What is an "apostle" according to the scriptures? Now this is a very religiously loaded term, for sure. You've got the original twelve [quote]"apostles"[unquote] of Jesus -- or is it thirteen, including the apostle Paul? Then you have people running around christendom today claiming the high and mighty title, [quote]"Apostle"[unquote]. Now the original twelve or thirteen or whatever, and the self-appointed ones of today are held in such high esteem that you may as well call *them* "little gods," greatly esteemed ones who are due reverence and awe. Let's first look up that word in the dictionary. The classical Greek dictionary. Here's the word in the original Greek language, αποστολος, which you can see just generically refers to a person commissioned for some purpose. You can see in the dictionary a couple of religious Biblical citations in definition A.2, which you would expect in a dictionary entry, although this is, of course, begging the question I am posing, rather than answering it, as this is a secular dictionary referring to how it is now religiously commonly understood after the fact. That's the noun form that denotes a person role. Then, if you scroll up from there you can see other variations on the word, just as in an English dictionary. There's αποστολευς, which is one who commissions, then αποστολη, which refers to the commission itself and occurs several times in the Bible as [quote]"apostleship"[unquote], which again begs the question, then a few other entries here, obviously in alphabetical order, and then, inconveniently, the verb form is an irregular verb, spelled a bit differently, so we have to flip back from sigma-tau-omicron to sigma-tau-epsilon here to locate the verb, which is αποστελλω, to send off or dispatch someone on some mission or service, again just a generic word that does not have any kind of religious connotation inherent to it. As usual, the way we got this to be so religiously loaded is by transliterating it, Roman character for Greek character, sound for sound, to get the religious word, apostle, instead of translating it, in which we would just have the idea of dispatching someone on a mission, after which case all this religious pomp and circumstance would just dissolve. The Greek word is the compound of απο, which is a preposition or prefix that means off or away from, and στολος, the noun form, which in semantic context refers to an expedition, journey, voyage, or particular purpose or mission. Or the irregular verb form -- I'll need to type this in, since you would need to scroll so far back -- στελλω, which you can see just means to dispatch or send or something like that. So it is very clear that the compound αποστελλω means to dispatch or send off or away on some mission, to commission someone for some purpose or task. In James Strong's KJV concordance you have G649 for the verb αποστελλω, G651 for αποστολη, the noun representing the commission, and G652 for αποστολος, referring to a person commissioned, as we might say administrate, administration, administrator, or educate, education, educator, or create, creation, creator, for example. But then, you say, never mind the secular classical Greek dictionary. Is it a special word in the Bible? Well, let's look and see who all has been commissioned to the apostolic hall of fame in the Bible. In Matt 10:5, Mark 3:14, Mark 6:7, and Luke 6:13 Jesus commissions the Twelve and assigns that name to them. That's why we call them apostles, right? And in Acts 1 they were diligent to replace the now-deceased Judas Iscariot with Matthias to bring that number up to Twelve again. And in Rev 21:14, there will be twelve foundations to the wall of the New Jerusalem, named after the twelve apostles. So, what about the [quote]"Apostle Paul"[unquote], whom God himself commissioned, using that same word with just the additional prefix εξ (meaning out), according to Acts 22:21? Are there now thirteen apostles, not twelve? But it doesn't stop with thirteen, because in Acts 14:14, Barnabus is also called an apostle along with Paul. Now we have fourteen. And Epaphroditus, who is called an apostle in Phil 2:25. Now we have fifteen. Yet there is more. In Luke 10:1, Jesus commissions 72 others. There's that word again. Oops. Are they all apostles too? What about Ananias, whom the Lord commissioned in Acts 9:17 to give Saul of Tarsus, soon to become the apostle Paul, his sight back and fill him with the Holy Spirit? Is Ananias an apostle? What about Judas and Silas in Acts 15:27, or Timothy and Erastus in Acts 19:22? Are they apostles? Was John the Baptist an apostle? God "commissioned" him, according to John 1:6. Then Jews commissioned priests and Levites in John 1:19 to ask John the Baptist who he was. Were they apostles? What about the men that God told Peter he commissioned from the house of Cornelius the gentile in Acts 10:17-21 and Acts 11:11? Were they apostles? Is anyone who brings the gospel with their "beautiful feet" an apostle? Rom 10:15 says that they are commissioned. There you go. Are you an evangelical Christian bearing the gospel? You're an apostle, according to scripture. Did Joseph make apostles out of his brothers in Egypt, according to Acts 7:14, when he dispatched them back home to bring the whole family back? And what about the angels that Jesus says he will commission in Matt 13:41 at the end of the age? And Gabriel, who was commissioned in Luke 1:19 to speak to Zechariah, and in Luke 1:26 to speak to Mary. And the angels of Heb 1:14? Are these angles apostles? The Philippian authorities commissioned officers in Acts 16:35-36 to tell the jailer to release Paul and his companions from jail. Were those officers apostles? The Jewish leaders commission deputies to arrest Jesus in John 7:32, spies in Luke 20:20, and others in Matt 22:16 and Mark 12:13 to trick Jesus. Were they apostles? In Matt 2:16, King Herod commissioned soldiers to kill all the babies in Bethlehem? Were they apostles? In Mark 6:27, King Herod commissions a guard to behead John the Baptist in prison and bring his head to him on a platter. Was that executioner an apostle? In the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, in Deut. 24 a man is said to [quote]"divorce"[unquote] his wife -- another topic -- read my article and see my videos on that subject -- and dispatch the woman from out of his house. Is such a woman now an apostle, commissioned by her unfaithful husband? What about the donkey in Matt 21:3 that its owner was to dispatch to the disciples for Jesus to ride on? Is that donkey an apostle? Then, notice the "legion" of demons in the man at Gadarenes in Mark 5:10 ask that Jesus not dispatch them out of the area. I guess the demons were looking for a special apostolic commission from Jesus. There are many other, more mundane examples of the word to illustrate the point, but I hand-picked these for a bit of shock value. So you see, we are dealing with a very general word that has to be understood in its context wherever it is used. The word was used by the early Christians to refer to the twelve. It says so in scripture. Jesus picked twelve and designated them as commissioned ones, later they replaced Judas Iscariot to bring the number back up to twelve, and there will be twelve foundations in the New Jerusalem named after those twelve. But the word itself is more general and mundane than that in its definition and usage. The issue is in what people mean today when they use the word having to do with others. So there you have it. The Twelve hand-picked disciples of Jesus were designated as the commissioned ones simply on account of the fact that they were "sent off" two by two by Jesus, who called them that, the label was convenient, and it stuck. Yet the "Apostle Paul," as we say, was the apostle Paul because he was εξαποστελω, "dispatched-off-out," Acts 22:21, to the gentiles/nations by Jesus. And he talked about himself being an apostle, as we say, or literally, "a commissioned one," in the scriptures more than the twelve combined did, as well as writing more of the New Testament than anyone else of that time. But if you just re-translate it as having the sense of some official commission in each case, instead of using the transliterated word "apostle," then you will get what the scriptures are talking about. Then when you see one of these guys strutting around like a rooster with an "apostle" label attached to himself, you will just roll your eyes and say, "Whatever." But this resolves the dilemma of how there can be more than twelve apostles of Jesus, including the apostle Paul and many others, that in reality every foreign missionary could properly be called an apostle, and even you, if you use your beautiful feet to spread the gospel, according to Romans 10:15 and in obedience to Matt 28:19-20, can properly refer to yourself as an apostle of Jesus.