Well, good afternoon. I'm David Bercot and we are continuing going through the Matthew commentary, the Historic Faith Commentary Series, where we look at how the early Christians understood the Book of Matthew. And today we're in chapter 10. We're about midway through the chapter, or at least through the apostles. In the last session, we got down to John, the apostle John. I didn't quite finish with him, so we're going to pick up with him today, and then we're going to look at the rest of the 12.
We went through his ministry that's recorded in the Book of Acts. We see him ministering along with Peter on several occasions. And then after that, we don't read anything more about John. But the early Christians do give us quite a bit of history about him, which is backed up by the Book of Revelation. And that is, yeah, he traveled pretty far and wide in his ministry, and eventually he was arrested by the Emperor Domitian.
Now, Domitian was the second Roman Emperor to start a empire-sponsored persecution against the Christians. Now, Domitian did it against a lot of people. He was a very wicked man like Nero and he sent John to the Isle of Patmos. When I was a boy, I thought, okay, big deal. He got sent off to some island. It was maybe a little lonely or something like that. But that's not the way the penal islands were. When Rome sent you to a penal island, it was to an island where they had mines. You were sent to work in the mines.
It was a death sentence. You would live a little bit longer than if you were crucified or beheaded or something like that, but maybe just a year or a couple of years, you'd work yourself to death. That's what was planned. But God had different plans, and Domitian was assassinated, not by Christians, but by the Romans because of his wickedness. And once he was assassinated, then all of the political prisoners that he had had arrested were all freed, and that included the Christians.
And so John was freed from the Isle of Patmos. But it was in Patmos where he was given the vision for the Book of Revelation. I've been to the island of Patmos. Now you can go there. They'll show you the cave where John supposedly had the vision. That's totally made up, but the island itself is historic and it's also inspired. It's in the New Testament. Now, Clement of Alexandria tells us this about John after the death of Domitian. He said, " On the tyrant's death, John returned to Ephesus from the Isle of Patmos.
" So when he was arrested, apparently he was not in Rome, but in Ephesus or had been in Ephesus at some point. It says he then traveled to the adjoining territories of the Gentiles, being invited to one place to appoint bishops in another to set in order, whole churches, and in still others to ordain such men as was marked out by the Spirit. So, decades after Paul had died and Peter had died, John is still very active in the ministry.
He would have been a very old man at this point, probably close to 100, and he was still ordaining leaders in different churches and solving church problems, things like that. But his center was there in the city of Ephesus. Anyway, he writes that it was during his final years in Ephesus that he wrote the gospel of John and probably also where he wrote the three letters, 1st and 2nd and 3rd John. Now, Irenaeus states that John remained there in the church in Ephesus until the time of Trajan.
Now, Trajan is the emperor who ruled from AD 98 to 117. So that would tell us that John lived at least until the year 98. The general thought is he probably died about the year 100. And according to tradition and just from the facts we know, he was the last of the apostles to die. He did not die as a martyr, but he suffered a very brutal imprisonment for his faith. Now, I wanted to talk a little bit about the name that Jesus gave to him and his brother James. When he's naming the apostles, Mark writes this.
It says, " And James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James, and he, Jesus, names them Boanerges, which is sons of thunder. " Now, I was always told earlier in life that this was a negative name, that this was like a epithet that Jesus put on John and James. And a lot of modern commentators say that. They say it's because they had hot tempers. They wanted to call down fire on that one Samaritan village. And so it's because of having bad tempers that Jesus called them sons of thunder.
But none of the early Christians looked at Sons of Thunder as a derogatory nickname that it was a name of honor that Jesus put on them. Origen writes this, " Some of those who stand by Jesus are deemed worthy of this honor, " he's talking about to some of the disciples. He says, " If either they are a Peter or the sons of thunder and are begotten of the mighty voice of God who thunders from heaven and cries aloud great things to those who have ears and who are wise.
" So they saw it as, " Okay, your sons of thunder because you're going to go out proclaiming boldly the message of God. " And that fits everything that we know about them. There's really nothing in any of the records that would indicate John had a bad tempered or that he was a hot-tempered person. He wanted to call down fire because they had insulted Jesus, not necessarily because he had a hot temper, but because he was very devoted to Christ. All right, let's move on then to Philip.
He's the next one named by Matthew. And he was another one who, when Jesus said, " Follow me, " he immediately left and followed Jesus. And it's amazing that people did that. I mean, some people say, well, follow me maybe wasn't quite that literal. That's perhaps true, but the thought is definitely that they instantly dropped whatever they were doing and became his disciple. You know, Matthew did that.
