What Happened to the Twelve Apostles? Matthias, the Empty Seat and the Evidence

Cold open

Picture a room in Jerusalem, crowded with about a hundred and twenty people. Among them, eleven men... and one empty place where a twelfth used to be.

Two names are put forward. A prayer is said. Lots are cast... and one man is in.

And then? The Bible never mentions him by name again. Not once. He wins a seat among the Twelve, and immediately vanishes from the page.

His name was Matthias. And today, in our final episode of The Twelve, we'll look at that empty seat... and ask a bigger question. What actually became of the Twelve? How much do we really know, and how much is tradition, or legend, or wishful thinking?

As always, I'll tell you which is which. When it's the Bible, you'll know. When it's early tradition, you'll know. And when it's legend... oh, you'll know.

Let's begin.

A hole in the Twelve

Scripture

The story is told in just one place: Acts chapter one.

Jesus has ascended. The disciples are back in Jerusalem, praying in an upper room. Then Luke goes on: "In these days," Peter stands up among the disciples... about a hundred and twenty of them.

He talks about Judas, "who was guide to those who took Jesus." Judas, he says, "was counted with us, and received his portion in this ministry." Then he quotes the Psalms: "Let his habitation be made desolate." And the line that matters for our story: "Let another take his office."

So there's a vacancy.

Now, why twelve? Peter doesn't explain, and Acts doesn't either. But the Gospels had already recorded a striking promise. In Matthew, Jesus tells the disciples: "you who have followed me... you also will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." Luke has a similar saying: "You will sit on thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel."

What those words mean, we won't settle today.

The job description

Scripture

Here's what I love. Before anyone is chosen, Peter sets out the qualifications. Think of it as the first job description in church history.

The new man must be one of those "who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John to the day that he was received up from us". And his role? To "become a witness with us of his resurrection."

So: there from the start, there at the end, and a witness that Jesus had risen. A short list.

Then: "They put forward two: Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justus, and Matthias."

Three names for the first man! Joseph, Barsabbas, and Justus. And the second candidate? Just... Matthias. One name. Guess which one wins.

Scholarship

The names themselves are worth a moment. Matthias is a Greek form of the Hebrew name Mattithiah, which means "gift of Yahweh." Justus is a Latin name, meaning "just." Many Jews then carried a Latin or Greek name alongside a Hebrew one.

Casting lots

Scripture

So: two candidates, one place. How do you choose?

First, they pray: "You, Lord, who know the hearts of all men, show which one of these two you have chosen to take part in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas fell away..."

And then: "They drew lots for them, and the lot fell on Matthias; and he was counted with the eleven apostles."

That's it. That's the whole election.

Now, how did they actually do it? Stones in a jar? Honestly? The text doesn't say. And anyone who tells you exactly how it worked is guessing.

Scholarship

What we can say is that casting lots was a normal, very biblical way to decide. In the Hebrew Scriptures, lots are cast over the two goats on the Day of Atonement, to divide the land under Joshua, and to sort the priests into divisions. Sailors cast lots to find out who's to blame for a storm... "and the lot fell on Jonah." Poor Jonah.

Luke's own Gospel opens the same way. Zechariah, the father of John the Baptist, is on Temple duty, and "his lot was to enter into the temple of the Lord and burn incense."

Scholars often compare our passage with Proverbs: "The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from Yahweh."

And here's a lovely bit of language. The Greek word for "lot" here is klēros. It's the same word behind Peter's line a moment earlier, that Judas "received his portion" in this ministry. And over the centuries, by way of Latin, klēros gave English the words... clergy. And clerk.

Tradition

Saint Augustine went a step further. He suggested that clergy and clerks got their name because Matthias was chosen by lot: the first man, he says, that we read of being ordained by the apostles. So the next time you queue at a council office... spare a thought for Matthias.

Scripture

One last detail. This is the last time the New Testament shows the believers casting lots to make a decision. Turn the page to chapter two... and it's Pentecost.

