The Calling of the Disciples

🔗The Mark 1 Problem

In the traditional text of Mark, Jesus begins the Galilean proclamation "after John was delivered up" (Mark 1:14), immediately calls Simon, Andrew, James, and John from their boats (1:16-20), then has the group enter Capernaum (1:21) and go from the synagogue to "the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John" (1:29). Read in isolation, the sequence is clear: John is already imprisoned, Jesus begins in Galilee, four fishermen are summoned, and the newly summoned group moves into Capernaum.

That sequence creates a serious source-history problem once John and Luke are allowed to control the chronology. John 1:35-42 places Andrew's first following of Jesus near John the Baptist and has Andrew bring Simon to Jesus there. John 3:22-24 then explicitly says John was "not yet cast into prison" while Jesus and John were both active. Luke's Capernaum sequence also lacks Mark's shoreline call at this point: Jesus comes down to Capernaum, teaches in the synagogue, and enters Simon's house (Luke 4:31-38). Luke's fish-catch commissioning comes later, at Luke 5:1-11, and is directed around Simon, with James and John named as his partners; Andrew is not named there.

The UPDV therefore treats Mark 1:14, 16-20, 21, and 29 as a connected source-composition bundle. The issue is not one isolated verse. The phrase "after John was delivered up" in 1:14 creates the chronological hinge; verses 16-20 supply the shoreline call; the group's movement into Capernaum in 1:21 and the named entourage in 1:29 depend on that call scene. If the shoreline call is judged secondary at this point in Mark's composition, the surrounding seams have to be adjusted with it.

🔗What the UPDV Prints

The UPDV removes the phrase "after John was delivered up" from Mark 1:14 and excludes Mark 1:16-20 from the running text. It then adjusts the two seams that depended on the removed scene:

• Mark 1:21 now has Jesus enter Capernaum in the singular.
• Mark 1:29 now has Jesus come out of the synagogue and enter the house of Simon and Andrew, without the removed James-and-John entourage.

The result is a simpler sequence: Jesus comes into Galilee preaching the good news of God (1:14-15), enters Capernaum and teaches in the synagogue (1:21-28), then enters Simon and Andrew's house (1:29-31). John 1 remains the account of Andrew bringing Simon to Jesus before John's imprisonment, and Luke 5 remains the fuller fish-catch call or commissioning scene.

🔗What This Decision Does and Does Not Claim

This is a source-history/source-composition decision upstream of the extant manuscript tradition. It is not a claim that surviving Greek manuscripts directly omit Mark 1:16-20. NA28 prints the whole sequence, and the local INTF collation shows positive Greek transcription evidence at both the opening and closing verses of the unit: Mark 1:16 has 149 witnesses across local variants, and Mark 1:20 has 168 witnesses across local variants. The variation is local wording, spelling, harmonization, and order; it is not a simple ancient Greek omission of the whole shoreline call.

Nor is the decision based on one scholar or one reconstruction treated mechanically. Some standard commentary already recognizes seams around this material. WBC (Guelich) notes that the unusual wording of Mark 1:16 may reflect Mark's editorial linking of the call with the Galilee notice in 1:14-15. ICC (Gould), trying to explain the abruptness of the call, says the immediate following is probably due to a previous acquaintance with Jesus and points to John 1:35-43 as the account in which they had already become disciples during John's ministry. Those observations do not by themselves prove excision. They show the pressure that the UPDV judges in light of John, Luke, and the reconstructed baseline-gospel policy.

NTL (Boring) presses the same abruptness in the opposite direction from harmonization. He notes that harmonizers can appeal to Luke or John, where those called have already observed Jesus' works or heard his teaching, but Mark itself gives no explanation and presents the fishermen's discipleship as wholly the work of Jesus' effective word. In the footnote to this point, Boring explicitly prefers Haenchen's reading of Mark 1:16-20. Haenchen contrasts Mark with Luke 5:1-11 and says Mark's story does not speak of an authenticating miracle that identifies Jesus as a divine being, but deals "only" with "the miracle of the compelling word." Boring therefore says that "There is no parallel to such an unmotivated call story in ancient literature" and that it is "a mistake to try to fit the scene into a psychologically plausible or theologically voluntaristic biographical mode of reporting." In his reading, Mark 1:16-20 is "the paradigmatic representation of the gathering of the Christian community by the call of God in Christ" and is not meant to portray the practicalities of discipleship. This still does not prove the UPDV's excision by itself, but it strengthens the article's distinction between Mark's theological shoreline scene and the chronology question raised by John and Luke.

Klinghardt's reconstructed baseline gospel sharpens the source-composition question. His reconstruction prints *5:1-11 as "Miraculous Catch of Fish. Calling of Peter and the Sons of Zebedee" and labels it "Attested; certainly present; presumably editorially revised." In his discussion of the tradition history, *5:1-11 is not a secondary Lukan reworking of Mark 1:16-20. Rather, under *Ev-priority it is "the first commissioning account" and the first place disciples are mentioned in *Ev. Klinghardt then states the relationship directly: "Mark dismantled the commissioning account *5,1-11 and placed the calling of the first four disciples (Mark 1,16-20 || *5,8-11) at the beginning of Jesus' public ministry." The UPDV does not turn that reconstruction into a manuscript claim, but it gives a specific source-history rationale for excluding Mark's shoreline-call placement while retaining Luke's fish-catch commissioning.

The controlling judgment is that the Johannine chronology is more accurate here than the Markan sequence. John presents Andrew and Simon's first encounter with Jesus before John is imprisoned, and John 3:24 explicitly preserves concurrent ministry before that imprisonment. The UPDV therefore removes the Markan hinge and the shoreline call scene that require the opposite order.

🔗Reader Effect

Nothing is lost from the larger disciple-calling picture. Andrew still first follows Jesus because of John's testimony and brings Simon to him (John 1:35-42). Simon, James, and John still receive the fish-catch commissioning in Luke 5:1-11. Capernaum remains the early public setting for Jesus' authoritative teaching and healing (Mark 1:21-34; Luke 4:31-39). What is removed is the Markan source layer that places an abrupt four-fishermen shoreline call after John's imprisonment and then uses that call to carry James and John into Simon and Andrew's house before the Capernaum ministry.

🔗References and Checks

• John 1:35-42; John 3:22-24; Luke 4:31-39; Luke 5:1-11.
• NA28 Mark 1:14-29 prints the full traditional sequence.
• INTF local collation: Mark 1:16 = 149 witnesses / 61 readings; Mark 1:20 = 168 witnesses / 52 readings.
• Klinghardt, Matthias. The Oldest Gospel and the Formation of the Canonical Gospels, Part II: Reconstruction – Translation – Variants. Leuven: Peeters, 2021, 537, 539, 541.
• WBC 34A (Guelich) on Mark 1:16: the wording may stem from Mark's editorial linking of 1:16-20 with 1:14-15.
• ICC Mark (Gould) on 1:18: the abrupt following is probably due to previous acquaintance, with John 1:35-43 cited as the account of that earlier discipleship during John's ministry.
• NTL Mark (Boring) on 1:16-20: Mark gives no explanation for the immediate following, notes that harmonizers can appeal to Luke or John, says there is no parallel to such an "unmotivated call story," and describes the scene as a "paradigmatic representation of the gathering of the Christian community by the call of God in Christ." Boring cites Haenchen, Der Weg Jesu, 80, as the preferred interpretation: unlike Luke 5:1-11, Mark's story does not center on an authenticating miracle but on "the miracle of the compelling word."
• See also The Reconstructed Baseline Gospel Text (*Ev) and Variant Exceptions.