Characters / The Four Gospels

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The various characters of The Four Gospels. See also Acts of the Apostles for how they're depicted in that work.

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Jesus and followers

Jesus of Nazareth

"I am the way, the truth, and the life."

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The main character of the Gospels, Jesus is the central figure of Christianity, a carpenter from the small town of Nazareth turned preacher and healer. He is called the Messiah or Christ, the Son of God, and even God Himself in human form, coming to bring humanity closer to God and to save them from evil

Matthew 1:21: She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus^note The direct translation of the original name Yehoshua is "God is salvation"., for he will save his people from their sin^note Likewise, "sin" is originally the word for "alienation (from God)" - not for any specific action(s) that being motivated by this alienation leads to. "Evil" (or "the will to do evil") is a pretty good contemporary English translation..

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• All-Loving Hero: Jesus is the Trope Codifier. In fact, the trope's former name was "The Messiah" because of this. He regularly interacts with people shunned by society and many teachings call for Jesus' followers to remember everyone.
• Angel Unaware:
  • One of said teachings is to treat anyone in need of your help as if you were encountering Jesus pulling one of these - one of Jesus' parables even makes the promise of a Karmic Jackpot at the end of days just the same as if it had actually been Angels Unaware if someone treats others as if.
  • Jesus appeared to the disciples after coming Back from the Dead, but they did not recognize who it was at first.
• Animal Motifs:
  • He's frequently associated with sheep, being known as the Good Shepherd and the Lamb of God.
  • He's also called the Lion of Judah.
• Armor-Piercing Question: Jesus calls others out for not helping the man with his right hand withered during the Sabbath.
  Jesus: "I will ask you one thing: Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy?"
• Armor-Piercing Response: He often gave these in response to people wanting to start a discussion. A good example is being asked the question if it was legal to pay taxes to Rome in the hope Jesus could either be arrested or alienate the audience with the answer. He outsmarted the Morton's Fork by asking to be shown one of the coins to pay those taxes with - and then giving the answer of "since it's Roman, it belongs to Rome; so give it to them."
  Jesus: "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, and render unto God that which is God's."
• Back from the Dead:
  • Jesus is the Ur-Example of the trope, being raised back to life by God on the third day after being tortured to death by the Roman Empire.
  • He also raises others from the dead, most notably a little girl and Lazarus.
• Badass Preacher: While Jesus is mostly portrayed as calm, trashing the corrupt moneychangers' stalls in the temple certainly qualifies.
• Berserk Button:
  • He probably didn't have any issue with not having Roman coins (which were also icons for the religion worshipping the Roman emperor) in God the Father's house per se^note see also the "if it belongs to Rome, give it to them" instance - but don't use it as a cover or location for cons and scamming the poor and downtrodden.
  • Holier Than Thou is an even bigger berserk button.
  • And most importantly: don't do anything in God's name God did not sign up for - especially don't you dare use God's name as a cover for doing evil.
• Beware the Nice Ones: He will die for you^note See also the entry about the Good Shepherd "who lays down his life for the sheep" - but if you ever happen to push one of Jesus' Berserk Buttons, may God help you... Actually, God wouldn't; not least because those are by all biblical accounts the very same buttons He Himself shares.
• Bigger Than Jesus: Ironically, Jesus used this trope - at least in the eyes of the authorities of the time.
  Jesus: The Queen of the South will rise at the judgement with the people of this generation and condemn them, for she came from the ends of the earth to listen to Solomon's wisdom; and now one greater than Solomon is here. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgement with this generation and condemn it, for they repented at the preaching of Jonah; and now one greater than Jonah is here.
• Bullying a Dragon: Frequently a target of this. He patiently puts up with it (unless you push a Berserk Button):

Forgive them, for they don't know what they're doing.

• Capital Letters Are Magic: As some styles of writing capitalize pronouns referring to deities, translations of the Bible often capitalise pronouns referring to Jesus.
• Cassandra Truth: a lot of people Jesus spoke to did not believe what was said - sometimes it's even lampshaded by Jesus:

Jesus answered and said to him: "What I do you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter."

• Catchphrase:
  • Often starts sentences with "Verily I say unto you" ("I tell you the truth" in modern translations).
  • Also, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
• Celibate Hero: In the Bible Jesus does not marry or show romantic or sexual interest in anyone.
  • Some people think that Jesus was actually married (most likely to Mary Magdalene), but they believe that this marriage was not mentioned in the Gospels (and thus there are also a lot of speculations about just why this is so). Other people see the very idea as heresy. Regardless, having a wife is not sinful; so if Jesus did marry, it wouldn't invalidate who Jesus was or what Jesus taught.
• The Chosen One: The Messiah or "Anointed One".
• Child Prodigy: At about 12, Jewish boys were expected to start joining in religious discussions. At 12, Jesus was teaching at these discussions, and astonishing everyone with thorough understanding and profound answers.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Occasionally.
  • In one instance^note (which is the Trope Namer for Go and Sin No More), when asked if someone should be stoned for adultery, Jesus wrote something in the dirt instead of answering. While the specific words of that writing are lost to history (and thus it comes off as random scribblings) there are several educated guesses as to what non-random thing might have been written there. The names of those asking the question are a popular guess - making it a direct reference to the words of the prophet Jeremiah:
    Oh Lord, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed,[those who stray from your word] shall [disappear in shame, they shall cease to exist like names that were] written in [the dust], because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters.
  • As the people asking the question were certainly familiar with Jeremiah (as was anyone at the time), this was a not-so-subtlle way of telling them that they, also, had strayed from the word of God and should be ashamed of themselves (and hence should also be punished, according to their own logic).
• The Cuckoolander Was Right: A lot of the time, these moments DO help Jesus make a point.
• Compelling Voice: He stopa a storm by outright scolding it.
• Country Mouse: He was one, since Nazareth was apparently a backwater town, regarded as insignificant to the point of scorn: as others said, "Can anything good come from Nazareth?"
• Cradle To Grave Character: Played with. Matthew and Luke begin with God incarnate being conceived by the Holy Spirit and born in Bethlehem, describe Jesus' ministry in detail, describe torture and execution on a cross, and end by going past the grave to describe the Resurrection from the dead. But the character is generally not depicted as achieving old age and a natural death, except in certain apocryphal writings.
• Crucified Hero Shot: He is the Trope Codifier.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: Crucifixion was actually a standard public execution method in ancient Rome, but it was most definitely cruel. Certain aspects of the death in the Gospel accounts were made to be even crueler than usual, for example the Crown of Thorns. Note that there is also a very large humiliation^note For example: most English translations say the Roman soldiers cast lots over Jesus' "garment". A more accurate translation of the word in the original Greek would be "underwear". Which - all bowdlerising artwork aside - is quite obviously not being worn at this point. and disgrace component which is lost on modern audiences. Due to a number of factors, being crucified was extremely dishonorable, to the point that crucifixion victims ellicited the same utter disgust that we today feel for pedophiles or neo-nazis.
• Deadpan Snarker: Frequently - surprisingly enough - though more along the lines of a Gentleman Snarker.

