In our historical search about the mission of Jesus, now we see a question which regards the time of the election of the apostles from Jesus. 

   We see if the group of the apostles is what emerges inside the amplest community of the disciples of the Teacher, constituted after the resurrection of Jesus or they have directly been select from Him? 

   The question can seem without importance, but it is not this way. It constitutes a remarkable wedge of the image about the historical Jesus that is gradually delineating in our search. 

   Some studious like Wellhausen, Schütz, Kleins, believe that "the twelve college would have risen in Jerusalem, in the period among the death of Jesus and the conversion of Paul, as stable group with function and presbiterial authority inside the entourage of the disciples". 
   Others, sustain instead, that  Jesus has chosen the Twelve apostles sending them in the mission. In fact the Gospel show a certain similarity between this hypothesis and the rabbinic tradition.  Grundmann says that the apostles' dispatch in mission is not anything else other than the realization, in the community of Jesus, of the Jewish institution of the "shaliah", that means to be entrusted of a mission to complete, of which will be owed, then, to realize . 

   Analogous to the tradition of the "shaliah" it is the charge that Jesus confers to the Twelve apostles and to the 72 disciples that are his first community: 

   "Jesus decided to ask some of his disciples to go up on a mountain with him, and they went. Then he chose twelve of them to be his apostles, so that they could be with him. He also wanted to send them out to preach and to force out demons. Simon was one of the twelve, and Jesus named him Peter. There were also James and John, the two sons of Zebedee. Jesus called them Boanerges, which means "Thunderbolts." Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus were also apostles. The others were Simon, known as the Eager One, and Judas Iscariot, who later betrayed Jesus"(Mc 3,13-19). 

   This text of Mark constitute privileged material of the attention of many researchers. The apostles are the base of the primitive Church. First of all, because they live a long period of familiarity with the Teacher, gradually discovering that mystery that will fully be disclosed after the experience of the Easter. 

   This life in common with Jesus it also means acquisition, from the apostles, of the ocular testimony, over how affective of the personality of the Teacher. The same ocular testimony that will constitute one of the essential elements of the extraordinary incidence of the apostolic announcement. And the same Jesus preannounces them: 

   "Then you will also tell others about me, because you have been with me from the beginning" (Jn 15,27). 

   And when the apostles have to select  a new apostle to replace Judas Iscariot in the apostolic college, they chose a person that had shared the life of the young community of Jesus since the beginning of the Mission.: 

   "So we need someone else to help us tell others that Jesus has been raised from death. He must also be one of the men who was with us from the very beginning. He must have been with us from the time the Lord Jesus was baptized by John until the day he was taken to heaven"(Acts 1,21-22). 

   Not only, but "the Twelve already appear in the ancient profession of faith of 1 Cor 15,5, that, in the substance, it refers an Semitic text"(J. Jeremias). 

    The same word "Twelve" continues to be quoted, although after the death and resurrection of Jesus the apostles have remained in eleven. And the fact same that the apostolic college has tried to fill the place left free by Giuda the traitor, it shows that it has wanted to be faithful to that number. A fidelity that is able explained only with the fidelity to a choice sort from Jesus. 

   To Twelve election further demonstration, from the same Jesus, it is the agreement, nearly absolute, of the apostles' names inserted in the four Gospel. And, considered that after the Pentecost, and also the persecutions, the apostles have gone all over the world to bring their announcement, if their election were authentic from Jesus, we would not undoubtedly have an extraordinary agreement in their names in all the around 24000 texts that recall him the New Testament. 
   A last datum, and perhaps it is the most meaningful, it concerns Judas Iscariot the traitor. Its name is inserted in all the lists of the apostles. And it s the most palpable test of the existence of this group before the death of Jesus. A tries underlined with particular attention by J. Jeremias:   

    "From the Gospel we see which difficulty this tradition [of the traitor included among the Twelve] has created to the community... Who could have created  this difficulty? To who should be come the idea to make the promise that would have sat down on one of the regal thrones to judge the twelve tribes of Israel to the traitor, if Giuda doesn't really was not belong to the entourage of the guests? Nobody has still succeeded in making such acceptable idea... 

   The fact that the Sinotticis write the name of the traitor in all the lists of the Twelve, it shows undoubtedly that the tradition around the birth of the group of the apostles is is antecedent to the passion, death and resurrection of Christ".. 
   All shows that before his death Jesus has driven a narrow group of apostles inserted in an ampler community.  Then we can deduce Jesus has wished to give a succession to his mission of salvation. 

   This thoughts, enunciated here, they show that the apostles' election in the entourage of the community of the disciples of Jesus not only it shows the historicity of Jesus, thing by now that any more sets in doubt. But it also illuminates the mysterious and explosive missionary effectiveness of the evangelical announcement in the years that follow the Pentecost and the missionary apostolate of saint Paul.

   The fact that a swarm of timorous Hebrews of Galilee comes to propagate the Gospel of Jesus Christ, also testifying with their death, the fidelity to the Teacher, it shows that something upsetting has happened in the years when they lived with Jesus and, above all, after his bloody experience of the Calvary. Something that can be explained only with the perception of his Divinity that glows really in the days of the Easter, when their eyes opened and they understood what John writes in his Gospel: 

    "The Word that gives life was from the beginning, and this is the one our message is about. 
Our ears have heard, our own eyes have seen, and our hands touched this Word. The one who gives life appeared! We saw it happen, and we are witnesses to what we have seen. Now we are telling you about this eternal life that was with the Father and appeared to us. We are telling you what we have seen and heard, so that you may share in this life with us. And we share in it with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ."(1 John1-3).