And when others, for example, asked, " Well, let me first bury my father, " you know Jesus said, " Let the dead bury the dead. You preach the kingdom of God. " So he did expect people when they were given such a special invitation to immediately respond. Like Peter and Andrew, Philip was from the town of Bethsaida near the Sea of Galilee. So most of these 12 came from that region. And again, it was a backwater region. It was not a region that generally any famous people came from before, you know, the apostles.
It was a region where there were a lot of Gentiles, and that was an asset because a lot of the Jews there were able to speak Greek as well as Aramaic. And Philip joined Jesus ' disciples the very next day after Peter and Andrew. So he was a very early disciple. And it says this that immediately after he responded to Jesus ' invitation, he went and found Nathaniel and said to him, " We have found him who Moses wrote about in the law and the prophets, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
" So he immediately recognized this is that prophet that Moses had promised. So there was no wavering of doubt. He didn't maybe understand that Jesus was the Son of God at that point, but he immediately recognized he was the promised prophet. And that is about all that we know about Philip. Bartholomew is named with him. And three of the evangelists, they group Philip along with Bartholomew. Many modern commentators suggest that Bartholomew is one and the same person as Nathaniel.
You know, I mentioned with Philip that the first thing he did was go and tell Nathaniel and they think maybe Nathaniel is really the same person as Bartholomew. And I've read the arguments. They're actually pretty well thought out arguments, but I would have to say none of the early Christians suggest that. So I would doubt that it is the case, but I would say it certainly is plausible. Okay, then we come to Thomas. And speaking of Thomas, the Apostle John writes, " Thomas who is called Didymus.
" Now, the Greek word " didymus " literally means " twin ". So, many of the modern Bible translations, they render John's word as Thomas, who is called the twin. Now, as I'm about to explain, that's really not a good translation. They should leave it the way it is. The King James version gives it as a like second secondary name, and I think that is the correct intent that John had, that Thomas, who was called Didymus, that is Thomas Didymus, or he was also called Didymus the way that Simon is also called Peter.
And the reason I say that is Didymus, it means twin, but it was a common Greek name. This is something I just accidentally stumbled on. I was doing some reading in the works surrounding the Arian controversy. And there's a letter there from the church that was like a suburb of Alexandria. It's a small town none of us have heard of. And I was looking at the list of names in there of the different elders and deacons who signed this letter. This is just from this small little town.
And of that, there was an elder and two deacons all named Didymus. This is from this one little, little place. So if that's the case, then yeah, Didymus was obviously a pretty common name. And I think it's more correct to think of it as a secondary name for Thomas rather than that he had a twin. I mean, the New Testament doesn't say anything about him having a twin brother. And it would have been odd that he would become a disciple and his twin brother wouldn't.
In the case of the other brothers, they, you know, they did come together. And not a single early Christian writer understood that he had a twin. They all understood Didymus to be a second name. So the King James Version got that definitely correctly. Now, after serving faithfully with the other apostles in Jerusalem for many years, the Holy Spirit then took Thomas to the land of Persia. I'm going to read what Eusebius, the church historian writes.
He says, " The holy apostles and disciples of our Savior were dispersed throughout the world. " According to tradition, that means what was handed down orally. Parthia was allotted to Thomas as his field of labor. Parthia was what Persia was known in the times of the Romans during the days of Eusebius. We know it as Persia in the Old Testament, but it became known as Parthia later on.
And there's a lot of tradition that from there that would, of course, Parthia bordered on India, that Thomas traveled to India and that he planted the church there in India. Also, the tradition that he died as a martyr, the same tradition for all 11, all except John, that they died as martyrs, but we don't have written history to verify that. Now, even though Thomas was this remarkable apostle, I mean, he was the one who was wanting to go to Bethany because he thought they were going to kill Jesus.
He said, " Let's go and die with him. " He was this marvelous missionary, you know, took the gospel to the second greatest empire of that time, the Parthian Empire, and then, you know, the furthest from any of the apostles, if indeed he did go to India. And so we should really just think of his name as this marvelous apostle, and that's what we should think. But he is most remembered if you would bring up the name Thomas to almost any Christian, what are they going to say? Oh yeah, doubting Thomas.
He's the one who doubted Jesus. And in modern English, I mean, that's a term doubting Thomas that the world uses, who maybe have never even heard of the Apostle Thomas. They've heard that name, doubting Thomas. Because of one incident, it's after Jesus was resurrected, he appeared to the apostles, but Thomas wasn't there. And so when he was told about it, he said, well, I'm not going to believe until I see his body and I can put my finger in his side and the wounds in his hands.