Jesus: "Am I some dangerous robber, that you come like this, armed to the teeth to capture me? Why didn’t you arrest me in the Temple? I was there teaching every day."

• Deal with the Devil: Averted, though not for lack of trying on the devil's part. (It helped that Jesus had Incorruptible Pure Pureness.)
• Depending on the Writer: While the most important details are consistent across the four Gospels (such as Jesus being the Son of God and the Messiah), some details vary between the four Gospels, partly due to the authors not all being in the same place at the same time. The closer a translation gets to the Greek originals, the larger the variations between the accounts are.
• Descend From A Higher Plane Of Existence: Jesus is said to be God in Human Form.
• The Determinator:
  • An angry mob who wanted to throw Jesus over a cliff was faced down and silenced with a mere look. He then walked right through them without a scratch.
  • He still mops the floor with an opponent trying to solicit a Deal with the Devil in an argument after fasting for forty days in the desert.
  • He couldn't even be stopped by death itself .
• Dying Moment of Awesome: In the midst of execution by torture, Jesus refused to take anesthetic, managed to make arrangements for someone to look after Mary and the disciples' Tagalong Kid John, reassured a penitent thief that he would be personally taken along to Heaven, and forgave the executioners.
• First Law of Resurrection: Returns from the dead on the third day after dying.
• Forgiveness Requires Death: With the twist that Jesus wasn't guilty. He was dying to get forgiveness for everyone else.
• Friend to All Children: When their parents tried to keep a bunch of children from approaching and crowding around Jesus to hear a parable better, Jesus got annoyed at the parents and explained that children have exemplary faith the Kingdom of Heavens. He then blessed the children and went back to telling the parable.
• Friend to All Living Things: He made a point of drawing parables from nature, inviting listeners to "Consider the Lilies" or "Consider the birds of the air."
• A God Am I: "Before Abraham was, I Am." (Double points for invoking the name of God revealed to Moses in the Old Testament.)
  • Whether Jesus actually claimed to be divine is open to interpretation and was/is heavily debated among theologians from the get go^note for example, see Nontrintarianism. One possibiity is that "Son of God" may be more of a symbolic title ascribed to any peacemaker^note for example see Matthew 5:9, not only to Jesus.
• God in Human Form: He claimed to be, leading to accusations of blasphemy - though whether this actually happened or the accusers infered it from what Jesus said is a debated topic. See A God Am I above.
• Good Is Not Soft: Although this attitude is mainly aimed at a tempter trying to solicit a Deal with the Devil, those who were being Hypocrites, or those who defiled God the Father's temple by misusing His name for a scam - don't push any berserk buttons or else Beware the Nice Ones.
  • On the other hand, even demons who ask nicely can be included in All-Loving Hero, getting Jesus' permission to posess a herd of pigs instead of a boy. It all comes down to not pushing a Berserk Button.
• Good Shepherd: the Trope Namer:
  Jesus: I am the Good Shepherd.
  • He lives up to it, too - including the part about "the good shepherd laying down his life for the sheep".
  • Dark Shepherd: Then on the other hand, there are warnings of eternal damnation in Hell if someone doesn't turn from evil ways. He will give them any and every help needed to avoid this if they do, though - up to and including descending into Hell on Holy Saturday to get the damned out.
• Healing Hands: He healed a lot of people who were sick, handicapped and/or maimed, usually by either laying hands on them or saying something.
• The Hero: Of the New Testament. Specifically, a Guile Hero who used cleverness rather than violence.
• Heroic Sacrifice / Someone Has to Die: According to the substitutionary punishment view dominant in three of the gospels^note John is the odd one out., Jesus had to die and suffer the punishment mankind had earned in order to make it possible for people to be saved and not have to suffer punishment themselves.
• Humble Hero: He shows this in many ways. A notable example is making a public entrance into Jerusalem not (as would be expected) as a grand spectacle, but riding on a donkey.
• I Am the Noun: A favorite form of statement, especially in the gospel of John: "I am the resurrection and the life", "I am the true vine", "I am the bread from heaven", "I am the way, and the truth, and the life",...
• I Have Many Names: Jesus son of Joseph^note Yehoshua bar Yosef back then, Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus Christ, ^note "Christ" is derived from the Greek profession of Christian faith Christos, meaniing "He who I believe is the Messiah" (which includes a translation of the Hebrew word mashiah: "anointed one") - not a surname or a title..
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Crucifixion involves^note Yes, present tense: sordidly enough, people still do this. Though it's no longer an official form of execution anywhere, a mob lynching of someone Christian for being Christian might involve it precisely because of the implications. impaling a person through their wrists and ankles to the cross.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Jesus was even tempted by the devil himself in a moment of seeming vulnerability (trying to tempt Jesus with food while the latter was hungry from fasting). He didn't buckle.
• Internal Reformist: Jesus is one of Judaism, attempting to bring about a return to the spirit of the law of Moses. He even lampshades it at one point, saying this return to the spirit of the law is the same thing other prophets through the ages have also attempted to get people to. Paul in turn reformed the early church's focus, extending Jesus' message to non-Jews.
• It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Does it ever...
  "Father, if you are willing, take this cup from me; yet not my will, but yours be done" is a quote from an actual prayer Jesus prays in Luke 22:42. One interpretation is that Jesus felt dying impaled as a criminal and a blasphemer was a heavy load to bear and an affront to God. Another interpretation is that Jesus simply understands that being in human form and dying a gruesome death is just going to suck, despite being God Himself. The gospel states in the next few verses that God sent an angel to comfort Jesus. So really, even God knew it sucks to be the Chosen One and tried to make it a little easier.
• Jesus Was Way Cool: He was definitely seen as this by many contemporaries; and many people even today emphatically see Jesus that way.
• Jews Love to Argue: He was Jewish, of course; and much of the action in the Gospels involves arguments with others (including Jesus' own disciples) about the correct interpretation of the Laws of Moses.
  • However, in many instances, it was the other person or people who argued with Jesus that started these arguments. He's more than happy to oblige.
• Journey to Find Oneself: Jesus' forty days and nights in the desert, sort of. Note that forty weeks is also the time a child spends in its mother's womb from conception to birth.
• Kung-Fu Jesus: Despite forcibly kicking shady merchants out of the Temple on one occasion, this is mostly averted. In fact, people turned against Jesus because they expected their Messiah to lead a revolt against Rome, and Jesus wasn't this expected Kung Fu Messiah.
• Large Ham: Occasionally. The most obvious example is the aforementioned instance when Jesus angrily chases out the corrupt among the money changers from the Temple and flips their tables.
