‘They were fishermen’: Peter and Andrew’s trade in the memory and discourse of the first churches

Abstract

The social and economic situation of Peter and Andrew before their encounter with Jesus has not led many traces in the ancient Christian literature. However, it raised various speculations and fabrications that many times mixed up the historical fact with apologetic interests and theological symbolisms. The first Christian writers barely kept the data that both brothers had been working as fishermen at the time of their calling, but the conditions of their trade, their family realities and the implications of their change of life are depicted in different ways in the texts of the ancient churches. There is a double aim in this work: on the one hand, we propose to carry out a sociohistorical approach to the living conditions of the fishermen in the Roman Palestine so as to understand the possible relational and labour bonds in which Peter and Andrew were inserted. On the other hand, based on the previous analysis, we will observe the narrative construction that the first Christian literature created about the brothers of Bethsaida before the apostolic life. For the first objective, we will resort to written sources as well as to archaeological studies conducted in the fisher localities of Galilee and Gaulanitis. For the second one, not only will we analyse the vocabulary with which the brothers’ activity is presented, but also we will consider every reference about their material condition, bearing in mind the discourse evolution about the authority of the churches and the Gentile critics about the socio-economic background of Jesus’s first followers. The progressive urban insertion of Christianism and the fact that many groups of believers seek an acknowledgement from the authorities would have been a good reason to bring some order to the narrative of Peter and Andrew’s lives, who, though being rough fishermen and with minimum training, became, by divine grace, eminent messengers of the Kingdom.