How Old Were the Disciples of Jesus? Mostly Young Men in Their Teens and 20s, and Who Was the Youngest

The Bible does not give the age of any of Jesus’ disciples. Its hints point to young men, most likely in their late teens to twenties when Jesus called them, with Peter, who was married, probably the oldest, and John, by early tradition, the youngest. Each of those ages is an inference from a few verses, and none is certain.

Jesus himself “began to be about thirty years of age” when his public work began (Luke 3:23), and the men he called were probably younger than he was, some of them much younger. They were at their nets and their tax table when he said, “Follow me,” and most of their lives still lay ahead of them. The clues to their ages are few: a mother-in-law, a fishing boat shared with a father, a temple tax paid for only two men, and the long life of one apostle.

How old were the disciples when Jesus called them?

The Gospels show the first disciples at work, never at an age. Jesus “saw Simon and Andrew his brother casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers,” and a little farther on “James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, who also were in the ship mending their nets.” The brothers “left their father Zebedee in the ship with the hired servants, and went after him” (Mark 1:16–20). Matthew was “sitting at the receipt of custom”, taking taxes, when Jesus said to him, “Follow me” (Matthew 9:9). Men who could leave a trade were old enough to have one. Past that, each clue tells us only a little.

Peter’s wife and mother-in-law

The clearest clue is Peter’s household. After the synagogue at Capernaum, Jesus and the first four disciples “entered into the house of Simon and Andrew”, where “Simon’s wife’s mother lay sick of a fever”, and Jesus “took her by the hand, and lifted her up” (Mark 1:29–31). Years later Paul could still ask whether the apostles might “lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas” (1 Corinthians 9:5). Cephas is Peter: Jesus told Simon, “thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone” (John 1:42). A married man who shared a house with his brother was a grown man by the standards of his time.

James and John in their father’s boat

Zebedee’s sons were still working their father’s boat, beside his hired men, when Jesus called them. That fits sons who did not yet have boats of their own, and so it fits young men. It does not prove it. Grown sons often worked a family trade all their lives.

Were some of the disciples under twenty?

They may have been, and one story in Matthew is why the question comes up. At Capernaum “they that received tribute money came to Peter, and said, Doth not your master pay tribute?” Jesus sent Peter to the lake, where he would find a coin in the mouth of a fish: “that take, and give unto them for me and thee” (Matthew 17:24–27). This was the half-shekel paid each year for the temple. The Law of Moses set it on “every one that passeth among them that are numbered, from twenty years old and above” (Exodus 30:14), and the notes of the New American Bible, the translation of the Catholic bishops of the United States, say that before the temple fell in AD 70 “every male Jew above nineteen years of age” paid it. The coin was “worth two double drachmas”, the tax for two men.

Only Jesus and Peter were paid for. If the others owed nothing because they were under twenty, this was a band of very young men. But Matthew does not give the reason, and the same notes read the story another way. It answered a question in Matthew’s own church, they say, whether its members should pay the temple tax, and Peter’s payment “serves as a standard for the conduct of all the disciples.” On that reading the story is about Peter’s place and says nothing about anyone’s age. At most it is a hint.

How old was Peter when Jesus called him?

No ancient writer records Peter’s age, so every figure is an estimate, and the estimate rests on his marriage and his place among the Twelve. He had a wife, a mother-in-law in his house, and a fishing trade shared with his brother. In every list of the apostles his name comes first; Matthew’s begins, “The first, Simon, who is called Peter” (Matthew 10:2). Jerome, writing against the monk Jovinian in 393, explained why Jesus made Peter, and not John, the head of the Twelve: “Deference was paid to age, because Peter was the elder: one who was a youth, I may say almost a boy, could not be set over men of advanced age”. But Jerome is comparing Peter with John, not giving Peter’s years. His “men of advanced age” sets the others against a boy; it does not fit the other clues well, and he gives no ages for them.

Put together, the clues suggest a man somewhere between his early twenties and his mid-thirties when Jesus called him, close to Jesus’ own age of about thirty. Scripture narrows it no further. Yet after the resurrection Jesus spoke to Peter of his youth as already behind him, and of his old age ahead: “When thou wast young, thou girdest thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest: but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee” (John 21:18). The young fisherman would grow old in his Lord’s service.