• Law of Chromatic Superiority: In many Bibles, quotes directly attributed to Jesus are written in red. He is also often portrayed wearing purple robes, purple being a color long associated with royalty in the West; or dressed in white, representing purity.
• Light Is Good:
  Jesus: I am the light of the world: those that follow me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life.
• Lineage Comes from the Father: Subverted. Jesus is both the legal and biological heir of David. Legally through Joseph, but it turns out that the genealogy in Luke is actually Mary's, (though this is never explicitly stated) tracing her back to David. In addition, there are a few women so well-respected that Matthew felt the need to mention them: Tamar, Bath-sheba, Rahab and Ruth (who is in fact the great-grandmother of David).
• Looks Like Jesus: Subverted. Fairly fitting for whom those artworks are depicting (considering that according to the Bible God Himself adopted human form so that human beings could identify with and thus get closer to Him) most depictions of Jesus take Artistic License to help the viewers contextualize Jesus as a person who can identify with them, making protraits look similar to the artists or most people around them.^note In Europe Jesus is blonde (or brunette) with blue eyes, in African art often depicted as black, in Asian art given Oriental features, and so on. He's almost universally depicted in most Western art as a European looking guy with long, straight brown hair and beard. Not only did Jesus actually most likely look far more mediteranean than most art would have you believe, furthermore long hair was not common for men at the time. He probably did have a beard, but both historical texts and artwork from the era confirm that men in that time and place wore their hair and beards cut short to protect against lice. Meanwhile, the Bible does not give any appearance details or eyewitness descriptions, but the fact that the Roman soldiers needed Judas to point out whom to arrest suggests that Jesus was completely average-looking.^note In academic studies, beyond generally agreeing that "Jesus was average-looking for the time and place", anthropologist scholarship throughout the centuries has not conclusively dealt with the question of what "average-looking" then meant. For those wondering, here's a depiction by Rembrandt van Rijn where he asked a living average-looking person from the region to sit for Jesus' portrait◊.
  • Old Testament prophesies also imply this on the few occasions they comment on the Messiah's appearance. Isaiah's description is of someone with
  "no beauty of majesty to attract us to him; nothing in his appearance that we should desire him."
  • The closest to an eyewitness description anyone has been able to find is attributed to the historian Josephus, a few decades after Jesus, who described Jesus as four feet tall, with terrible posture, and a mono-brow.^note Whether Josephus is a reliable source is up for debate, as he was entangled in the controversies of his own time. But the idea of Jesus as ancient Jerusalem's Danny DeVito is admittedly very amusing.
• Magical Homeless Person: The Son of God with seemingly unlimited powers who chose the life of a penniless wandering prophet.
• Magnetic Hero: He had no trouble gathering the twelve apostles - in fact, most of them Jumped at the Call. Justified as Jesus, being God in Human Form, would have all the knowledge needed to choose the specific people in question.
• Manly Tears: "Jesus wept"^note John 11:35 when grieving for a dead friend.
• Matter Replicator: An example where the matter being replicated is also this (with a little divine help): Jesus multiplied fish and loaves of bread to feed the masses from just one boy's lunch.
• Meaningful Name: The original version of the name, Yehoshouah, means "God is salvation".
• Meekness is Weakness: He otherwise subverts this trope, although the narration does once describe Jesus as being "meek and lowly in heart". See also Good Is Not Soft.
• Messianic Archetype: The Trope Maker.
• My Rule Fu Is Stronger than Yours: He often took people arguing about Scripture down a notch or three when they tried to discredit the reasoning behind why a return to the true spirit of Mosaic law was both better and nescessary.
• Never Accepted in His Hometown: The Trope Namer and the page quote-provider. Yeah, Jesus wasn't exactly popular in Nazareth.
• Nice Jewish Boy: More recent scholarship on both sides of the Jewish/Christian divide has recognized that whatever else, Jesus was definitely a Jew whose lifestyle and teachings were perfectly at home in Roman-era Judea. And of course, "nice" goes without saying.
• Numerological Motif: The Gospels are probably the origin of several of these.
  • Chose twelve apostles.
  • Was tempted three times to enter into a Deal with the Devil and rose from the dead on the third day after dying.
  • When he preached forgiveness, Peter asked if he was supposed to forgive someone seven times, he said seventy times seven.
  • Stayed in the desert for forty days and nights.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • When the guy known for using divine power for good and being a Friend to All Living Things turns and curses a fig tree after finding no fruit on it, causing it to wither and die; then you know something serious is about to go down. This could have been invoked Foreshadowing as Jesus went to a gruesome death a few days later.
  • Ditto with those of the money-changers in the temple taking advantage of the poor and downtrodden, on whom Jesus instantly goes absolutely berserk when catching them at it.
• The Paragon:
  Jesus: "Love one another as I have loved you."
• Parental Substitute: to the Apostles' Tagalong Kid John^note Just how young John was is downplayed, but while dying Jesus arranges for Mary to take care of John as if for a son. Although John could not have been too young as Jesus also arranges for him to take of Mary..
• The Power of Love: Two of Jesus' most remembered teachings are to love God and to love your neighbor. He emphasizes love as the most powerful thing in the universe. (Faith and Hope being the two runners-up.)
  • Taken up to eleven when Jesus says to love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you.^note It quite spoils the "beyond the impossible" appearance when someone clarifies that doesn't mean "feel as if they were lovable", but rather means "act charitably and with humanity towards them" (for this very reason, the word "charitable" is derived from the Latin word caritas for unconditional love) - but now you know.
• Psychic Nosebleed: While praying at the Mount of Olives just before being arrested, Jesus' sweat appears like drops of blood (Luke 22:44). Ultimately a subverted trope as this is actually a documented medical phenomenon in some cases of extreme stress - here likely brought on by the knowledge of what's about to go down.
• Purity Personified: In a heated debate, Jesus once asked: "Which of you convicts me?" There was no response.
• Rainbow Text: In addition to speaking in ALL CAPS, many versions of the Bible also have Jesus speaking in red text.
• "Rashomon"-Style: The four Gospels emphasize different sides of Jesus based on each evangelist's target audience. Matthew showed Jesus as an Expy of Moses and cited a myriad of Old Testament prophecies to really drive the whole Messiah thing home. Mark's Gospel was Darker and Edgier because his audience were persecuted Christians. Luke's Gospel is Lighter and Softer, emphasizing Nice Guy qualities of Jesus because he was targeting non-Jewish converts. John's Gospel is the most mystic of the four and writes a Higher Self version to emphasize Jesus' divinity.^note It also subtly hints at the author not sharing some of the more common Christian views of his time - just the very core Christian doctrine - although John treads very carefully and plays Ambiguous Syntax (which Greek has a lot of as many words have multiple meanings) and Exact Words to the hilt so as not to distract anyone from the core message by unexpected details which could be misunderstood. The most striking difference is John stressing that God's Grace existed from before the dawn of time and did not suddenly come into existence on Good Friday. John is also very particular about not confusing Heroic Sacrifice and Human Sacrifice there.
