NOPE, WRONG. GUESS AGAIN.
The first few times I read the Gospels, I was amazed, each time. Here comes this dude out of nowhere, and addresses a company of commercial fishermen at work. He says, "Follow me, and I will make you fishers of Men." Simon (later called Peter), Andrew, James, and John, drop what they're doing, and follow Jesus down the road to Capernaum.
I don't know about you, but I considered that if this happened to me, I'd look around to see if there were any cops available, or better yet, a team of mental health professionals. No way would I follow this weirdo, and I'm not so sure that I want to "fish" for men. Were Simon, Andrew, James, and John that gullible, or what?
The Gospels are arranged in the Bible according to early ideas as to the order in which they were written: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and then John. So that's the order in which I read them, and wondered how Jesus really got his first disciples. The early church scribes got at least one thing right: The Gospel of John was written last, probably many years after the first three. And we should note: it was three or four hundred years before the 27 "books" of the New Testament began to be bound together in a single volume.
I found the Gospel of John so different from the others that I was not sure it was written about the same dude. But gradually I learned that this last Gospel had been written in large part to include certain things that happened (or were said), but never made their way into the first three. One of the things it made clear is that Jesus didn't call his first disciples near the northern end of the Sea of Galilee. No, his first disciples were called when Jesus was many miles from there, at the southern end of the sea of Galilee, down by the Jordan River. And this took place many months before Jesus called these four men out of their boats.
Down by the Jordan:
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| Jesus, John, and Andrew |
( I picked this image because it portrays John the Apostle without a beard. John has always been recognized as the youngest of the Apostles and portrayed with no beard, even three years after he met Jesus. Check out paintings of the Last Supper, for example. If this is true about John, he must have been a teenager when he met Jesus.)
Who were the first disciples? For the first two disciples, check out the Gospel of John chapter one verses 35 to 39:
The next day John [the Baptist] was standing again with two of his disciples, and he looked at Jesus as he walked by and said, "Look! The Lamb of God!" The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. Jesus turned and saw them following him, and said to them, "What are you seeking?" And they said to him, "Teacher, where are you staying?" He said to them, "Come and you will see." So they came and saw where he was staying, and they stayed with him that day, for it was [already] about 4:00pm.
So who were these two young men? The writer of the Gospel says that one of them was Andrew, the brother of Simon (Peter). He leaves the other one nameless, although most scholars through the years have surmised that the second one was John the future apostle himself, the traditional author of the Gospel of John. The author remains un-named throughout the Gospel, although he does get described as "the disciple whom Jesus loved." He is also mentioned at the end of the book along with his brother James, identified only as "sons of Zebedee" (John 21:2).
Now we know the first two disciples, Andrew the son of Jonas and younger brother of Simon, and John the son of Zebedee and younger brother of James. But that day one more new disciple was brought to Jesus, as shown in John 1:40-42:
One of the two who heard John [the Baptist] speak and followed Jesus was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his own brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah." He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him and said, "So you are Simon the son of Jonas? You shall be called Peter."
Since it is not mentioned, we may guess that Peter was not a disciple of the Baptist, which is why he missed hearing "Look! The Lamb of God!" But what about James, the older brother of the Gospel writer? If he had met Jesus this same day, it is hard to fathom why that would be left out of the Gospel. In any case, James would almost certainly have met the Master when Peter invited Jesus to live in his house in Capernaum for a while. Or maybe our first guess was right after all.
But there were two more disciples to follow Jesus the very next day: Philip of Bethsaida and Nathanael of Cana. Philip would have been known to the three fishermen (Peter, Andrew, John) for all of them hail originally from Bethsaida. Nathanael son of Tholmai was a friend of Philip, who was a proficient speaker of Greek. Nathanael's name in Aramaic was Nathanael bar Tholmai, from which comes (in Greek) his other name: Bartholomew.
Now Jesus has five disciples (at least), and the first thing Jesus does is to invite them to a wedding in Cana, where his mother will be helping to supervise the servants. At the wedding Jesus picks up his four older step-brothers (from a previous marriage of Joseph) and they all go to Capernaum at the invitation of Peter.
Jesus's first move was to offer friendship. From that point forward he discipled them to the point that they trusted and believed in him. At exactly the right time, Jesus walked down the beach and invited his four fisher-men disciples to leave their occupation and follow him into the strange territory of "fishers of men."
By observing how Jesus worked, we can draw lessons for ourselves as we disciple others. Friendship is a good first step.
Post #66
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