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Only in reference to the most distinguished of the Apostles have any trustworthy accounts reached us. James the brother of John, at an early period, in A.D. 44, suffered a martyr’s death at Jerusalem. Peter was obliged by this persecution to quit Jerusalem for a time. Inclination and his special calling marked him out as the Apostle of the Jews (Gal. ii. 7–9). His ministry outside of Palestine was exercised, according to 1 Pet. i. 1, in the countries round about the Black Sea, and, according to chap. v. 13, extended to Babylon. The legend that, contemporaneously with the beheading of Paul, he suffered death by crucifixion under Nero at Rome (John xxi. 18, 19), is doubtful; and it is also questionable whether he ever went to Rome, while the story of his having down to the time of his death been Bishop of Rome for twenty-five years is wholly fabulous. John, according to the tradition of the church, took up Asia Minor as his special field of labour after it had been deprived of its first Apostle by the martyr death of Paul, fixing his residence at Ephesus. At the head of the mother church of Jerusalem stood James the Just, the brother of the Lord. He seems never to have left Jerusalem, and was stoned by the Jews between A.D. 63–69. Regarding the rest of the Apostles and their fellow-workers we have only legendary traditions of an extremely untrustworthy description, and even these have come down to us in very imperfect and corrupt forms.

§ 16.1. The Roman Episcopate of Peter.—The tradition that Peter, after having for some years held the office of bishop at Antioch, became first Bishop of Rome, holding the office for twenty-five years (A.D. 42–67), and suffered martyrdom at the same time with Paul, had its origin in the series of heretical apocryphal writings, out of which sprang, both the romance of the Clementine Homilies and Recognitions (§ 28, 3), and the Ebionite Acts of Peter; but it attained its complete form only at the end of the fourth century, after it had been transplanted into the soil of the church tradition through the Acta Petri et Pauli (§ 32, 6). What chiefly secured currency and development to this tradition was the endeavour, ever growing in strength in Rome, to vindicate on behalf of the Roman Episcopate as the legitimate successor and heir to all the prerogatives alleged to have been conferred on Peter in Matt. xvi. 18, a title to primacy over all the churches (§ 34, 8; 46, 3 ff.). But that Peter had not really been in Rome as a preacher of the gospel previous to the year A.D. 61, when Paul came to Rome as a prisoner, is evident from the absence of any reference to the fact in the Epistle to the Romans, written in A.D. 58, as well as in the concluding chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. According to the Acts, Peter in A.D. 44 lay in prison at Jerusalem, and according to Gal. ii., he was still there in A.D. 51. Besides, according to the unanimous verdict of tradition, as expressed by Irenæus, Eusebius, Rufinus, and the Apostolic Constitutions, not Peter, but Linus, was the first Bishop of Rome, and it is only in regard to the order of his successors, Anacletus and Clement, that any real uncertainty or discrepancy occurs. This, indeed, by no means prevents us from admitting an appearance of Peter at Rome resulting in his martyrdom. But the testimonies in favour thereof are not of such a kind as to render its historical reality unquestionable. That Babylon is mentioned in 1 Pet. v. 13 as the place where this Epistle was composed, can scarcely be used as a serious argument, since the supposition that Babylon is a symbolical designation of Rome as the centre of anti-Christian heathenism, though quite conceivable and widely current in the early church, is not by any means demonstrable. Toward the end of the first century, Clement of Rome relates the martyrdom of Peter as well as of Paul, but he does not even say that it took place at Rome. On the other hand, clear and unmistakable statements are found in Dionysius of Corinth, about A.D. 170, then in Caius of Rome, in Irenæus and Tertullian, to the effect that Peter and Paul exercised their ministry together and suffered martyrdom together at Rome. These statements, however, are interwoven with obviously false and fabulous dates to such a degree that their credibility is rendered extremely doubtful. Nevertheless they prove this much, that already about the end of the second century, the story of the two Apostles suffering martyrdom together at Rome was believed, and that some, of whom Caius tells us, professed to know their graves and to have their bones in their possession.

