2.40 Jesus' Disciples I: The Cabinet of Three

History in the Bible

Garry Stevens

History, Christianity, Judaism, Bible, Religion & Spirituality

4.6 • 693 Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2019

⏱️ 30 minutes

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Summary

Keynote ep: Jesus had an inner cabinet of three disciples: Simon Peter; and James and John, the sons of Zebedee. Only they have significant speaking parts. The often appear together at many significant moments, such as the Transfiguration. The rest of the disciples are ciphers. Peter is by far the pre-eminent disciple, named more often in the New Testament all the other disciples put together. He is Jesus’ devoted wombat, an impulsive, exuberant, and eminently likeable individual. But he fails when put to the test. A work attributed to him, the Apocalypse of Peter, provided all our modern images of hell. Western church fathers held that the disciple John wrote the gospel of that name, Revelation, and three letters. The Eastern church and modern scholars are dubious. James was the first disciple to be martyred, by Herod Agrippa. He is memorialised at the cathedral of Santiago de Compostela.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Gide. I'm Gary Stevens.
0:07.4	And welcome to the second series of the History in the Bible podcast.
0:13.1	More of the history in more of the books in all the Bibles.
0:19.9	Episode 2.40, Jesus Disciples Part 1, The Cabinet of 3.
0:28.1	In this episode, I take a break from the narrative to talk about the disciples.
0:33.8	We all know about the 12.
0:36.7	That English word disciple is a translation of the Greek word, Methadis, which really better
0:43.3	translates as student.
0:45.3	Sometimes I'll use the word student to translate Methades in my quotes.
0:51.3	Oddly, the word is only found in the Gospels and the book of Acts.
0:56.0	You won't find any students or disciples in any of the letters.
1:01.0	Sometimes the Gospels call the disciples Apostoloi, the word for delegates or ambassadors in Greek.
1:10.0	The Gospel of Luke says that Jesus appointed another 70 disciples word for delegates or ambassadors in Greek.
1:17.2	The Gospel of Luke says that Jesus appointed another 70 disciples, or perhaps 72.
1:19.2	The manuscripts differ.
1:24.8	No one has paid the least attention to these others, so I'll just stick with the 12th.
1:32.2	If you don't pay close attention to the Gospels, you'd get the impression that Jesus had 12 disciples from the get-go.
1:34.8	Now, as I recounted in episode 2.36, Jesus in Galilee, at the beginning of his ministry,
1:43.1	Jesus has only four loyal disciples. According to
1:47.0	the Synoptic Gospels, they are the brothers Peter and Andrew. And the brothers James and John.
1:53.9	In the Gospel of John, on the other hand, they are the brothers Peter and Andrew, and Nathaniel
2:00.7	and Philip.
	...

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