09 — Historical Questions
The honest inventory of what can and cannot be said about the Apostle Bartholomew. These files gather the collection’s source-critical work into two studies: the central question of the identification with Nathanael, and the wider legacy and veneration of the apostle East and West — the place where the divergent mission traditions, the apocrypha, and the relic-cult are weighed together.
Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)
A reference guide owes its reader candor about the state of the evidence. For Bartholomew that evidence is thin: a name in four lists, an identification with Nathanael that the New Testament never makes explicit, mission fields given variously and not easily reconciled, and a death and relic-history known largely through later and apocryphal sources. None of this touches the apostle’s veneration, which is universal and ancient; but it shapes how the historian and the catechist alike must speak. This section sets out the identification debate with the positions named, and then the apostle’s reception and legacy — the cult, the patronages, the place of “St. Bartholomew’s Day” in later history — as the honest summing-up of the whole collection.
Files in This Section
| File | Description |
|---|---|
| The Identification Debate | Bartholomew = Nathanael: the patronymic argument, the Philip-pairing argument, the silence of John on “Bartholomew” and of the Synoptics on “Nathanael,” the alternative identifications proposed, and the scholarly caution — laid out with the positions and their proponents named. |
| Reception and Legacy | The veneration of the apostle East and West; the patronages and dedications; the later, unrelated use of his name for the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre (1572); and a final honest summary of what the sources allow us to know. |
See Also
- Bartholomew and Nathanael — the identification first introduced
- The Missions — the divergent mission traditions weighed here
- Assessing the Tradition — the apocrypha in the balance
- Holy Scripture — the scriptural data that anchors the whole
References
- The Holy Bible, Revised Standard Version and King James Version. (Matt. 10:3; Mark 3:18; Luke 6:14; Acts 1:13; John 1:45–51; 21:2.)
- Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel According to John I–XII. Anchor Bible 29. Garden City: Doubleday, 1966.
- Farmer, David Hugh. The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. 5th ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. (Entry “Bartholomew.”)