The Seventy Disciples

The names of our Savior’s apostles are plain to everyone from the Gospels, but no list of the seventy disciples is found anywhere. Barnabas, however, is said to have been one of them. The Acts of the Apostles mentions him in various places, and so, not least, does Paul in his letter to the Galatians. [a] They say that Sosthenes too, who wrote to the Corinthians together with Paul, was one of them. This account is in Clement, in the fifth book of his Outlines. There he also says that Cephas was one of the seventy disciples, a man with the same name as Peter the apostle—the Cephas of whom Paul says, “But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face.” [b] The report also holds that Matthias, who was counted with the apostles in place of Judas, and the man who was honored together with him in the same vote, were both thought worthy of the same calling as the seventy. They say Thaddaeus too was one of them, and I will shortly set out an account about him that has come down to us. If you look closely, you will find that the Savior had more than seventy disciples. Paul is the witness. He says that after the Savior rose from the dead he was seen first by Cephas, then by the twelve, and after them by more than five hundred brothers at once, of whom some, he said, had fallen asleep, but most were still alive at the time he was writing. [c] Then he says he was seen by James; and this James too was one of those called the Savior’s brothers. Then, since besides these there were a great many others who were apostles, after the pattern of the twelve, as Paul himself was, he adds: “Then he was seen by all the apostles.” So much, then, about these men. [d]