Who were the twelve apostles?

Why twelve

He appointed twelve, that they might be with him, and that he might send them out to preach

Jesus had many disciples, a word that means students. From them he chose twelve, and the number was a statement. Israel had twelve tribes, descended from the twelve sons of Jacob, and Jesus promises the twelve they will sit “on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel” (Matthew 19:28). Choosing twelve said that God was gathering his whole people again. That is also why, after Judas, the eleven felt they had to fill the empty place (Acts 1:21–26). Apostle comes from the Greek apostolos, one who is sent: an envoy carrying someone else’s message.

The names

Four lists survive (Mark 3:16–19; Matthew 10:2–4; Luke 6:14–16; Acts 1:13). They always put Peter first and, in the Gospels, Judas Iscariot last, and they agree on all but one name.

1. Simon Peter. A fisherman of Capernaum, renamed Cephas, “rock” in Aramaic.
2. Andrew. Peter’s brother, in John’s Gospel the first to follow Jesus.
3. James, son of Zebedee. A fisherman, one of the inner three with Peter and John.
4. John, son of Zebedee. James’s brother; Jesus nicknamed the pair Boanerges, “Sons of Thunder” (Mark 3:17).
5. Philip. From Bethsaida, “the city of Andrew and Peter” (John 1:44).
6. Bartholomew. A family name meaning son of Talmai; tradition often makes him John’s Nathanael of Cana.
7. Matthew. The tax collector of Capernaum, called Levi in Mark and Luke.
8. Thomas. His name is Aramaic for twin, which John translates as Didymus (John 11:16).
9. James, son of Alphaeus. Almost nothing else is known about him.
10. Thaddaeus. Luke and Acts call him Judas son of James, and John knows a “Judas (not Iscariot)” (John 14:22).
11. Simon the Zealot. Zealot meant zealous: for the law, perhaps, or for revolt against Rome.
12. Judas Iscariot. The one who handed Jesus over; his end is told in How did Judas die?

Ordinary men

They were Galilean Jews, most of them working men: at least four fishermen, a tax collector who had worked for Herod Antipas, and a Zealot, two men who would once have hated each other. There were two pairs of brothers, two Simons, two Jameses and two named Judas. Peter, James and John formed an inner circle. The Gospels never hide how often the twelve misunderstood, argued on the road about who was the greatest (Mark 9:34), and ran away at the arrest: “They all left him, and fled” (Mark 14:50).

After Easter

The word apostle soon widened. Matthias was chosen by lot to replace Judas (Acts 1:26), and Paul, who never followed Jesus in Galilee, insisted he was an apostle too; see Who was Paul the Apostle? Peter led the first community in Jerusalem, and his place among the twelve is weighed in Was Peter the first pope?

Tradition gave each of the twelve a mission and, for most, a martyr’s death: Peter crucified in Rome, Andrew at Patras in Greece, Thomas in India, where the Saint Thomas Christians of Kerala still trace their church to him. John alone, the stories say, died old, at Ephesus. Most of these traditions are late. Besides Judas, the New Testament records the death of only one of the twelve: Herod Agrippa I “killed James, the brother of John, with the sword” (Acts 12:2), around AD 44.