Did Jesus Have Female Disciples?
The 12 tribes of Israel began with the 12 sons of Abraham’s grandson Jacob, and Jesus chose 12 Jewish men as his “apostles,” signaling a new start for God’s people (Matt. 19:28; Luke 22:30). Mark describes the apostles like this: “He appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority to cast out demons” (Mark 3:14–15). From this point on, when Mark uses the word “disciples,” he tends to mean these 12 apostles. Jesus’s Female Disciples But Luke explains that the 12 were a subset of Jesus’s disciples. After a night of prayer, Jesus “called his disciples and chose from them twelve, whom he named apostles” (Luke 6:13). So, what about the larger group of disciples who traveled with Jesus? Luke makes it clear that this larger group included many women. After telling a story of Jesus forgiving a notoriously sinful woman and commending her over a self-consciously religious man, Luke writes: Soon afterward [Jesus...