• Scars Are Forever: He still had the scars from the crucifixion after rising from the dead, probably because the Apostles would not believe it was Jesus unless they felt those; something at least one of them (Thomas) outright stated.
• Screw Destiny:
  • According to Christianity the whole point of God becoming human was God's version of this - not for His own sake, but for all human beings' destinies; so that human beings would not be trapped in hostile destiny and bad karma, but freed to come to Him.^note How large a part of this was due to heroic sacrifice is weighted differently between the Gospels - in Marks' Gospel, it's the entirety of it; while John treads carefully about the fact that he disagrees with Mark by 100 percent.
  • Also, several examples where Jesus pronounces forgiveness for individual people.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: One example of Jesus' ethics. See the parables about the eye of the needle or The Rich Man and Lazarus.
• Self-Restraint: He went along with being sentenced to death - and even remarked at the time that four legions of angels were just waiting for a word to summon them to make very short work of the captors. He was just chosing not to call them. Note that the sight of even a single angel on Easter Sunday made a group of soldiers so afraid they fainted.
  • He declined to even say anything in his own defense while on trial. This likely has at least something to do with Jesus' track record of mopping the floor with opponents in religious disputes - making an active effort to rebut the accusations might have complicated the Heroic Sacrifice. Also, the accusers were determined to kill Jesus regardless of the validity of what anyone (including anyone else, eg: Pontius Pilate) said during the trial.
• Shout-Out: He does this frequently in parables (though never in a way that interferes with the storytelling), often to Book of Psalms, and at least once a parable to one or several stories in Book of Genesis^note The Parable of the Lost Son, in particular, has some sort of allusion to the Book of Genesis almost every other word..
• The Storyteller: His preferred method of teaching was telling parables, usually with An Aesop included. These parables usually tell the aesops in several different ways at once to appeal to different audiences (eg: they work well as memorable stories at face value, but are also chock full of Shout Outs to older scripture, leading to the one or other Easter Egg if you know what's being cited and/or look up where it came from).
• Suicidal Pacifism: True to Jesus' own teaching to Turn the Other Cheek and not resist evil with violence, when enemies show up to take Jesus off to be tortured to death, Jesus not only doesn't resist in the least, but even heals a man injured by one of the disciples. He explains that, yes, it would have been possible to call legions of angels to fight against the captors. He just chose not to call them (the whole Heroic Sacrifice thing might also have had something to do with it).
• Take a Third Option: One of Jesus' specialties.
  • Notable example: saving the adulteress from stoning by telling those who wanted to kill her that it wasn't like they were so pure either.
  • Another example is the answer to the question of Roman taxation which was basically: if it belongs to Rome (and only then), give it to them".
• Take Care of the Kids: While dying by torture, Jesus made arrangements for His mother and the apostles' Tagalong Kid (amounting to His adoptive son, though it's downplayed) to take care of each other.
• Take That!: It's hard to read the words of the Gospels and not think Jesus were talking about someone today - but those words are more talking about the people of the time, their hypocrisy and blindness to injustice.
  But since Jesus is God those statements very well could be talking to people today, especially since sometimes we humans can be slow to learn from our mistakes. Or the message is one that can speak to all people across time.
• Thanatos Gambit: He comes Back from the Dead.
• Third-Person Person: He often referred to "the Son of Man" in a third-person kind of way when prophesying or talking about the role of Messiah.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Some things are unforgivable even for Jesus, such as blasphemy against the Holy Spirit - i.e. misusing God's name for evil purposes.^note By all scriptural accounts, this is a Berserk Button Jesus shares with God the Father: the Book of Exodus seriously stresses NOT to push it, or even God will never forgive you.
  "Anyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this age or in the age to come."
• Turn the Other Cheek: The Trope Namer. He does refer to the "eye for an eye" ethic of demanding compensation of the exact value in damages for the thing destroyed or damaged^note Not inflicting an equal injury on the one who did the damage, as both Jesus and the audience at the time knew very well and most recent audiences do not. Rather, this "eye for an eye" was set up to limit the amount of damages to the value of the damaged thing and prevent feuds. Jesus is (merely) taking it still a step further - and by now you can guess that the cheek probably wasn't quite that literal, either..., but then adds that it's much better to, well...
  You have heard that it was said "Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth." But I tell you [...] If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
  • Jesus was by no means an Extreme Doormat, however. He was always quick to call people out on their evil attitudes and walk away from potentially explosive circumstances - it was only on Good Friday that Jesus did not resist being arrested, tried, and then executed on false charges.
    If anyone has a cloak, let him sell it and buy a sword.
• Too Good for This Sinful Earth: The Trope Codifier. He was mocked and whipped before being crucified. Although Jesus' death wasn't him being rescued from said sinful earth - rather the other way around: it was about Jesus rescuing this sinful Earth. He also stayed around for awhile after the resurrection, before ascending into Heaven.
• The Unreveal: To settle a dispute, Jesus wrote something in the dust on the ground that apparently blew them away and made everyone stop fighting. This is the only recorded instance of Jesus ever writing anything. But none of the books ever tell us what was written there, maybe because we couldn't understand it?
  • The incident in question is recorded in the Gospel of John^note in Chapter 8, when a woman who was caught in adultery was brought to Jesus in yet another attempt to trap Jesus by a Morton's Fork. Commentators have suggested that what Jesus wrote on the ground were the accusers' own failings, as a way of calling them out for hypocrisy.
  • Another take is that writing anything in the dust at all is a shout out to the prophet Jeremiah^note From the Book of Jeremiah's chapter 17 verse 13 specifically - which was most certainly known to all parties involved - and while the King James version of the Bible translates this in a way that loses the Shout-Out, the gist of it closer to the original is:
    Oh Lord, the hope of Israel, all that forsake thee shall be ashamed,[those who stray from your word] shall [disappear in shame, they shall cease to exist like names that were] written in [the dust], because they have forsaken the Lord, the fountain of living waters.

