Apostlepalooza!

Daniel McClellan (0:02)

I've seen this claim, I don't know where it's coming from. I don't know if this has ever been argued by any scholars, but I've seen some folks try to argue that Thomas is Jesus' twin.

Daniel Beecher (0:12)

Okay, well, that would change the nativity stories a lot. Yeah.

I mean, now we have to hire Danny DeVito to play Dennis.

Daniel McClellan (0:24)

Let's have them say, Your back looks like a relief map of the Andes. Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Daniel Beecher (0:35)

And I'm Dan Beecher.

Daniel McClellan (0:36)

And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we try to increase the public's access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same, which unfortunately seems always to be increasing. How are we doing today, Dan?

Daniel Beecher (0:53)

Doing OK.

I am doing my best not to increase the misinformation, though I'm not, you know, I'm a bear of very little brain. It's not like I'm going to. I'm going to do it sometimes just by accident. It's just bound to happen.

Daniel McClellan (1:07)

Well, yeah, yeah. Who of us is innocent of every now and then spreading a little misinformation?

Daniel Beecher (1:15)

Yes, indeed.

Daniel McClellan (1:16)

There is a lot of it online these days, though. And in today's episode, I understand we're going to be just full of questions.

Daniel Beecher (1:23)

We got we got a whole lot of questions. It is an apostolic episode. We are going to be talking about apostles left and right, even epistles about apostles. So it's a it's a it's a good time.

But to start us off.

Look, here's what happened. I was doing some research for one of our segments, and I went down a rabbit hole and almost didn't make it back out. So I messaged you and I was like, you need to help me out with this. I don't know what's going on. So let's jump into our segment. McClellan 911

Daniel McClellan (2:10)

I guess our audio of choice, mine anyway, is boing.

Daniel Beecher (2:17)

Let's do the segment.

Daniel McClellan (2:21)

All righty. What are we talking about, Dan? What is your emergency?

Daniel Beecher (2:24)

Okay. Here's the thing. I was looking up what the word apostle meant. And then I was thinking about apostles.

And the original 12 came up, the 12 apostles. They're very famous. I don't know if you've heard of them, but a lot of people have. And the thing about them was I started to ask myself, wait, can I name the 12 apostles? It seems like something I should know. And I got Peter, James and John or Matthew and Mark and Luke. And I don't know who was an apostle. I literally suddenly realized, like, who's at that last supper? I don't know. You know, I knew Judas was one.

And then when I really racked my brains, I came up with, you know, Mr. Doubting Thomas.

And then I got so confused, so I went and looked it up, thinking this is a thing that will just have an easy list of names. Yeah.

Daniel McClellan (3:28)

One would imagine the way people talk about the 12 apostles, it seems like it's just a simple datum. Here they are.

Daniel Beecher (3:34)

Yeah. There's 12 dudes. How hard could that possibly be? And then I go to Wikipedia, and there's a grid. There's like graphics. And like, I was blown away.

Now, I know that I've been confused before by things like name changes, which happen way too frequently in the Bible for my comfort. For my personal comfort.

Daniel McClellan (4:02)

Yeah.

Daniel Beecher (4:02)

You know, we've talked about, we talked about Abraham becoming Abraham. We talk, you know, there's, there's, Jacob becomes Israel.

Daniel McClellan (4:13)

Even God's name changes. You have God introducing themselves to Moses and saying, look, they all knew me by this name. They didn't know me by this other name, but I'm letting you know my actual name is this. And then you go look at those other texts and it's like, that name's in there too. So, yeah, even God's name is not safe.

They're getting changed up.

Daniel Beecher (4:35)

Yeah, and the other thing that I want to talk, so, okay, so we've got some names that are changing. We've got some names that are confusing.

And the other thing is that I'm pretty sure that none of the names that I know are the original like Aramaic names of these guys.

Daniel McClellan (4:52)

Yeah, and this is something I get asked all the time. Did people running around this area 2,000 years ago really have names like John and Matt?