Apostle

The designation Apostle (from Greek apostolos, one sent forth) is not the proper name of a single historical individual but the title given in early Christian sources to the principal witnesses commissioned by Jesus of Nazareth. The canonical Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles list twelve men chosen from among Jesus' disciples in Galilee in the early first century CE: Simon called Peter, Andrew his brother, James and John the sons of Zebedee, Philip, Bartholomew (often identified with Nathanael), Thomas, Matthew the tax collector, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus (Jude), Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot. After Judas's death, Acts reports that Matthias was chosen by lot to restore the number twelve. No contemporary document records a verified year of birth for any of these men; they are generally understood to have been adult Jewish men of Galilee or Judea during the reigns of Augustus and Tiberius. Precise birthplaces, death dates, and burial sites for the group as a whole are not recoverable from first-century evidence.

According to the New Testament, their ministry began in the villages of Galilee and was centered for a time in Jerusalem. After the crucifixion of Jesus and the experiences the community described as resurrection appearances, Acts portrays the Twelve as remaining in Jerusalem, preaching, and organizing a community there before later traditions describe a wider dispersion across the eastern Mediterranean. Independent first-century corroboration of their individual careers is almost entirely lacking. Later ecclesiastical writers of the second through fourth centuries—including Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen, and Eusebius of Caesarea—preserve lists of sees supposedly founded by apostles and stories of martyrdom, but these notices are often late, contradictory, and shaped by the desire of local churches to claim apostolic foundation. Consequently, specific cities of death and burial for most of the Twelve cannot be verified from sources of the first or early second century, with the partial exception of James son of Zebedee, whose execution under Herod Agrippa I is mentioned in Acts, and the strong second-century tradition that Peter and Paul died in Rome.

Paul of Tarsus, a Pharisee from Cilicia who was not one of the Twelve, applied the title apostle to himself on the grounds of a revelation of the risen Christ and became the author of the earliest surviving Christian texts. Other New Testament figures, including Barnabas and, in the letter to the Romans, Andronicus and Junia, are also called apostles in a wider sense. In subsequent Christian usage the Twelve (with Matthias in place of Judas) and Paul were universally honored as saints; their cult predates the medieval papal processes of beatification and canonization, so no individual pope can be named as having canonized them. Feast days differ by rite: the Latin Church keeps 29 June for Peter and Paul and various other dates for individual apostles; Byzantine calendars observe a Synaxis of the Twelve Apostles on 30 June. Patronages attached to individual apostles—Peter of fishermen and of the see of Rome, Andrew of Scotland and of several eastern sees, James of Spain, Thomas of India—are products of medieval and later devotion rather than of documented first-century roles.

Because the subject supplied is the title Apostle rather than a named person, biographical fields that require a unique birth year, birthplace, spouse, or burial site cannot be filled without conjecture. Some apostles are described in the Gospels as having family ties—Peter's mother-in-law is healed, which implies that Peter was married—but the marital status of the group as a whole is not uniformly documented, nor is the existence of children. None of the Twelve held the later office of patriarch in the sense of the autocephalous Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Coptic, or Church of the East sees, though Peter is regarded in Catholic tradition as the first Bishop of Rome. Historical caution requires distinguishing the first-century missionary movement attested in Paul's letters and Acts from the rich but largely unverifiable legendary cycles of the apocryphal acts (such as the Acts of Thomas and Acts of Andrew) composed in the second and third centuries.