(Though when Jesus resumes writing again after their dispute one has the notion that now it's less of the reminder of earlier of the symbolic meaning of their names written in the dust saying they in turn should be condemned for misusing God's moral authority to set up a Morton's Fork, and more of giving them a chance to stop it and leave in some form of quiet.)

• Utility Weapon:
  • According to John's gospel, Jesus made a whip out of cords to drive all the sheep and cattle away from the temple courts. He then scattered the coins of the corrupt among the money changers, overturned their tables, and drove them away from the temple courts.
  • He was also the target of scourging^note being flogged with whips that had metal barbs attached to them so as to flay (i.e. painfully tear off) the skin by Roman soldiers on the way to the crucifixion.
• Verbal Tic: In the book of John, "I tell you the truth" or "Truly, truly I say to you."
• Wham Line: He liked these. One of the repeated refrains of the Gospels was that the people reacted to what Jesus said with amazement. He even announced the future eventual betrayal, crucifixion, and resurrection to the disciples; who were unsurprisingly alarmed and confused at their teacher's words.
• With Us or Against Us: As far as Jesus^note just like all of the prophets who were sent to remind people not to stray from God's way is concerned, neutrality in God doesn't exist. Either one accepts or rejects God and His divine moral authority wholeheartedly - which either-or is also a shout out to Book of Psalms:
  Make whole my heart to sing your praises.
• Words Can Break My Bones: He occasionally laid on a hand to make a point, but usually Jesus healed people who were sick, handicapped and/or maimed by saying something, and also carried out miracles by telling those miracles to come into being.
  • At one point, Jesus is asked to heal a dying man by a miracle: "I'm not worthy for you to come with me to see the sick, but say just one word now and he'll get well". He obliges, and also blesses the petitioner for expressing this much faith.
  • The Gospel of John refers to Jesus as The Word of God in human form.
• Wrongfully Attributed: Despite the popular assumption that December 25 is the anniversary of Jesus' birth, the Gospels themselves do not record a specific date. Several explanations for chosing that date about three hundred years later to start celebrating Jesus' birth exist:
  • The most biblical explanation is the belief, common at the time, that the prophets each died on some anniversary of their conception (even those who were violently murdered). His death date was well known, so this conception/death juxtaposition was carried over into Christianity to apply to Jesus (and John the Baptist), too - and if you go forty weeks from the eve of Pessach, which is on the 14th of Nissan^note This is somewhere around March 15th, as due to different systems of achieving leap years - adding one day versus adding several days - the two calendars involved even out over longer periods of several years, but their exact days don't always correspond in the same way., you end up with a child conceived then being born on or around the 25th of December.
  • One tradition holds that the mother of Jesus herself recalled the date of December 25 to the early Church.
  • Some historians have proposed that the Church Fathers selected the date for various cultural and poetic reason. To be able to go on celebrating various other holidays which fell into that time is another guess - just as you would translate the Christian message into the language spoken in the area to be understood, you'd also "translate" important Christian customs into the local customs and festivities (or rather them into it). Another version is that the purpose was to make it exactly one week before new year's day, symbolizing the start of a new beginning (also for various reasons that had to do with translating customs).
  • On the other hand, a spring or summer date is often considered a more probable time for local shepherds to have been out tending their flocks at night.

The Virgin Mary

"Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb!"

The mother of Jesus. Got pregnant miraculously, as she was a virgin.

