James the Less, Thaddaeus & Simon the Zealot

The apostles we're going to be looking at this week, three of them, are James the Less, Simon the Zealot, and Thaddeus, who is also known as Labaius. So I'm doing these three apostles together because we just don't know that much about them.

So what do you say? Really, what we know is their names, and it can get really confusing since there are already more significant apostles with these same names. Peter is also named Simon. There is another James, and Thaddeus, his real name is Judas, but not that Judas, because in the early church, obviously Judas is not a name you wanted to go by, so sometimes he's called Jude or Thaddeus or Labaius.

Now, here's the thing about these apostles. When they are listed in each gospel, sometimes their name is used, other times their nickname is used. So the lists are not identical. Also, when the apostles are listed, they seem to be put in groups of four.

The Apostolic Lists in Groups of Four

So Peter, James, John, and Andrew, that is one grouping of four. Peter, always mentioned first. Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, and Thomas is the next group of four. Philip is always mentioned first in that grouping.

And the apostles seem to get less significant as you go because by the final group of four, James, Thaddeus, Simon, and then Judas. James is mentioned first in that grouping every time, but we just don't know much about these men.

James the Less and the Other James

So like I said, all we have basically is their name. James is called the son of Althaeus, but usually he gets referred to as James the Less because the other apostle of James, the brother of John, he was either older, taller, more significant, or all of the above.

Thaddeus is sometimes called the apostle with three names since he is also referred to as Labaius and Judas, not Iscariot. Then Simon, the zealot, stands in the shadow of the other Simon, Simon Peter, so he's distinguished as Simon the zealot.

The zealots wanted to overthrow Rome, or he is called Simon the Canaanite, which likely means he was brought up, came from the city of Cana, where Jesus performed his first miracle. So I know this is a lot of information to take in, but in conclusion, not a lot else we can say about these men.

There are traditions about them, which may or may not be accurate, but rarely, if ever, do they speak in scripture, and I'll have more to say about the apostles in my sermon later on, which I've titled 12 Ordinary Men.

Recommended Resource and Closing Thoughts

And if you want more on this subject, I've recommended the book a few times by John MacArthur, which is called 12 Ordinary Men. Who knows what the book about the women are called? There's another book, 12 Ordinary Men, and then there's 12...

Extraordinary Women. Yeah, Extraordinary Women. So the apostles were ordinary, the women were extraordinary, so make of that what you will.