Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

Here again we begin with a philological fact: “follow” (following, etc.) appears in the gospels some eighty times, mainly in a theological sense, but never as a noun, “followership” or “discipleship” (akolouthēsis). It is always in verb form (akolouthein). That is: there is no such thing in the gospels as abstract discipleship. It is not an idea or a purely inward disposition; it exists only as a concrete, visible, tangible event.

Accordingly, we must imagine Jesus’ followers’ “discipleship” quite concretely, as “walking behind.” If you visit the Near East you can still see it: an Arab woman walks behind her husband, not alongside him. The son follows the father. The bride follows her bridegroom, the employee walks behind his employer, the student behind her teacher. And so it was, of course, in Jesus’ time also. A series of texts from the later rabbinic tradition shows that the students of the teachers of the Law walked behind their teacher, their rabbi, keeping a respectful distance. They followed him. That was simply a matter of proper deportment.

Given all that, we could suppose that the historical model for the disciples’ following was the rabbinic relationship of teacher and student—especially since the word “disciple” is based on the Greek word mathetēs, and mathetēs means nothing but student. The German word “Jünger” [disciple] rests on late Latin junior, which at the time, differently from today, also meant “student” or “pupil” or “learner.”²

The Rabbis and Their Students

Thus—according to the gospels—Jesus called “students” to follow him. Were the students he gathered around him, then, comparable to the rabbis’ students of the Law? As likely as this conclusion seems, it is inaccurate for three reasons:

First: the proper term for a rabbinic student’s entry into the Jewish house of study was not “following this or that rabbi,” but “studying (or learning) Torah.” So it is said of Rabbi Chanina ben Dosa (first c. CE) that he went to ’Arab (in upper Galilee) “to study Torah with Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai.”³ This is a stereotypical formula in rabbinic texts, and that in itself is remarkable. Mark says of Peter and Andrew not that “they came to Nazareth to study Torah with Jesus,” but “As Jesus passed along the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me and I will make you fish for people.’ And immediately they left their nets and followed him” (Mark 1:16-18).

So Simon and the others do not follow Jesus in order to learn Torah but to become fishers of people with Jesus. Discipleship, following Jesus, is not their idea, their plan, their project; they are called, against their accustomed way of life, against their life-project, probably even against their idea of what a devout life should be. This was not their own will but that of a stranger—and yet they recognized, in that stranger’s will, the will of God.

Jesus calls to discipleship. There is not a single story in the rabbinic traditions in which a rabbi called a student to follow him. The reason is very simple: a rabbinic student seeks his or her own teacher. We have a lovely saying by the scribe Yehoshua ben Perachia (first c. BCE): “Make for yourself a rabbi, acquire for yourself a friend; and judge every person in their favor.”⁴ Occasionally it is even recommended that the talmid, the scribal student, should change teachers in order to get to know other interpretations of Torah. This was quite consistent with the rabbinic system of teaching and thought. It is the principle of the Talmud that different opinions or traditions be set alongside one another. Such a thing is foreign to the New Testament. And change teachers? That would have been unthinkable where Jesus was concerned.