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• Arranged Marriage: Is betrothed to Joseph (i.e., legally married but not yet cohabiting) at the time she becomes pregnant with Jesus.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: The Catholic and Orthodox churches believe she was bodily taken up into heaven at the end of her life as part of an event called the Assumption or Dormition. The difference lies in whether they believe she actually died first or not. The Orthodox and some Catholics hold that she did (hence Dormition, "falling asleep" i.e. death) while other Catholics believe she didn't. Protestants rejected this account due to the event not appearing in scripture.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Although her appearance is not mentioned or commented on at all (not even in passing), Catholics generally depict her as being very beautiful.
  • Divine Race Lift: She usually conforms to whatever the ideal of feminine beauty is in the describer's culture.
• Breakout Character: In Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
• But I Can't Be Pregnant!: When the Archangel Gabriel shows up to tell her she will give birth to the Messiah, she wonders how this is possible since she "knows not man." Gabriel explains that God can do anything.
• Celibate Heroine:
  • Played straight at the time of Jesus' birth; there's a reason she got her title. Possibly averted afterward, depending on how you translate references to Jesus' "brothers and sisters" (Matthew 12:46).
  • The Protestant reading of Matthew 1:25, which says Joseph "knew her not until she gave birth to her firstborn son", holds that Mary is implied to have had union with Joseph afterward, in contrast to Orthodox and Catholic readings which hold that the Greek phrasing translated as "until" in English does not indicate that something "ceases to be" after the indicated time^note For instance, Jesus's statement elsewhere that "I will be with you until the end of the world" is not taken to mean that he wouldn't be after the world ends They view the passage as emphasizing that Jesus's divine parentage was not in doubt because Joseph never did the deed with Mary all throughout her pregnancy. The Greek equivalent of "firstborn" also does not imply other children unlike in English, similar to the Hebrew context where someone called firstborn is simply whoever "opened their mother's womb".
  • Some believe that by agreeing to be Jesus's mother, or even before (in Greek, she doesn't say she is "still a virgin", rather she says "I do not know man"), she had effectively made a vow before God to remain a virgin her whole life, and that her marriage to Joseph was never to involve sex, only to ensure that she would be protected and provided for when her time as a temple maiden was up.
  • The argument for her not staying a virgin basically boils down to "Look, sex is not evil, as evidenced by the Song of Solomon, so once Jesus was born, there wasn't really a reason for her to stay a virgin now was there?"
• The Chosen One: Chosen by God out of many different young women to be the mother of Jesus.
  • It Sucks to Be the Chosen One: Becoming pregnant through divine providence before she was married had her betrothed suspect her of infidelity, which could've been grounds for her execution had an angel not intervened to explain the matter to Joseph. And after her son is born, she has to watch him be humiliated and killed, and cannot do anything about it. When a holy man spoke of the infant Jesus's future role, he added "a sword will pierce your heart.” This has long been understood to refer to Mary's suffering while watching her son suffer and die.
• The High Queen: To those who believe that she became Queen of Heaven at the end of her earthly existence.
• Humble Heroine: Despite the point that Mary's decision to become pregnant with the Messiah would make her a very important figure to many, Mary's few recorded actions after her son's birth reflected her son's importance. Many Christians honor her greatly, as her son did, because of that very humility.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: The Roman/Latin Catholic doctrine of the Immaculate Conception states that she had to be pure from the very beginning in order to be a suitable mother for Jesus, and so she was spared from Original Sin or a disordered human nature open to sin. The Orthodox and Eastern Catholics don't have quite the same doctrine, as Greek/Eastern thought defines Original Sin as death itself, not human nature, but they essentially agree that Mary was pure and sinless because of the Greek term kecharitomene (translated as "Highly favored" or "Full of grace") used by the angel to describe her, which means something more like "completely, perfectly, enduringly endowed with grace."
• The Ingenue: See above.
• Jewish Mother: Well, literally but the trope varies by the gospel. In the Gospel of John she moves Jesus to perform his first miracle, turning water into wine at a wedding party. Jesus says it's premature but complies with her request anyway. In Matthew and Mark (the ones written for a Jewish audience), she and Jesus' brothers come to visit him while he's preaching, but Jesus doesn't go out to greet them, telling his audience that his family was whoever hears God's message and listened to it. In contrast, the Gospel of Luke focuses the most on her and gives the most favorable impression of her as a follower of God's will.
• Mistaken for Cheating: Her husband Joseph is understandably skeptical about her claim of a virgin pregnancy, believing that she must have slept with another man. Fortunately, the Archangel Gabriel shows up in a dream to set the record straight.
• Mum Looks Like a Sister: Depictions of her at the time of the Passion of the Christ, including Michelangelo's famous Pieta, portray her as extremely young for the mother of the thirty-three-year-old Jesus. Also, if Mary was Jesus's sole biological parent, some figure this would have made Jesus her Opposite-Sex Clone.
• Mystical Pregnancy: Experienced one. (Hint: There's a good reason she's referred to as the Virgin Mary.)
• One-Steve Limit: Averted; there are several other women named Mary in the gospels alone. It was a very common name at the time, after all. Mary Magdalene for sure, Mary of Bethany probably as well (if she's not the previous), and a bunch of other ones, some of which may be the same woman. The Acts of the Apostles adds another Mary, the mother of John Mark who is assumed to be the writer of the Gospel of Mark. This is because Mary is the same name as Miriam (via Hebrew Miryam, Aramaic Maryam, Greek Mariam, Latin Maria) understandably a popular Jewish name due to being borne by Moses's sister in the Book of Exodus.
  • This is one of the reasons why some Christians don't believe Jesus had literal brothers and sisters through Mary despite some of them being named. Jesus is said to have had brothers named James, Joseph/Joses, Judas and Simon. The four accounts of Jesus's death and burial mention several women at the scene. In the synoptic gospels, "Mary mother of James the less and Joseph/Joses" aka "the other Mary" is mentioned with Mary Magdalene and Salome the mother of James and John, while the "mother of Jesus" isn't explicitly or directly mentioned even if it's her son who just died. The gospel of John mentions "Jesus's mother, his mother's sister, Mary of Clopas^note usually understood as the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene". It's unclear how many women John meant, but one harmonized reading equates Mary mother of James and Joseph to Mary of Clopas, a "sister" or relative of some sort to Jesus' mother. Another reading is that Salome is "Jesus' mother's sister." In any case, if the James and Joses/Joseph here are not the sons of Jesus' mother but of a different Mary, they could be the same James and Joses/Joseph who are said to be Jesus' brothers, and so "brothers" could be understood as figurative, not literal.
• Pals with Jesus: She is, after all, His mom. Her traditional title "Mother of God" derives from Greek Theotokos which is more literally translated "Bearer of God", and was bestowed upon her by the early church to emphasize that Jesus was God incarnate. As one who "bore God in her womb", many early Christian writers compared her to the similarly holy (and off-limits) Ark of the Covenant. Because of this, Catholics and Orthodox believe that her prayers are more powerful, that God will never turn down a request from her. However, for Protestants, the relationship between her and Jesus is merely surrogate mother and son, and the latter occasionally rejected her request (not specifically, but presented as his whole family trying to reach him).
  • Also, among those that believe she was dedicated by her mother to live and work in the Temple, she was fed and cared for by angels.
• Proper Lady: Considered by some to be the Trope Codifier, due to being seen as the perfect mother figure as the mother of Jesus and the spiritual mother to His followers. She is popularly depicted as beautiful and graceful, humble, chaste, wise, and altruistic, being held up as the perfect woman, and many Christian (especially Catholic) and Muslim girls are encouraged to be more like her.
• Put on a Bus: To those who believe she was simply floated up to Heaven at the end of her Earthly life, instead of dying.
• Something about a Rose: Roses are a flower associated with her, notably the most iconic prayer about her is the rosary (meaning "rose garden").
• Take Care of the Kids: Inverted. As he is dying on the cross, Jesus entrusts her to the care of the beloved disciple, usually identified as John.
• Team Mom: To Catholics and Orthodox. In fact, they actually pretty much call her this, citing the above incident as support. See below.
• Teenage Pregnancy: Her age isn't mentioned anywhere in the gospels, but most scholars figure she was a young teen when she got pregnant with Jesus since people tended to marry young in those days. Goes hand in hand with Mum Looks Like a Sister.
• True Blue Femininity: Traditionally depicted wearing blue robes (This is generally the origin of this trope.)
• Virgin Power: In that she becomes pregnant and gives birth while still a virgin. Catholics and Orthodox believe that she remained a virgin her whole life, and also has powers of intercession for such things as healing. Other denominations believe that Mary lost her virginity to Joseph not long after Jesus's birth, taking the mentions of "brothers and sisters" as literal, but consider her saintly nonetheless.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Scripturally she is mentioned as late as Acts chapter 1 being among those gathered for the baptism of the Holy Spirit and that's it. Catholic and Orthodox traditional teachings fill in the gaps, as noted above.
• World's Most Beautiful Woman: Those who report seeing visions of her say that she conforms to whatever the ideal of feminine beauty is in their culture.

