser, whom the church venerates as a saint.

Either way, there is no scholarly consensus on exactly what “Iscariot” refers to. In her novel “Mary, Called Magdalene,” writer Margaret George opts for the “iscarii” theory surrounding Judas’s name, and paints Judas as an assassin and Jewish zealot who falls under the sway of Jesus’s teachings about love and peace.

In my story, Judas is going to play an entirely different role, one which might make traditional believers bristle, or at least roll their eyes. I won’t give it away entirely, but I am developing Judas’s character more in line with the recently translated Gospel of Judas, which paints Judas as a confidant and conspirator with Jesus. It suggests Jesus actually approached Judas and asked him to betray him to the authorities, in order to fulfill his mission, and that Judas, despite knowing that it would make him a traitor in history, agreed to do it, in order to help Jesus do God’s work. I am not necessarily going with that specific route for my depiction of Judas, but I am basing my depiction of Judas on the idea that perhaps Judas wasn’t the evil betrayer of Christ that traditional Christian theology says he was. Perhaps there were other reasons why Judas became notorious to later Christian communities, unrelated to any betrayal of Jesus.

In summary, the important thing to remember from all these etymological discussions is that “Jesus’s precious name” wasn’t really “Jesus,” and his central apostle, the father of Christianity and the Catholic Church’s first pope, was named Rocky – you know, like the boxer.