Jesus of Nazareth: What He Wanted, Who He Was

As we have seen, Jesus used a striking and clearly defined symbolic action in choosing twelve from a larger group of disciples, making them an eloquent sign of the gathering of the eschatological people of the twelve tribes. He “created” them (Mark 3:14). They represent eschatological Israel, which begins with the group of twelve and centers on Jesus and the Twelve.

Alongside the Twelve, however, there were a larger number of disciples. The Twelve live and act in the midst of this larger circle of disciples. Therefore we must say that the Twelve are disciples, but not all disciples are part of the group of the Twelve. That needs to be explicitly emphasized, because in Matthew’s gospel it could seem that the Twelve and the group of disciples were identical. Matthew speaks a number of times very clearly of “the twelve disciples” (10:1; 11:1; 20:17; cf. 28:16). Did he mean to restrict the group of disciples to the Twelve? Possibly, but it is not clear what his intent was.

In contrast, the situation is very obvious in Mark. For him the group of disciples extends beyond the Twelve. Mark 2:13-14 reports how Jesus called the toll collector Levi to be his disciple. Thereupon, Levi made a great banquet in his house and invited his professional colleagues and many of his friends and acquaintances. Mark then remarks in this connection: “And as he sat at dinner in Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were also sitting with Jesus and his disciples—for there were many who followed him” (Mark 2:15).⁴ This note makes clear how Mark imagined the situation. First: there is a larger group of disciples from among whom later (Mark 3:13-14) the Twelve are drawn. Second: one becomes a disciple by “following” Jesus.

Luke formulates still more clearly. After he has told how Jesus, on the mountain, has called the Twelve out of a larger crowd of disciples (Luke 6:12-13), he introduces the Sermon on the Plain (corresponding to Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount) as follows: “He came down with them and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases” (Luke 6:17-18). The theological scenery resembles the arrangement of the audience of Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount (Matt 4:23–5:1), but Luke allots space to Jesus’ listeners even more carefully than Matthew does: first, there is the group of the Twelve, just chosen, then around them “the great crowd” of the other disciples, and finally, in a still broader circle, the whole multitude of people. Luke thus thinks there was a large crowd of disciples.

This is clear also from the fact that, besides the mission of the Twelve in 9:1-2, Luke a little later, in 10:1, tells of still another mission of seventy-two disciples.⁵ This mission could, of course, rest on a misunderstanding on the part of Luke.⁶ But it may be that with the number seventy-two he was not so far from the actual size of the group of disciples.

Moreover, there is, of course, much to commend the idea that the boundaries of the group of disciples were fluid. The number of the Twelve was fixed, but the number of disciples shifted. The Fourth Gospel tells how one day a large number of disciples took offense at Jesus and left him (John 6:60-71).

We are in the fortunate position of having at least a few names of disciples who were not part of the Twelve but seem to have belonged to the broader group of disciples: Joseph Barsabbas (Acts 1:23); Cleopas (Luke 24:18); Nathanael (John 1:45; 21:2); Mary of Magdala (Mark 15:40-41); Mary, the [daughter?/mother?] of James the Younger (Mark 15:40); Mary, the mother of Joses (Mark 15:40); Salome (Mark 15:40-41); Joanna, the wife of Chuza (Luke 8:1-3); Susanna (Luke 8:1-3); and for a time also Matthias, who then was taken into the group of the Twelve in place of Judas Iscariot (Acts 1:23, 26). The list shows that Jesus’ group of disciples also included women. That was remarkable in an Eastern context and was anything but ordinary. It appears that here Jesus deliberately violated social standards of behavior.

So much, then, about the existence of a broader circle of disciples around the Twelve! In our context it is important to note that Jesus apparently did not attempt to gain disciples at any cost. Instead, he issued warnings: “As they were going along the road, someone said to him, ‘I will follow you wherever you go.’ And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’” (Luke 9:57-58).