Biblical Figures
Studies of particular people in Scripture — the twelve disciples, the patriarchs, the prophets, the kings.
Filing a study here is a decision about what it is most about. A study of Melchizedek's priesthood is Christology, because its subject is the office Christ holds rather than the man who briefly held it first. A study belongs here when the person is the subject, not the illustration.
Comics in these studies
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Named a Rock · Simon Peter
The studies
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The Twelve: Disciples and Apostles
The four lists of the Twelve compared position by position: the fixed groups of four hiding inside them, why the number had to be twelve, and the difference between a disciple and an apostle.
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Simon Peter
The fisherman Jesus renamed at first meeting: what 'Cephas' meant before Peter had done anything to deserve it, and why he heads all four lists of the Twelve.
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Andrew
The apostle who is introduced three times and is bringing someone to Jesus on each occasion — including the boy with the loaves and the Greeks who came asking.
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James son of Zebedee
One of the inner three, nicknamed Son of Thunder, and the only apostle whose death Scripture actually records.
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John son of Zebedee
The Son of Thunder who never names himself, the apostle given care of Jesus' mother from the cross, and the one who wrote most of the New Testament's closing vision.
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Philip
The apostle Jesus tested with an impossible catering question, who answered by doing the arithmetic — and who the Greeks approached when they wanted to see Jesus.
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Bartholomew (Nathanael)
An apostle whose name is a patronymic, not a personal name — and the cumulative case, laid out honestly, for identifying him with Nathanael of Cana.
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Thomas
The apostle who volunteered to die with Jesus, admitted he did not know the way, and made the highest confession of deity in the Gospels — all before anyone called him a doubter.
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Matthew (Levi)
The tax collector who left the booth mid-shift, threw a party for his disreputable colleagues, and then wrote himself into his own Gospel with the job title still attached.
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James son of Alphaeus
An apostle who heads a group of four in all four lists and never speaks, acts, or is described — and why the identifications commonly proposed for him do not hold up.
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Thaddaeus (Judas son of James)
The apostle with two names and one recorded question — asked in the upper room, and answered with a promise about where God intends to live.
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Simon the Zealot
The apostle whose only description is a political label — and why 'Simon the Canaanite' in older translations is a mistranslation worth correcting.
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Judas Iscariot
The apostle who is last in every list: what his name probably means, what the money box reveals, and how to handle the two accounts of his death honestly.
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Paul: Apostle to the Gentiles
The man who persecuted the church became the one Jesus sent specifically to the Gentiles -- what Scripture actually claims about the connection between his conversion and theirs, and where it stops short of calling him a type.