Note 65 — Chapter V · THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS.

The third quaternion is uniformly opened by James the son of Alpheus, of whom we have already spoken. After him comes in both Luke’s lists, Simon, whom he calls Zelotes, or the zealot, but whom Matthew and Mark (in whose catalogues he is placed one degree lower) distinguish as the Cannanite ὁ κανανίτης (from ‏קָנָא‎, to be zealous). This surname seems to mark him as a former adherent of the Jewish sect of zealots for religion,65 a party which, it is true, did not attain consistence until the latest period of the Jewish state, but which was already in the process of formation. In all the lists that retain the name of Judas Iscariot, he occupies the last place, but of him we must not speak until we enter on the history of the Passion. Luke, in his filling up of the remaining places of this quaternion, differs from the two other Evangelists, and perhaps these also differ from each other; Luke has a second Judas, whom he styles the brother of James; Matthew, Lebbeus; and Mark, Thaddeus. It is true that we now commonly read in Matthew, Lebbeus, whose surname was Thaddeus; but the vacillation in the early readings seems to betray these words to be a later addition intended to reconcile the first two Evangelists;66 an attempt which others have made by pointing out a similarity of meaning between the two names, though such a similarity does not exist.67 But allowing validity to one or other of these harmonizing efforts, there yet remains a discrepancy between Matthew and Mark with their Lebbeus-Thaddeus, and Luke with his Judas, the brother of James. Schleiermacher justly disapproves the expedients, almost all of them constrained and unnatural, which have been resorted to for the sake of proving that here also, we have but one person under two different names. He seeks to explain the divergency, by supposing, that during the lifetime of Jesus, one of the two men died or left the circle of the apostles, and the other took his place; so that one list gives the earlier, the other the later member.68 But it is scarcely possible to admit that any one of our catalogues was drawn up during the life of Jesus; and after that period, no writer would think of including a member who had previously retired from the college of apostles; those only would be enumerated who were ultimately attached to Jesus. It is the most reasonable to allow that there is a discrepancy between the lists, since it is easy to account for it by the probability that while the number of the apostles, and the names of the most distinguished among them, were well known, varying traditions supplied the place of more positive data concerning the less conspicuous.