Was it a mistake?

Scholarship

Which brings us to a debate.

Some Christian preachers and commentators have argued that the Eleven jumped the gun. That God's real choice for the twelfth place was someone who wasn't yet a follower of Jesus at all: Saul of Tarsus. Paul.

The British preacher G. Campbell Morgan, writing in 1924, called it "a debated point in interpretation", but he gave his own view bluntly: "the election of Matthias was wrong." Casting lots, he wrote, "was no longer necessary." Matthias was "a good man, but the wrong man for this position". And Paul, Morgan believed, "was God's man for the filling of the gap."

The radio Bible teacher J. Vernon McGee took a similar line: Paul, not Matthias, took Judas's place. Their argument: Matthias is never mentioned again, while Paul dominates the second half of Acts.

But this is a minority view, mostly from modern Protestant preachers. For most of church history, and for Catholic and Orthodox Christians today, Matthias is simply Saint Matthias the apostle, with his own feast day. Most commentators disagree. They point out that Paul doesn't meet Peter's own criteria: he wasn't there from John's baptism. In Acts chapter six, the Twelve are still acting together, with no hint that anything had gone wrong. And Paul himself, in First Corinthians, lists an appearance of the risen Jesus "to the twelve", and then, separately, "last of all... he appeared to me also." He calls himself "the least of the apostles".

Scripture

So where does the text itself stand? Acts never says the choice was a mistake, and never comments on it either. It simply reports it, and moves on. Both readings are out there; you're free to weigh them yourself.

The man after the lot

So what happened to Matthias himself? For that, we leave Scripture behind.

Tradition

In the early three hundreds, the historian Eusebius wrote that Matthias, and the other candidate too, "are likewise said" to have been among the seventy: the larger group Jesus sends out in Luke's Gospel. Notice his wording: said to. Eusebius admits, in the same chapter, that no list of the Seventy exists.

A century earlier, Clement of Alexandria passes on something stranger. He tells the story of Zacchaeus, the tax collector who climbed a tree to see Jesus... and adds that some say he was Matthias.

But there's a snag, as commentators have pointed out. Zacchaeus meets Jesus in Jericho, near the end of the ministry, and Peter's rule required someone who'd been there from the beginning. And even the translators wobble: Clement's Greek says "Matthias," but a standard old English translation prints "Matthew." Treat it as an early curiosity, not a fact.

Tradition

Matthias's name also appears on books. Clement quotes several sayings from something he calls the Traditions of Matthias. Here's one: "Wonder at what is before you." Origen, in a sermon on Luke, mentions a gospel called "According to Matthias," and says the church accepted only four. Eusebius lists a Gospel of Matthias among books put out by heretics under the apostles' names. And Hippolytus of Rome reports that the teacher Basilides and his son Isidore claimed Matthias had passed them secret teachings he'd heard from the Saviour.

Every one of these books is lost, apart from a few quotations. Scholars still argue about whether the Gospel and the Traditions were even the same work. And no modern scholar thinks Matthias wrote them.

Legend

And then there's the adventure story. In a later apocryphal tale, the Acts of Andrew and Matthias, Matthias is thrown into prison in a "city of the man-eaters," and Andrew sails to the rescue. Though some manuscripts give the prisoner's name as Matthew instead.

How did Matthias die?

Legend

Now, the death stories. Notice how late they are.

A list of the apostles once credited to Hippolytus, though almost certainly written later by someone else, says Matthias preached in Jerusalem, "fell asleep," and was buried there. No martyrdom mentioned.

In the thirteen hundreds, the Byzantine historian Nicephorus says Matthias preached in Judea, then in "Ethiopia"... which here seems to mean Colchis, on the Black Sea, in modern Georgia... and was crucified. Today, at the Roman fort of Gonio-Apsaros in Georgia, a marker claims his grave.

And in the Latin West, the thirteenth-century Golden Legend sets it back in Judea: he's stoned, and then finished off with an axe "after the manner of the Romans."

