Читать книгу The Story of Jesus - Roy A. Harrisville - Страница 16

Similarities and differences exist in the Gospel narratives of the calling of the disciples. In Mark and Matthew, Simon and Andrew, James and John, in Luke, Simon, James and John are first to be summoned. All three Synoptists record Jesus’ calling of Levi (Matthew), all three give a list of the twelve, including Thaddaeus in Mark and Matthew, Judas of James in Luke, and end with Judas Iscariot. The same list as appears in Luke’s Gospel appears also in his second volume (Acts 1:13). While Mark and Matthew describe the other Simon as a Galilean or Canaanite, Luke describes him as the zealot. In John, the calling of the disciples is more complicated. First, Peter nnd Andrew are introduced to Jesus by the Baptist, and in the same phrase he had used earlier to announce him to the crowd (“Here is the Lamb of God”). But only Simon, “son of John. . .to be called Cephas (translated Peter),”20 and Philip, both of Bethsaida in Galilee, are summoned to follow. Nathanael, the hardest to convince, ultimately acknowledges Jesus as Son of God, King of Israel, following their dialogue. In Mark, Matthew and Luke the lists of the disciples are virtually alike, whereas in the Fourth Gospel the number is drastically reduced to two, Simon Peter and Philip.

Could the slight differences existing between the three Synoptists derive from later remembrance of the number of the Twelve, a remembrance absent or deliberately erased by the time the Fourth Gospel was composed? Or, are the listings simply trajections into the record of traditions that took on life in the communities from which they derived? In view of the four evangelists’ agreement, as well as the priority they give to the one they first name, whatever may have been the role of the others, Simon Peter must surely have belonged to the first company of Jesus’ followers, and, if the Synoptists are to be credited, Andrew, and the Zebedees, James and John, together with the tax-collector Levi or Matthew, belonged to it as well.

The appellation “zealot,” attached to the second Simon named by Luke in his Gospel and Acts, has suggested to some that among Jesus’ followers at least one disciple belonged to a group involved in resistance to Rome. The conclusion drawn is that the revolt by Judas of Galilee gave birth to a Jewish freedom movement which developed into the Zealots by the time Jesus lived and worked, and that “Simon Zelotes” belonged to this movement. The suggestion that the title “Iscariot” naming Jesus’ betrayer is a transliteration of the Latin sicarius, that is, “dagger man,” thus that Judas was also a guerrilla whose betrayal was actually a move intended to force Jesus to assume power, puts a considerable strain on the imagination. The most plausible explanation is that “Iscariot” is a Greek transliteration of a Hebrew name, consisting of two elements, the first a common noun meaning “man,” and the second denoting provenance, the place from whence, hence “the man from Kirioth,” that is, from a town in south Judea. Of all those called to follow, Matthew (Levi) was the most despised. His ilk put in bids with the local governor for the opportunity to collect taxes among their own kind, notoriously bilking them in excess of the amount bid along with their expenses. For all intents and purposes the “publican” was a minion of the hated conqueror. The assortment of disciples was thus a “mixed bag,” comprised of Galilean fisherfolk, one, if not two. possibly resistance or protest types, and a hated lackey of the Roman rule. But it would not do to set the aggregate down as simple, unlearned country bumpkins, particularly in light of what they later accomplished.

In contrast to his fellow evangelists, Mark writes that the response of Simon and Andrew to Jesus’ call to follow was absolutely without hesitation: “Jesus said to them, ‘Follow me. . .” And immediately they left their nets and followed him” (Mark 1:18). Use of the same temporal adverb together with the tenses of the verbs used in connection with the summons to James and John indicate a like reaction: “Immediately he called them; and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men, and followed him” (Mark 1:20). There is nothing in the way of preparation for the summons or the response, nothing to be compared with the Baptist’s witness, with Jesus’ invitation to potential disciples to “come and see,” or with the miracle of “second sight” resulting in an acknowledgement of Jesus’ identity, as in the Fourth Gospel. The response is sudden, instantaneous, devoid of choice or reflection; the four abandon their occupation and family responsibility in a trice. “The Gospel of St. Matthew,” a 1964 film in memory of Pope John XXIII, directed by the Marxist Pier Paolo Pasolini, and described by the Vatican as the best film on Christ ever made, while assigning the disciples’ immediate response to Matthew, rather than to Mark, nonetheless gives a stunning recital of the event. In one minute Peter and Andrew are putting in their nets, in the next they are out of their boats trailing off after Jesus, followed by James and John running to have a look. If indeed the evangelists are not interested in simply supplying information but in engaging their readers on behalf of faith in Christ, then Mark’s expectation is that the reader’s or hearer’s reaction to this event of the disciple’s calling and response requires as sudden and as uncalculated a reaction as theirs. But aside from whether or not the account in Mark or in the others, for that matter, is nuanced for the hearer or reader’s sake, whatever power emanated from that Man to effect such response as is recorded in all the Gospels deserves paying mind if not pure wonder. Not for nothing Mark uses the same verb for Jesus’ appointment of the Twelve as the Septuagint uses for God’s creation of the world: “He made (Greek: epoiesin) twelve. . .to be with him” (Mark 3:13; cf. Genesis 1:1).