§ 16.2. The Apostle John.—Soon after the death of Paul, the Apostle John settled in Ephesus, and there, with the temporary break caused by his exile to Patmos (Rev. i. 9), he continued to preside over the church of Asia Minor down to his death in the time of Trajan (A.D. 98–117). This rests upon the church tradition which, according to Polycrates of Ephesus (Eus., Hist. Eccl., v. 24) and Irenæus, a scholar of Polycarp’s (Eus., iv. 14), was first set forth during the Easter controversies (§ 37, 2) in the middle of the second century by Polycarp of Smyrna, and has been accepted as unquestionable through all ages down to our own. According to Irenæus (Eus., iii. 18), his exile occurred under Domitian; the Syrian translation of the Apocalypse, which was made in the sixth century, assigned it to the time of Nero. But seeing that, except in Rev. i. 11, neither in the New Testament scriptures, nor in the extant writings and fragments of the Church Fathers of the second century before Irenæus, is a residence of the Apostle John at Ephesus asserted or assumed, whereas Papias (§ 30, 6), according to Georgius Hamartolus, a chronicler of the 9th cent., who had read the now lost work of Papias, expressly declares that the Apostle John was slain “by Jews” (comp. Matt. xx. 23), which points to Palestine rather than to Asia Minor, modern critics have denied the credibility of that ecclesiastical tradition, and have attributed its origin to a confusion between the Apostle John and a certain John the Presbyter, with whom we first meet in the Papias-Fragment quoted in Eusebius as μαθητὴς τοῦ κυρίου. Others again, while regarding the residence of the Apostle at Ephesus as well established, have sought, on account of differences in style standpoint and general mode of thought in the Johannine Apocalypse on the one hand, and the Johannine Gospel and Epistles on the other hand, to assign them to two distinct μαθηταὶ τοῦ κυρίου of the same name, and by assigning the Apocalypse to the Presbyter and the Gospel and Epistles to the Apostle, they would in this way account for the residence at Ephesus. This is the course generally taken by the Mediation theologians of Schleiermacher’s school. The advanced liberal critics of the school of Baur assign the Apocalypse to the Apostle and the Gospel and Epistles to the Presbyter, or else instead of the Apostle assume a third John otherwise unknown. Conservative orthodox theology again maintains the unity of authorship of all the Johannean writings, explains the diversity of character discernible in the different works by a change on the part of the Apostle from the early Judæo-Christian standpoint (Gal. ii. 9), which is still maintained in the Apocalypse, to the ideal universalistic standpoint assumed in the Gospel and the Epistles, and is inclined to identify the Presbyter of Papias with the Apostle. Even in Tertullian we meet with the tradition that under Nero the Apostle had been thrown into a vat of boiling oil, and in Augustine we are told how he emptied a poisoned cup without suffering harm. It is a charming story at least that Clement of Alexandria tells of the faithful pastoral care which the aged Apostle took in a youth who had fallen so far as to become a bandit chief. Of such a kind, too, is the story told of the Apostle by Jerome, how in the extreme weakness of old age he had to be carried into the assemblies of the congregation, and with feeble accents could only whisper, Little children, love one another. According to Irenæus, when by accident he met with the heretic Cerinthus (§ 27, 1) in the bath, he immediately rushed out to avoid any contact with him.

§ 16.3. James, the brother of the Lord.—The name of James was borne by two of the twelve disciples of Jesus: James, the son of Zebedee and brother of John, who was put to death by the command of Herod Agrippa I. (Acts xii. 2) about A.D. 44, and James, son of Alphæus, about whom we have no further information. A third James, designated in Gal. i. 19 the brother of the Lord, who according to Hegesippus (Euseb., Hist. Eccl., ii. 23) on account of his scrupulous fulfilment of the law received the title of the Just, is met with in Acts xii. 17; xv. 13; xxi. 18, and is recognised by Paul (Gal. i. 19; ii. 9–12) as the President of the church in Jerusalem. According to Hegesippus (§ 31, 7), he was from his childhood a Nazirite, and shortly before the destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews at the Passover having desired of him a testimony against Christ, and he having instead given a powerful testimony on His behalf, he was hurled down from a pinnacle of the temple, stoned, and at last, while praying for his enemies, slain by the blows of a fuller’s club. According to Josephus, however, Ananus, the high priest, after the recall of the Proconsul Festus and before the arrival of his successor Albinus, along with other men hostile to James, hastily condemned him and had him stoned, about A.D. 63. In regard to the person of this last-named James three different theories have been proposed.

1 In the ancient church, the brothers of Jesus, of whom besides James other three, Joses, Simon, and Judas, are named, were regarded undoubtedly as step-brothers of Jesus, sons of Joseph and Mary (Matt. i. 25), and even Tertullian argues from the existence of brothers of the Redeemer according to the flesh against the Docetism of the Gnostics.

2 Soon, however, it came to be felt that the idea that Joseph had conjugal intercourse with Mary after the birth of Jesus was in conflict with the ascetic tendency now rising into favour, and so to help themselves out of this embarrassment, it was assumed that the brothers of Jesus were sons of Joseph by a former wife.