Joseph of Nazareth

Mary's husband and Jesus's foster father.

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• Agent Scully: Joseph is, quite understandably, very skeptical about the claim that his fiancée had a miraculous virgin pregnancy rather than sleeping with another man. Fortunately, he comes around when the Archangel Gabriel explains it to him in a dream.
• Chuck Cunningham Syndrome/Disappeared Dad: Theological scholars speculate Joseph's lack of appearance later in the story may be due to Joseph dying at some point in the eighteen years between Jesus visiting the Temple at the age of 12 and starting His ministry at the age of 30. This in turn has fuelled speculation that he may have been somewhat older than Mary.
  • Joseph shows up in that episode when Jesus was 12 and He was in the Temple showing off his knowledge to the rabbis. Mary and Joseph were both mentioned here. After this, not much is known. Most sources say Jesus was an adult when Joseph died.
• Impoverished Patrician: Although he is from the lineage of King David, he earns a modest and meager living as a carpenter (or, depending on how you translate that term, he might have been an entirely unskilled laborer). On top of that, his social status is essentially "a nobody." (Or, if you like, the Average Joe.)
• My Girl Is Not a Slut: Averted. After finding out that Mary was pregnant, he decided to (quietly) divorce her rather than make a big deal about it and have her be publicly humiliated (and then possibly put to death for being an "adulteress"). That was really decent of him compared to how any other person of his time and place would've thought.
• Nice Guy:
  • While it's debatable how nice he was in "only" wanting to divorce Mary quietly (this would have all but condemned her to a life of prostitution, since a poor single mother in first century Palestine would've had very few alternative income options), as soon as he got divine instruction he was willing obey and not ask questions. This saves Mary's (and by extension Jesus') life twice—once from a lynch mob of self-appointed Moral Guardians, and once more when Herod sent troops in hopes of murdering the infant Jesus.
  • Some denominations hold that by agreeing to be God's surrogate mother, Mary effectively dedicated herself to lifelong chastity. This means that Joseph was not just willing to marry her anyway and claim Jesus as his own son, but also to stay faithful to her for at least twelve years without physically consummating their marriage.
  • He also scolded Jesus in the Temple story for causing distress, specifically to His mother.
• To Be Lawful or Good: When Mary’s pregnancy is discovered he’s left with the choice to marry her and protect her honor, thereby disobeying the law of God, or he could obey God which meant having Mary stoned to death. He decided to marry her in public but divorce her in private, sparing her life and give her a chance to be with the child's father. Fortunately God sent Gabriel to reveal the truth.

John the Baptist

And there was a cry from the wilderness...

An ascetic preacher who was the forerunner to Jesus, known for baptizing people as a sign of repentance/purification (Gentiles who wanted to convert to Judaism had to ritually cleanse themselves, usually via a bath, but some rituals also included pouring/sprinkling water over the penitent; John caused a public stir by baptizing Jews). Specified to have been related to Jesus, as his mother Elizabeth is mentioned (in Luke) as being related to Mary.

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• Hermit Guru: Lived in the wilderness, surviving mainly on locusts and wild honey, during his ministry.
• Off with His Head!: What happened to him in the end.
• Precursor Hero: Sort of. The point of his mission was to prepare ground for Jesus.
• Turbulent Priest: What got him imprisoned, including calling out Herod on marrying his queen Herodias while she was still married to his brother.
• Wonder Child: His parents were aged, making conception unlikely.

Mary Magdalene

A female disciple and one of several women who supported Jesus's band financially. Witnessed his death and resurrection.

