Fishermen

The fishing trade of the Sea of Galilee supplies more of the named followers of Jesus than any other occupation. It was ordinary commercial work: boats, dragnets and casting nets, hired crews, and family partnerships. Zebedee is described in the boat with hired servants when his sons left him (Mark 1:19-20), which indicates a business of some size rather than subsistence labour.

Simon Peter and his brother Andrew were casting a net into the sea when Jesus called them, and the phrase He used - fishers of men - took its force from the trade they were leaving (Matthew 4:18-20). James and John, the sons of Zebedee, were mending nets in the boat with their father when the same call came, and they left the boat and their father behind (Matthew 4:21-22). Luke sets the call after a night of catching nothing and a catch so large that the nets began to tear and a second boat was needed (Luke 5:1-11).

The trade reappears after the resurrection. Peter announced that he was going fishing, six others went with him, and the night again produced nothing until a figure on the shore told them where to cast (John 21:1-14). The list of those in the boat that night names Thomas and Nathanael alongside the sons of Zebedee, which is the basis on which Thomas is counted here.

Not every fisherman in these pages became a disciple. Zebedee stayed with his boats. John, the father of Simon Peter, is known only as the father named in his sons' patronymic (John 1:42; John 21:15). The trade itself supplied the imagery Jesus used for the kingdom - a net let down into the sea that gathers fish of every kind (Matthew 13:47-48).