Note 2 — Chapter V · THE DISCIPLES OF JESUS.

Let us test the justness of their view. In the synoptical narrative Jesus says to his future disciples, Come after me, δεῦτε ὀπίσω μου, and the result is that they follow him (ἠκολούθησαν αὐτῷ). If we understand from this that the disciples thenceforth constantly followed Jesus, how can we give a different interpretation to the similar expression in the fourth gospel, Follow me, ἀκολούθει μοι? It is therefore a laudable consistency in Paulus, to see, in both instances, merely an invitation to a temporary companionship during a walk in the immediate neighbourhood.2 But this interpretation is incompatible with the synoptical history. How could Peter, at a later period, say so emphatically to Jesus, We have left all, and followed thee: what shall we have therefore?—how could Jesus promise to him and to every one who had forsaken houses, etc., a hundredfold recompense (Matt. xix. 27 ff.), if this forsaking and following had been so transient and interrupted? From these considerations alone it is probable that the ἀκολούθει μοι in John also denotes the commencement of a permanent connexion; but there are besides the plainest indications that this is the case in the context to the narrative. Precisely as in the synoptical gospels, Jesus appears alone before the scene of the vocation, but after this on every fit occasion the attendance of his disciples is mentioned: so in the fourth gospel, from the time of the occurrence in question, the previously solitary Jesus appears in the company of his disciples (ii. 2, xii. 17, iii. 22, iv. 8, 27, etc.). To say that these disciples, acquired in Peræa, again dispersed themselves after the return of Jesus into Galilee,3 is to do violence to the gospels out of harmonistic zeal. But even supposing such a dispersion, they could not, in the short time which it is possible to allow for their separation from Jesus, have become so completely strangers to him, that he would have been obliged to re-open an acquaintance with them after the manner narrated by the synoptical writers. Still less probable is it that Jesus, after having distinguished Simon in the most individual manner by the surname Cephas on their first interview, would on a later occasion address to him the summons to be a fisher of men—a destination which was common to all the disciples.