on the disciples

ANDREW
Peter’s younger brother, the sort of vague embarrassment of the family because what sort of son abandons an honest future in fishing to follow around a dirty hermit in a loincloth? (he eats locusts, Andreia. I don’t care if this Baptist claims to be a prophet, he can still eat food like a normal person.) Kind of a space cadet, loves religion more than is probably healthy. If his family had been wealthier, he probably would have been sent to rabbinical school, but instead he follows around every Joshua, Joachim, and Jephthah who claims to speak on God’s behalf.

I think the first to recognize Jesus as Messiah would have to be a little credulous, with Heaven on his mind.

JAMES
big guy, barrel chest and one of those laughs that rumbles through the bass register, the physical inverse-image of his younger brother, John. Like John he’s from a family of means, and it shows sometimes. He has a quick temper and a dirty sense of humor, but is a total lamb around women—his mother, Salome, is one of the women in Jesus’ retinue, so I like to think he spent a lot of time making sure she was comfortable, fetching and carrying as she cooked.

The other disciples like to tease him, because of the way she pats his cheek and calls him her good boy. James pretends not to mind.

BARTHOLOMEW
can’t stay still for more than a few minutes, a sucker for stories of far-off lands, no matter how outrageous or obviously embroidered. Spends a lot of time looking to horizons, and often the others have to keep him from wandering. (That’s like…half the reason he travels so widely in his ministry, there’s no one to stop him from reaching India, Armenia, Ethiopia, Parthia, Lycaonia. A truly hopeless wanderer.) Close with Philip.

THOMAS
North African, the youngest disciple, in love with Jesus in a blushing, hero worship sort of way. They call him “the twin” (t’oma, in Aramaic) because he is so often found at Jesus’ side, the Master’s little twin. Most of the older disciples feel protective of him, since he has no home to return to—his father swore to disinherit him if he left with the prophet from Galilee. (Though truly, the loss is not so great—his father was a brute, and Thomas still bears the bruises.)

Particularly close with Mary, Jesus’ mother, whom she looks to as a second son.

PHILIP
of Turkish descent, older than the rest of the disciples, more serious and slow to laughter as well as anger. Often, he is sought out for his advice when the Master is not to be bothered. He’s oddly good with children, patient and thoughtful. He and Bartholomew have known one another almost all their lives.

MATTHEW
the odd one out, in Jesus’ band of ragged country bumpkin revolutionaries. A wealthy tax-collector from Galilee, he was so moved that after one of Jesus’ sermons, he invited him to a feast at his house. Instead of being rebuffed (tax collectors were hated as pawns of Rome) Jesus had clapped him on the shoulder, and accepted. Matthew has been mostly caught in the whirlwind since then, believing despite himself, basking in the warmth of this company he has stumbled into.

A nebbish type, a scribbler and a numbers man by nature, but also one of the few literate in both Aramic and Greek. The others tease him for it, but it comes in handy more than once, like when the Master says, show me ‘kingdom’ and show me ‘son of man’ and show me my name.

Or when it comes time, and Matthew the tax collector writes, this is the geneology of Jesus, the Messiah.