Originally posted by GW
Are you excluding the apostle Matthias, who was with them from the early days of our Lord's ministry even unto his ascension? (Acts 1:21-23) I believe Paul was including Matthias.
It also could be true that "the twelve" is the common designation for the apostolic college. Jesus appointed a number of 12 offices in his personal incarnational ministry, and that number "12" continues to have significance all on its own (Rev 21:14; Matt 19:28).
Hi GW, This article might answer your questions about Matthias, it's written by
Anastasios Kioulachoglou :
Luke 6:13-16, "And when it was day, he called unto him his disciples: and of them he chose twelve, whom also he named apostles; Simon, (whom he also named Peter) and Andrew his brother, James and John, Philip and Bartholomew, Matthew and Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon called Zelotes, And Judas the brother of James, and Judas Iscariot, which also was the traitor."
As it is evident from this passage, the original composition of the group of the twelve included Judas Iscariot. Many other passages in the gospels also witness that Judas Iscariot was
"one of the twelve" (Matthew 26:14,47, Mark 14:10,43, Luke 22:3,47, John 6:71).
Thus, whenever we read "the twelve" we should understand it as a term that denotes the group of the above twelve people, except if there is a change in the composition of this group. In this later case, when the reference is to events before the change the number "twelve" should be understood as the group of the above twelve men, while when the reference is to events after the change, the meaning has to be adjusted correspondingly. In our case, the event that the Word of God speaks about in I Corinthians 15:5 is the resurrection of Jesus Christ and his appearances that followed it. Therefore, the simple question that has to be asked is
what was the composition of the group of the twelve at the time of the resurrection? Was Matthias numbered with the eleven at that time? The exact time and the process that was followed for the inclusion of Matthias in the group of the remaining eleven disciples is given in Acts 1:15-26. From this record we learn that sometime between the ascension and the day of Pentecost, Peter proposed the substitution of Judas by someone else. The candidates were two: the one was
"Joseph called Barsabas" and the other was
"Matthias." How the choice was made and who was chosen is described in Acts 1:24-26 Acts 1:24-26,
"And they prayed, and said, Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, shew whether of these two thou hast chosen, That he may take part of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place. And they gave forth their lots; and the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles." Now, since only at that point Matthias was numbered with the eleven, this obviously means that he wasn't numbered before (the Greek word that is translated as "numbered" in the above passage is the verb
sugkatapsephizo, which means "to be numbered with", "to be counted with" or "to be calculated with" and denotes the inclusion of something/someone into a particular group). Therefore, whenever we meet the expression the "twelve" and the reference is to events that happened before Acts 1:26 what is meant is the twelve of Luke 6:13 that included Judas. On the other hand, when this expression refers to events that happened after the inclusion of Matthias then what is meant is the new composition of the group that excluded Judas and included Matthias. Bearing this in mind we should not have any problem to understand who are the twelve of I Corinthians 15. The corresponding passage refers to the appearance that happened before
"Matthias was numbered with the eleven."
Therefore, since at that time Matthias was not yet one of the twelve, the expression
"by the twelve" of I Corinthians 15 refers to the usual twelve of Luke 6:13 that included Judas. This does not mean that Matthias didn't see the resurrected Jesus. In fact, in his proposal given in Acts 1:15-23, Peter says:
"Therefore, of these men who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John to that day when he was taken up from us, one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection" (Acts 1:21-22).
For Matthias to be proposed (Acts 1:23) it means that he fulfilled all these requirements. The fact that except of the twelve others also saw the resurrected Christ is also confirmed by the gospels (Luke 24:33-36) and by I Corinthians 15:6 that speaks for an appearance to
"five hundred brethren." The point, therefore, is not whether Matthias was a
witness of the resurrection for he certainly was. What is the point is whether at the time of the resurrection he was
counted with the
eleven. As we saw,
he wasn't.
Some claim that, even though Matthias was not an apostle at the time of Jesus' resurrection, he was an apostle at the time the book of Acts was written. Therefore, they referred to Matthias as an apostle for that reason. However, this is not supported anywhere in scripture.
For example, scripture does not say that "
Paul, an apostle of Christ, was consenting unto his (Steven, an apostle) death" in Acts 8:1. Nor does it say "
Paul, an apostle of Christ, he made havock of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison" in Acts 8:3. Scripture does not refer to Paul as an apostle of Christ at this point in time, because Paul was not ordained an apostle at the time he was persecting believers in Christ. Likweise, scripture does not say "And as Jesus passed forth from thence, he saw a man, named Matthew,
an apostle of Christ, sitting at the receipt of custom" in Matthew 9:9. Why? Because Matthew was not ordained an apostle when he collected taxes for Caesar. Niether were Peter and Andrew called apostles of Christ when they were commercial fishermen (Matthew 4:18), even though they were all apostles at the time the gospels were written. The reason is because they were not apostles at this point in time. They were only referred to as apostles from the point in history that they were ordained as apostles. The same goes for Matthias, who was ordained an apostle of Christ
after the resurrection of Jesus. Further evidence regarding the presence of Judas after the resurrection is given by the gospel records of two of the post-resurrection appearances of Jesus.