Killing Jesus: A History

Jesus comes to the fishing town of Capernaum to speak to the people. However, the town, a major travel hub, is too busy and loud for him to get anyone’s attention. Jesus finds Simon and his brother Andrew, two men he had previously met in the summer, dejected at the docks because they had caught no fish the whole day. Jesus tells Simon to take him out in the boat a little way from the dock, and Simon agrees. Jesus preaches from the boat, and his voice carries to everyone at the waterfront. After he is finished teaching, he tells Simon to go to deeper water and cast out his nets. Simon pulls in so many fish that the nets “start to break” (138). Simon becomes Jesus’s first disciple after this event, and Jesus renames him Peter. By 28 CE, Jesus selects eleven other men to follow him, including three more fishermen, since they are multilingual from their fishing travels and can reach larger audiences. The group also includes Matthew, a despised tax collector who worked for Rome, and Judas Iscariot, the only disciple not from Galilee. The area of Galilee is only about 30 by 40 miles, and word spreads quickly of the Nazarene preacher Jesus, who bases his operations in Capernaum.