New Testament

The New Testament begins by naming forty-two generations. Matthew 1 traces Jesus from Abraham through David to Joseph, Luke 3 runs the line the other direction and back past Abraham to Adam, and the two genealogies together set the terms for everything after: this is a record about specific people, in a specific province, under datable rulers.

Five stages hold the story. The Gospels cover the life of Jesus, and the names arrive in clusters — Mary, Joseph, Elizabeth, Zechariah, Simeon and Anna around the birth in Luke 1–2; the twelve apostles listed in Matthew 10, Mark 3 and Luke 6; the women who travelled with the group and funded it in Luke 8:1–3; and the officials, Pharisees, Sadducees and Roman soldiers who appear at the trial in all four accounts.

Acts follows the pattern set out in Acts 1:8. In Jerusalem, Acts 1–7, the church begins with the replacement of Judas by Matthias, the seven chosen to serve in Acts 6, and the killing of Stephen. In Judea and Samaria, Acts 8–12, Philip, Simon the sorcerer, the Ethiopian official, Cornelius, Aeneas, Tabitha and Herod Agrippa I carry the record outward. From Acts 13 the mission reaches the ends of the earth: Paul and Barnabas sail from Antioch, and the named companions multiply until Romans 16 alone greets twenty-six people by name, several of them women who led congregations in their houses.

The letters are, in this sense, address books. Timothy, Titus, Philemon, Onesimus, Priscilla, Aquila, Phoebe, Epaphroditus, Tychicus, Demas and dozens more are named in the epistles, sometimes in a single clause and never explained further. People like Alexander the metalworker in 2 Timothy 4:14 or Diotrephes in 3 John 9 appear once, in one verse, and the New Testament simply expects the reader to know who was meant.

Revelation stands as its own era here rather than as a tail on the letters. Its figures — the twenty-four elders, the four riders, the two witnesses, Antipas of Pergamum, the woman called Jezebel at Thyatira, the Nicolaitans — belong to a vision addressed to seven named churches in Revelation 2–3, and they are catalogued on their own terms: what John sees and who appears in it.

Rome is present throughout. Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, the governors Pilate, Felix and Festus, and the Herodian family from Herod the Great to Agrippa II give the story its calendar, and Luke uses them that way in Luke 3:1–2. Their profiles are kept alongside the apostles because Scripture keeps them there.

As in the Hebrew Scriptures, names repeat. Six men are called James, several are called Judas, and there are multiple Marys, Simons and Johns in the same chapters. Each profile below is one person, fixed by first reference and era, so that James the son of Zebedee, James the son of Alphaeus and James the brother of Jesus stay distinct, and Levi the tax collector is never merged with Levi the son of Jacob.