Who was the youngest disciple of Jesus?

Christian tradition names John, the son of Zebedee. Jerome says so plainly, “John, one of the disciples, who is related to have been the youngest of the Apostles”, and calls John at the time of the call “a youth, I may say almost a boy”. Jerome wrote more than three and a half centuries after the events, and he shows how he reached the age: from John’s long life, which “ecclesiastical history most clearly proves”. So the claim is tradition, and it rests on one argument.

The argument runs like this. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons in the second century, wrote that John remained at Ephesus “until the times of Trajan”. Jerome put his death “in the sixty-eighth year after our Lord’s passion”. Scripture gives no year for the call or the passion, but if you take the call as about AD 28 and the passion as about AD 30, John died about AD 98. A man of twenty-five at the call would then be about ninety-five, and a man of eighteen about eighty-eight. The long life fits a John in his teens or early twenties when Jesus called him.

Two details in John’s Gospel fit it too, without proving it. The disciple “whom Jesus loved”, traditionally identified with John, was “leaning on Jesus’ bosom” at the Last Supper (John 13:23). On Easter morning he and Peter ran to the tomb, “and the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre” (John 20:4). Why John is remembered as the beloved disciple is a question of its own, taken up in why John is called the beloved disciple. Painters kept the tradition. In Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper in Milan, painted between 1495 and 1498, John is, in the words of the museum that holds it, “the melancholy young man seated next to Christ”.

Who was the oldest of the twelve apostles?

No source names the oldest. Peter is the likeliest, because he was married and kept a house and because the lists put him first, but Jerome’s “Peter was the elder” compares him only with John. Andrew was Peter’s brother, and no Gospel says which of the two was older. Nothing gives an age for Matthew or for Simon the Zealot. A tax collector needed some experience, and a Zealot some years of conviction, so either may have been older than the fishermen. Those are guesses; the Gospels say nothing of either man’s age. Nor do they give any age for Judas Iscariot.

At what ages did Jewish custom place study, marriage and work?

A saying printed at the end of the Mishnah tractate Avot gives the stages of a Jewish man’s life in years. The Mishnah was written down about AD 200, and this saying may be later: the Jewish Encyclopedia treats it as a teaching from outside the Mishnah, the “Baraita attached to Abot v. 21”, and credits it to Samuel ha-Katan at the close of the first century. In printed editions it reads: Judah ben Tema “used to say: At five years of age the study of Scripture; At ten the study of Mishnah; At thirteen subject to the commandments; At fifteen the study of Talmud; At eighteen the bridal canopy; At twenty for pursuit [of livelihood]; At thirty the peak of strength” (Avot 5:21). It comes from after Jesus’ day and describes an ideal, so it cannot fix any disciple’s age. It does show that a young man of eighteen was thought ready to marry, which puts a married Peter at least in his late teens, and more likely older.

The bar mitzvah ceremony came later still. Its name in the present sense, the encyclopedia notes, “can not be clearly traced earlier than the fourteenth century”, when the rite became a fixed custom in Germany, though the age of thirteen is ancient.

Jesus’ own age at the start of his ministry is discussed in how old Jesus was when he began his ministry.

How old were the disciples when they died?

The Bible records the deaths of only two of the Twelve: Herod “killed James the brother of John with the sword” (Acts 12:2), and Judas died before Pentecost (Acts 1:16–18). Jesus foretold that Peter would live to be old (John 21:18–19). By tradition John outlived the rest of the Twelve, and if Jerome’s sixty-eight years after the passion are right and he was in his late teens when called, he died close to ninety. How each apostle died, and what the early sources say about it, is set out in how the twelve apostles died.

They were young when they left their boats, and they followed him into old age, some of them a very long way. When Jesus had told Peter how he would grow old, he said to him what he had said to the fishermen at the start: “Follow me” (John 21:19; Matthew 4:19).

Related reading

• Who were the 12 apostles?
• Apostles vs disciples: what is the difference?
• How did Jesus meet Judas Iscariot?
• Peter in the Bible: his journey with Jesus