Buried in Jerusalem. Crucified in "Ethiopia." Stoned, then an axe, in Judea. They can't all be right. And none of them can be checked.

Later Tradition

Then there are the relics. A medieval story says that the Empress Helena, mother of Constantine, brought his relics to Rome, and that part of them ended up at Trier, in Germany. Even the old Catholic Encyclopedia introduces it with "It is said".

At Trier, the bones were reportedly found in eleven twenty-seven, while the abbey church was being rebuilt. Today it's the Abbey of Saint Matthias, and it calls his tomb the only grave of an apostle north of the Alps.

Scholarship

And here's a twist. Eusebius preserves a list of the early bishops of Jerusalem. On it are a Justus, a Zacchaeus... and a Matthias. Back in the sixteen hundreds, the Jesuit scholar Bollandus wondered whether the relics in Rome belonged to that later bishop Matthias instead. There's no way to check.

What became of the Twelve?

And that, really, is the story of almost all of them. So let's widen the lens.

Scripture

Acts chapter one is the last time the Bible lists the eleven by name. After that, most of them simply... disappear from the narrative. Andrew, Philip, Thomas, Bartholomew, Matthew, the other James, Simon, Jude, and now Matthias: they're folded into the Twelve, or the apostles, and that's it.

Peter dominates the first half of Acts, last appearing in chapter fifteen. John appears beside him, in the Temple, and on a mission to Samaria. And Paul, in Galatians, names "James and Cephas and John" as the pillars in Jerusalem.

Scholarship

Which James? Paul has just mentioned "James, the Lord's brother." Most modern scholars think that James wasn't one of the Twelve, though an old tradition in the West, going back to Jerome, identified him with James son of Alphaeus.

Scripture

And apart from Judas, only one of the Twelve has his death recorded in the New Testament: James, son of Zebedee. Herod, Luke says, "killed James, the brother of John, with the sword." That's it. One sentence.

For Peter, John's Gospel has Jesus tell him that when he is old, "you will stretch out your hands," and adds that this signified "by what kind of death he would glorify God." It doesn't say where, or how.

Tradition

But First Clement, a letter from the church in Rome usually dated to the nineties AD, says Peter suffered martyrdom. Eusebius records that Peter was crucified under Nero, and, quoting Origen, that he asked to be crucified head-downwards.

For John, the bishop Irenaeus, writing around 180, says John stayed in Ephesus until the reign of Trajan.

Eusebius, drawing on Origen, records a tradition that assigned Parthia to Thomas, Scythia to Andrew, and Asia to John. But for most of the rest, the stories come later. Sometimes centuries later. Sometimes several, all contradicting each other... just like Matthias.

So here's our honest scorecard.

James, son of Zebedee: Scripture. Solid. Judas: Scripture, in two accounts that readers have long tried to fit together. Peter: a hint in Scripture, plus early tradition. Strong. John: early tradition. Thomas and Andrew: an early tradition about where they went, then legend about the details. And most of the rest, Matthias included: later legend. Fascinating. Unprovable.

Close

So. Back to that room in Jerusalem, and that empty place.

Over twelve episodes, we've met a fisherman nicknamed Rock. A "doubter" who said it more plainly than anyone. A tax collector, a man called the Zealot, a man with three names in four lists, and a traitor whose death is told two different ways. And, last of all, a man chosen by lot, who never says a single word in the Bible.

And the job description Peter wrote boiled down to this: "a witness with us of his resurrection."

Scripture

The Bible's last book gives them one final image. In Revelation, the holy city has a wall: "The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them twelve names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb."

It doesn't list the names. Which, after everything we've learned this series... feels about right.

That's the end of The Twelve. But it isn't the end of the channel. Because there's one more apostle we haven't covered. The New Testament never counts him among the Twelve, and he didn't fit Peter's job description. Yet some people, as we heard, think he should have had that empty seat.

Paul. Coming soon to Bible History Class.