And so Jesus appeared and, you know, Thomas did that. And then he did believe, and he, you know, got a reprimand from Jesus. But he's also the one who exclaimed, " My Lord and my, yeah, my Lord and my God, " which is the most direct statement of the deity of Christ from any of the apostles up to that point. He was the first one to make such a declaration. But maybe the lesson there is that we can have a faithful life in Christ, but one strong blemish can mar our record. In his case, I think it's perhaps unfairly.
I don't think it was meant to mar his record, but it does show the need to be consistent and that when we stumble, yeah, it can put a blot on our name as a result. Okay, let's now move to Matthew. He's most famous to us because he wrote the gospel of Matthew, which was according to the early Christians. And I think I do not the reasons modern commentators say Mark was written first. I discussed this in the appendix. I hope you all will read that in the commentary.
The reasons they give are such really shoddy reasons. There's no reason to doubt the early Christians. There's such a strong testimony that Matthew was written first, not Mark. Mark was not one of the apostles. Matthew was, they say Matthew depended on Mark's gospel. Well, wait a minute, Matthew was an apostle. Why would he have to depend on what was written by someone who was not an apostle? He was there during all of these different events. It doesn't make any sense.
And of course, we know him as the tax collector. Something else we should think about him is this humility. Now, the others, they list Matthew and Thomas together, but the other evangelists, they put it in the order, Matthew and Thomas. When Matthew writes in his gospel, he puts it Thomas and Matthew, even though, you know, Matthew generally would have more honor, but just out of humility, he puts himself second behind Thomas and then he says Matthew the tax collector.
I shared the other day of the terrible image that tax collectors had. I mean, it's like saying Matthew the thug, you know, or something like that. And the other evangelists, when they list the apostles, they don't say Matthew the tax collector. They just say Matthew. But he puts on their tax collector to show what the grace of Christ can do. Yeah, I was this evil person. I was a thug at one time, but I became an apostle of Jesus Christ. And if I can change, anyone else can change.
So he wasn't proud of his past, but he wanted people to know Jesus came to save sinners, not to call people who were already sufficient in their own righteousness. All right, we move next to James, the son of Alphaeus. Again, not very well known. Just like the other James, as I mentioned the other day, his actual name is Jacob, not James, but we know him as James. Again, Jacob was a very popular name for Jewish boys.
To distinguish between the two, Matthew designates one of them as James or Jacob, the son of Zebedee, and the other as James, the son of Alphaeus. Other than that, the fact that he was one of the 12, we know nothing more about James, the son of Alphaeus, but we shouldn't think in our mind, oh yeah, he never became anything. The early Christians say all 12 of them went out and evangelized the whole world. When we read the New Testament, you would get the impression that Paul did most of it.
Well, Paul certainly, he says he worked harder than any of the others. And, you know, Paul is very frank in what he says. So I think we can take that as true testimony, but the others worked hard. They maybe didn't do as much as Paul, but they went out and they evangelized. They didn't just spend the rest of their days there in Jerusalem.
But as I also had mentioned, they were such gifted men, they were able to get the church started on such a foundation that it stayed one single church without being a state church for 300 years, and then it stayed, you know, for centuries after that, united, although it was with the help of the state, and that same church is still with us today. So all of these were remarkable men. Next we come to Thaddeus.
As the 10th Apostle, Matthew says this in his list, Lebbaeus, whose name was Thaddeus, whose other name was Thaddeus. Now, Mark just simply refers to him as Thaddeus. Now, one of the little puzzles with the Apostle is that when Luke lists, he doesn't make any mention of either Lebbaeus or Thaddeus. Instead, he lists a Judas of James, probably meaning son of James, as one of the apostles.
Now, I think about the only logical conclusion we can come to is that Lebbaeus, Thaddeus, and Judas, the son of James were all the same person, that he had three names, just like Peter had Simon, Cephas, and Peter. They're all three the same person. Those three were the same person. But we don't know anything more about Thaddeus beyond that, other than Jesus picked him of 12 people that he was going to pick. Thaddeus was one of them, so we know he was a very special disciple. Then we have Simon, the Canaanite.
Matthew and Mark call this 11th Apostle Simon the Canaanite to distinguish him from Simon Peter. Now, if I'm pronouncing that funny when I say Canaanite, it's because the King James version renders it Simon the Canaanite. And so it sounds like he was a pagan you know Canaanite, someone from the land of Canaan. Of course, that was the land of Canaan, but I mean the Canaanites had long disappeared or been absorbed into the other people.
