The Eleven - Jesus appeared risen to the Officers of the Temple Prison

The thesis of this article is that the term “the Eleven” used by the Greek Luke both in his Easter appearance Gospel and in his Acts of the Apostles doesn’t designate the twelve Galilean apostles minus the dead Judas Iscariot, but the officers of the temple prison of Jerusalem. These officers, with their servants who are called ‘hyperetai’ by Luke, were also responsible for the corporal punishments and the death penalty. This vocabulary and these responsibilities are an exact parallel of the organisation of the prison in Athens, as described in the book “Athenaion Politeia” attributed to Aristotle, and as described by Heraclides, not earlier than the second century BCE. It will be shown that this one simple thesis about “the Eleven” accounts for many, hitherto seemingly contradictive or inexplicable elements of the narratives in Gospels and Acts, especially of the Easter narratives, which now can be regarded as completely historical, as they are not reciprocally contradictive any longer in any detail.

The thesis implies that Jesus both appeared risen to his Galilean apostles in the room of the Last Supper and to his prison guards in the temple and that these two groups of witnesses of his (death and) resurrection became one group of apostles on Pentecost, for then Simon Peter stood and preached “with the Eleven”. The Galilean apostles nevertheless remained distinct from all others, as “the Twelve” who had the doctrinal and administrative authority.