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2–4 The use of the term “apostle” here (the only use in Matthew; see above)
is appropriate to the setting, as the term means properly an envoy and these
twelve men are about to be sent out (apostellō, v. 5, the verb from which
“apostle” is derived) on a mission in which they will represent Jesus and his
message.
The first four names in the list have been introduced to us in 4:18–22, where we
have already been informed of Simon’s nickname and of the name of the father
of James and John. They are listed in the same order as in 4:18–22, as pairs of
brothers (as in Luke 6:14), rather than grouping together the “inner circle” of
Peter, James and John (as in Mark 3:16–17; Acts 1:13). In specifying that Peter
is “first” Matthew reflects not only that he was the first to be called, but also his
prominence throughout the story as leader of the group, which will be strongly
underlined in 16:17–19. By Matthew’s time the first apostle was generally
known as “Peter” rather than “Simon,” and so Matthew uses “Peter” even before
that name is formally given in the narrative sequence at 16:18; his narrative uses
“Simon” (always in connection with “Peter”) only when he is being introduced,
here and in 4:18, and on the occasion of his renaming in 16:16–17. But on the
two occasions when Jesus addresses him by name (16:17; 17:25) it is by his
personal name “Simon,” even though he has been described in the narrative as
“Peter.” It seems then that the evangelists recognized a distinction between
Jesus’ historical usage and that of their own day.
Apart from Matthew (see 9:9) the rest of this list consists of men who are not
mentioned anywhere else in Matthew’s gospel except for the last, Judas Iscariot.
The corporate role of the Twelve was obviously more important and more
remembered than the individual contribution of most of the members of the
group. Only three names receive even the briefest expansion: Matthew’s
previous life as a tax-collector reminds us of the story of his call; the father of
the second James is mentioned in order to distinguish him from his better-known
namesake; and the second Simon is also given with his nickname, “Zealot,” in
order to distinguish him from Simon Peter. “Zealot” did not become a technical
term for members of the revolutionary party until the time of the Jewish War, so
that Simon’s nickname may derive more from his reputation for religious zeal
(for “zealot” in this sense see Acts 21:20; 22:3; Gal 1:14; cf. Phil 3:6) than from
involvement in an insurrectionary group,¹ though by the time Matthew wrote his
gospel at least some of his readers would have been likely to take the term in the
latter sense. The title raises the interesting question how a man so described
would enjoy being part of the same group as a tax-collector, his ideological
opposite, but that can only be speculation. All the names except Andrew and
Philip are Jewish in form, suggesting that Jesus’ disciples were drawn mainly
from the more conservatively Jewish part of the mixed population in Galilee (see
also on the names of Jesus’ brothers in 13:55 below). Andrew and Philip, like
Simon Peter, were originally from Bethsaida (John 1:44), on the other side of the
Jordan and so strictly outside Galilee in the territory of Herod Philip: their Greek
names perhaps reflect the more Hellenistic milieu of that area.
Judas’ betrayal of Jesus will be fully narrated later (26:14–16, 21–25, 47–50;
27:3–10); here it is mentioned only because it is the one thing about him every
Christian would remember. He comes, appropriately, at the end of all the gospel
lists (just as Peter comes first in all of them)—and is of course absent from the
list in Acts 1:13. His second name, “Iscariot”, is usually included, partly to
distinguish him from the other Judas of John 14:22, but also because his
notoriety made his full name familiar. Many derivations of “Iscariot” have been
proposed,¹¹ including the suggestion that it is a corruption of sicarios, a member
of the most notorious of the revolutionary groups (which would make for an
interesting collocation with Simon the “zealot”), but perhaps more likely is the
traditional notion that it derives from ʾîš-qerîyôt, “man of Kerioth;”¹² if so, this
raises the interesting possibility that Judas was the one non-Galilean among the
Twelve, since the only two towns called Kerioth that we know of are in Moab
and in southern Judea. But that too is speculation, and since Hebrew qiryâ
(“town”) occurs in several other placenames it cannot be relied on.
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