And certainly there's no reason to think that Simon, again, he was carrying the name Simeon, which was a popular Jewish name, that he was anything but a Jew, that one of his apostles was actually a Gentile, a Canaanite. Because in Greek, in English, it looks very similar, but in Greek, the name that he's called Canaite is a totally different word than the word for the pagan Canaanites. I mean, they're not even close. They don't even look anything alike. They would have maybe been pronounced a little bit similar.
So we should not think he was a Canaanite. Jerome thinks the name means that he was from the village of Cana, you know, where Jesus performed his first miracle where he changed water into wine. They just called a Canaite that he was from the village of Cana. That's one theory. We don't know for sure. It may have been another place that he was from, but it wasn't because he was a pagan Canaanite at one time. Now the other myth that you see, it's not an old myth.
It's a myth that started in the 19th century, but now you see it everywhere, is that he was a member of the Zealots because Luke refers to him as Simon called Zelotes. Now, that Greek word Zelotes, everywhere else, it is translated as zealous. So we should think of him as Simon the Zealous. And that's how the early Christians look at him. He was Simon the Zealous. It was another good name put on him. This was somebody full of zeal that he went out as an apostle preaching and all that sort of thing.
But somewhere in the actually the late 19th century, so this isn't very old at all. Some commentator came up with this wild idea that Simon Zelotes meant that this Simon was a member of the Jewish sect called the Zealots, the ones who were trying to overthrow the Romans. And because that sounded good to a modern mind, that it's just caught on. And like I say, you pick up the average commentary, it will probably say that either as a fact or as a likely thing. But not a single early Christian thought that.
No one suggested it until the late 19th century. And it's such a bad theory. I mean, we can rule it out for two reasons. First of all, like I say, neither the New Testament or the early Christians in any way connect Simon Zelotes, Simon the Zealous, with the political movement of the zealots. So there's no historical basis for thinking that. And like I say, that word Zelotes is always translated every other place in the New Testament as zealous.
So there's no reason to think it means anything except Simon the Zealous. But there's another reason, and that is we have the pagan antagonist, Celsus, who was trying to say everything bad he could about the Christians. I mentioned the other day he talks about he had collected with him Jesus as his followers these wretched tax collectors, you know, because they were bad.
Now, if Simon had been a member of the Jewish rebel group, the Zealots, do you not think that this Roman antagonist wouldn't flag that, say, you know who one of his followers were? One of the zealous, the ones who tried to overthrow the Romans. You know I mean, he would have trumpeted that everywhere. So that I think again rules it out. But there's an even stronger reason. That name Zealot is not a common name. We have one source for it, and that's Josephus.
He's the one who uses that name, and he applies it to one group of people alone. And those were the followers of a radical Jew named John of Giscala. And John of Giscala and his followers didn't even come into power until the Jewish uprising in the year 66 AD, over 30 years after Jesus had picked his apostles. So Simon could hardly have been a member of the zealous because the zealots weren't in existence in his day.
So again, that's what happens when modern commentators just picking sources here and there and coming up with ideas that make sense to a modern person, but don't make sense to an ancient person because they know a little bit more about what was going on in that day. Well, we're going to close today with Judas Iscariot. Not a lot needs to be said about him. Every one of the evangelists, they all list Peter first and they all list Judas last. And they all make the notation that Judas is the one who betrayed Christ.
Judas Iscariot committed the most highest crime ever committed in human history, to have been a faithful follower of Jesus and then to have betrayed him to put him to death. Even Jesus, who is so merciful and on the cross, said, " Forgive them, Father, they know not what they do. " Talking about even the scribes and Pharisees. He said this about Judas, " Woe to the man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been good for that man if he had never been born.
" That's serious, when Jesus Himself says that about you. As a result of his villainous deed, Judas became the most detested name in Western history. You never find anyone naming their son Judas. Probably even till today. I've never met anyone named Judas. I'm going to guess that's stuck even till today when people have thrown out the Bible largely. I think that stigma has still stuck there.
Actually, Jesus ' brother, he had a brother named Judas, the one who wrote the letter, but the King James changed his name to Jude or eroded as Jude just because, like I say, the name Judas has such a bad stigma connected with it that we think of Jesus ' brother as Jude, and that's a fine translation of it. And I like that. I think it's a good tradition to just stick Judas the traitor with that name alone. Well, that is what we know in a nutshell about the twelve.
There's a little bit of more information about them in the commentary and also about the other incidents that happened in Matthew chapter 10. There's a lot of important teaching in that chapter that we didn't go into. So again, I want to refer you to the commentary. Definitely read what it says there, the instructions that Jesus gave to the twelve when He sent them out to preach. There's some things that are a little bit puzzling and mystical that the early Christians helped to clear up.
So, I've enjoyed talking with you today. Thank you again for your time.