Holy Week: Theories That Confirm Jesus Had More Than 12 Apostles

“It is debatable that Jesus made 12 apostles among his followers,” he adds.

“There were others, even a woman.”Historian, theologian and philosopher Gerson Leite de Moraes, a professor at Mackenzie Presbyterian University, agrees.

“The word apostle seems like a useless word,” he explains.

To understand the controversy, we must try to understand what the Bible says about Jesus' apostles.

Also, it is first mentioned in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians In the first half of the 50sBefore, therefore, the Gospels.

Christianity's oldest passage contains what is known as the Kerygma, the declaration of faith made by the first Christians.

It says “Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried and resurrected on the third day, according to the scriptures. He appeared to Zeba, and then to the twelve.”

Andre Leonardo Cevitares says that there are some problems with this passage, which is why some ancient Greek versions say. “Eleven” instead of “Twelve”.

“Paul did not know there was a traitor,” he notes.

Judas Iscariot would have betrayed Jesus so that he could not be with the group after the death of the man they were following.

“There is an idea of ​​12 people. But Paul mentions it only once in his seven letters, all from the same decade,” says the historian.

Moraes believes that 12 of those who came with Jesus, given as symbols, formed the main nucleus. But he recognizes that there are problems with agreement, especially when Paul's letters are compared with the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.

“In Paul, the concept of apostle is a little more widespread. Thus, the distinctive position of the 12 in early Christianity is clear, But it is not known whether such a condition already existed when Jesus was alive“, explain.

When we read the Gospels, the four biblical books that describe the life of Jesus, the situation becomes even more complicated.

“Because only one author of the New Testament said who the 12 were,” notes Sevitarez.

“It is in the 6th chapter of Luke, which is generally dated from the 90s to the end of the first century.”

That is: it is a history already written under the “ideological pollution” of a primitive church, whether intentional or not. It's already up. His own author had not seen the stories he told.

A passage in the book of Luke reads: “When the time came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them. He named them apostles”.

“It speaks of a select group of Jesus' disciples,” explains the historian.

But how many people actually followed Jesus?

That's what Sevidares believes It was a “very small and intra-Jewish” movement.

“We are not talking about a messianic candidate who attracted crowds. “Jesus was a popular leader in Galilee and had a small number of followers,” he analysed.

These supporters, as defined by the researcher, can be called “disciples, people who have heard his messages, agreed with them and decided to be close to Jesus.”

“Mainly it operated in rural, agricultural environments,” he adds.

Yet the majority of Jesus' disciples Poor farmersA literate elite also became interested.

“This explains why from the early 1950s after the death of Jesus, the texts we have access to are in Greek and not in Aramaic. In view of the problems created by the Roman occupation, sections of the Jewish elite were a small urban elite who agreed with Jesus through an alliance with Rome.

A clue as to how many there were is found in Paul's letter to the Corinthians, where he says that after the passage where he mentions the 12, he “would have seen” Jesus as well.More than 500 brothers At the same time”.

“That is, in a certain way, Jesus had more disciples than the 12. And there is no reason not to admit it (…) There were also female disciples. Women They left part of their daily work to listen to him,” says Sevitares.

The oldest source to legitimize the existence of the 12 is Paul and he mentions the presence of other apostles. Including women.

In his letter to the Romans, from the decade of the 50s, he greets the couple as “Andronicus and Junias, my kinsmen and my comrades in captivity.”

say what Both were “great apostles and belonged to Christ before me.”

Today “there are many fundamentalists who say that Junias is the name of a man,” Moraes recalls. “But it's a girl,” he says.

Vaticanist Philip Dominguez, deputy director of the Lay Center in Rome and professor at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, commented on Mary Magdalene's central role in this central core of the Jesus movement.

“There were women who followed him, and Madalena was one of them. She is informally known as the Apostle of the Apostles. “I want to remember that Pope Francis made the Magdalene liturgy a priority just like the other apostles,” he points out.

“Today, from a liturgical perspective, it carries the same weight,” he adds.

“The account that she was sent to preach like others, is not widely called an apostle only because there is no evidence in the Gospels. But since a woman doesn't do it at that time, we can see it as a menstrual thing.”

Dominguez also emphasizes that Mary, the mother of Jesus, was another close disciple.

Historian Sevidares suggests that the idea of ​​a select committee of twelve may have existed “Lucas' Invention.”

“The book of Acts, written by Luke (which describes the first steps of the movement after the death of Jesus), created the apostolic tradition,” he explains.

“This is very important in Luke's mind, because to him it is as if Jesus sent his teaching to 12 men, and the 12 men each went to a different place in the world, bringing the teaching and the power.”

In the same book of Acts, Barnabas is also called an apostle.

“It's all tradition,” says Cevitares. “Power speech. A subtlety in establishing an elite on one side and the common people on the otherPushing vertically helps break up the horizontal.

According to Moraes, “The controversy is very interesting because studies say that the apostle was not even in the time of Jesus.”

“Perhaps this is a later added termThe hierarchy of the early church was used in a charismatic government structure,” he concludes.