3 The want of biblical foundation for this view was the occasion of its being abandoned in favour of a theory, first hinted at by Jerome, according to which the expression brothers of Jesus is to be taken in a wider sense as meaning cousins, and in this way James the brother of the Lord was identified with James the son of Alphæus, one of the twelve disciples, and the four or five Jameses named in the New Testament were reduced to two, James the son of Zebedee and James son of Alphæus. It was specially urged from John xix. 25 that James the son of Alphæus was the sister’s son of Jesus’ mother. This was done by a purely arbitrary identification of the name Clopas or Cleophas with the Alphæus of the Synoptists, the rendering of the words Μαρία τοῦ Κλωπᾶ by the wife of Clopas, and also the assumption, which is scarcely conceivable, that the sister of the mother of Jesus was also called Mary. We should therefore in this passage regard the sister of the mother of Jesus and Mary wife of Clopas as two distinct persons. In that case the wife of Alphæus may have been called Mary and have had two sons who, like two of the four brothers of Jesus, were named James and Joses (Matt. xxvii. 56; Mark xv. 40; Luke xxiv. 10); but even then, in the James here mentioned, we should meet with another James otherwise unknown, different from the James son of Alphæus in the list of the Apostles, whose name occurs in Luke xv. 16 and Acts i. 13 in the phrase Judas of James, where the genitive undoubtedly means brother of James son of Alphæus. And though in Gal. i. 19, James the brother of the Lord seems to be called an Apostle, when this is compared with Acts xiv. 14, it affords no proof that he belonged to the number of the twelve.

But the fact that the brothers of Jesus are all and always expressly distinguished from His twelve Apostles, and form a group outwardly and inwardly apart from them (Matt. xii. 46; Mark iii. 31; Luke viii. 19; John ii. 12), tells decidedly against that idea. In John vii. 3, 5, they are, at a time when James son of Alphæus and Judas brother of James were already in the Apostolate, described as unbelieving, and only subsequently to the departure of the Lord, who after His resurrection appeared to James (1 Cor. xv. 7), do we meet them, though even then distinguished from the twelve, standing in the closest fellowship with the Christian believing community (Acts i. 14; 1 Cor. ix. 5). Besides, in accordance with Matt. xxviii. 19, none of the twelve could assume the permanent presidency of the mother church, and Hegesippus not only knows of πολλοὶ Ἰάκωβοι, and so surely of more than two, but makes James enter upon his office in Jerusalem first μετὰ τῶν ἀποστόλων.

§ 16.4. The Later Legends of the Apostles.—The tradition that after the Lord’s ascension His disciples, their number having been again made up to twelve (Acts i. 13), in fulfilment of their Lord’s command (Matt. xxviii. 18), had a special region for missionary labour assigned by lot to each, and also the other tradition, according to which, before their final departure from Jerusalem, after a stay there for seven or twelve years, they drew up by common agreement rules for worship, discipline and constitution suited to the requirements of universal Christendom, took shape about the middle of the second century, and gave occasion to the origin of many apocryphal histories of the Apostles (§ 32, 5, 6), as well as apocryphal books of church order (§ 43, 4, 5). Whether any portion at all, and if so, how much, of the various contradictory statements of the apocryphal histories and legends of the Apostles about their mission fields and several fortunes can be regarded as genuine tradition descending from the Apostolic Age, must be left undecided. In any case, the legendary drapery and embellishment of casual genuine reminiscences are in the highest degree fantastic and fabulous. Ancient at least, according to Eusebius, are the traditions of Thomas having preached in Parthia, Andrew in Scythia, and Bartholomew in India; while in later traditions Thomas figures as the Apostle of India (§ 32, 5). The statement by Eusebius, supported from many ancient authorities, that the Apostle Philip exercised his ministry from Hierapolis in Phrygia to Asia Minor, originated perhaps from the confounding of the Apostle with the Evangelist of the same name (Acts xxi. 8, 9). A history of the Apostle Barnabas, attributed to John Mark, but in reality dating only from the fifth century, attaching itself to Acts xv. 39, tells how he conducted his mission and suffered martyrdom in his native country of Cyprus; while another set of legends, probably belonging to the same period, makes him the founder of the church of Milan. John Mark, sister’s son of Barnabas, who appears in Col. iv. 10; 2 Tim. iv. 11; and Philem. 24, as the fellow-labourer of the Apostle Paul, in 1 Pet. v. 13 as companion of Peter at Babylon, and, according to Papias, wrote his gospel at Rome as the amanuensis of Peter, is honoured, according to another very widely received tradition, quoted by Eusebius from a Chronicle belonging to the end of the second century, from which also Julius Africanus drew information, as the founder and first bishop of the church of Alexandria, etc., etc.