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• Acceptable Feminine Goals and Traits: She actually averts this hard by the standards of the time and place. First, she was actually a successful business woman, which was unheard of in a time where the only feasible way for a woman to earn her own income was prostitution. In fact, her surname means "of the city of Magdala," whereas any other woman of the time would have a surname meaning "of [husband's name]." She was that independent.
• Alliterative Name: Mary Magdalene.
• Canon Discontinuity: She had a whole gospel to herself in the Gnostic texts, but it's not considered canon by any modern religions.
• Demonic Possession: Had seven demons trapped within her, until Jesus healed her. Exegesis which identified her with the unnamed "sinful woman" who appears elsewhere linked the seven demons to the Seven Deadly Sins.
• Due to the Dead: She's one of the women who witness both Jesus's burial and the empty tomb days later, having gone there to anoint his body with myrrh and other spices (further).
• Hooker with a Heart of Gold: Traditionally she has been depicted as a harlot, but this comes from tradition and not from Scripture.
  • The unnamed "sinful woman" (who anointed Jesus with perfume as a gesture of honor, as well as "cleaning" his feet with her tears and hair as penitence) actually comes from a passage in the gospel of Luke several chapters after Mary Magdalene's debut, and this woman is never stated to be Mary Magdalene nor a harlot.
• One-Steve Limit: Another aversion; she shares a name with Jesus' mom and other women named Mary.
• The Smurfette Principle: While Jesus had other female followers, she is the most prominent in cultural depictions, mainly because the resurrected Jesus first appears to her in the Gospel of John while she is alone, and also due to the historical tendency in the West to conflate her with three other women: Mary of Bethany, a sinful woman and a woman caught in adultery. In all four canonical gospels she is also consistently a witness to both the crucifixion and the empty tomb.
• Undying Loyalty: She was present when Jesus died, along with several other women, even when his Apostles (except John the "beloved disciple", according to the gospel of John) had scattered and hidden themselves. She's also among the women present when Jesus is buried, and she's one of the first (if not the very first) to see him back from the dead.

Martha, Mary and Lazarus

Siblings from Bethany in Judea who were followers of Jesus, who is said to have loved all three.

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• Back from the Dead: Lazarus is most famous as one of the people Jesus brought back to life, after dying of an illness.
• Due to the Dead: Though they're not explicitly identified by name, Eastern Christianity traditionally counts Martha and Mary among the "myrrh-bearers", a group of women who went to Jesus's tomb in order to anoint his body and thus saw at least the empty tomb.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: Martha and Mary are contrasted this way, but this is played with.
  • Martha invites Jesus into their home and busies herself with showing hospitality while Mary listens at Jesus's feet. Martha complains about being left to do all the housework herself, but Jesus gently tells her to cool it since Mary chose what was more important.
  • On another occasion, Martha is serving at a dinner held for Jesus, while Lazarus is eating with him, and Mary surprises his apostles by anointing Jesus with some very expensive perfume as a grand gesture of devotion and honor. The apostles (particularly Judas) are indignant about this, calling it extravagant and wasteful, but Jesus says she has done an admirable thing because she has prepared him for his burial.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted yet again.
  • Mary of Bethany is yet another Mary in the gospels. Western Christianity has until recently tended to conflate her with Mary Magdalene (meaning Mary of Magdala, a different place) and the sinful woman who also anointed Jesus, while Eastern Christianity has always maintained they are separate people (and the two anointings are different though similar incidents).
  • Lazarus is also the name of a sickly beggar in one of Jesus's parables, who goes to heaven while a rich man who ignored him goes to hell.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Martha and Mary again. Besides the above incidents, when Lazarus dies it's Martha who goes to meet Jesus while Mary stays at home. Martha doesn't cry (or is not explicitly said to have), while later Mary does (and makes Jesus himself cry). When Jesus orders that Lazarus's tomb be opened, Martha shows her more "practical" side further when she says his body will smell since he's been dead for days.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Both sisters tell Jesus that Lazarus would not have died in the first place if he had come earlier and healed him. Jesus had received news of his illness some days earlier, but had delayed.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: After Lazarus is resurrected, the chief priests and elders are also mentioned to be plotting his death along with Jesus's, but he is never mentioned again (as are the sisters, at least by name) after the anointing incident. Christian tradition says he and his sisters were eventually forced to flee persecution like many of Jesus's followers after Jesus was resurrected, but disagree on where they ended up. One tradition says they ended up in France, where further legends say Martha tamed a dragon-like creature called the Tarasque.

James the Just

"What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him? If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace, be warmed and filled,' without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead."

One of several brothers of Jesus mentioned by name, together with unnamed sisters. He eventually took up leadership of the Christians in Jerusalem with Peter and John after Jesus's death and ascension. Is the author of the Letter or Epistle of James, and a brother named Judas wrote the Letter of Jude.

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• Ascended Extra: Much more important in the Book of Acts and in Paul's epistles, not to mention his own.
• Heel–Face Turn: Didn't support Jesus at first, but converted after his death. This may be because according to Paul, the resurrected Jesus appeared to him personally, though this event is not recorded in any of the canonical gospels. It's in a non-canonical or apocryphal gospel called The Gospel of the Hebrews though, as attested by Jerome (who did the Vulgate, the most important translation of the Bible in Latin). According to that, James vowed to not eat because of Jesus's fate until the resurrected Jesus came to him and made him eat.
• Historical Domain Character: He's mentioned by the Jewish historian Josephus and identified as Jesus's brother, which is used as evidence that Jesus really existed historically.
• In Name Only: Discussed Trope in his epistles, as James didn't think someone who did nothing more than pay lip service to Jesus was a true believer.
• The Magnificent: His title "The Just" is not from the Bible but from Eastern Christianity. According to tradition, he earned the title by being so true to both the Law of Moses and Jesus's teachings that even non-Christians recognized him as a righteous man.
• Never Accepted in His Hometown: He and Jesus's other brothers didn't believe in him, causing Jesus to invoke this.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted as he shares a name with two of Jesus' apostles. James is actually the same name as Jacob, transformed as it went through various languages, and so was a very common name for the time.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Was this for the Jewish Christians during the Apostolic Age, while Paul was a similar figurehead for Gentile Christians and Peter straddled both sides. Traditionally the first bishop of Jerusalem, appointed by Peter, John and John's brother James before he died.
  • Also, Catholics and Orthodox don't believe he was a son of Mary, but rather a son of Joseph only from a previous marriage (as seen in the non-Canon book Protoevangelion or Infancy Gospel) or a relative in some other manner.

The Brethren of the Lord

Jesus's brothers and sisters, collectively just called brothers or brethren. Only his brothers are named as James, Joses (or Joseph), Judas and Simon. Some Christians believe they were his half-siblings, while other Christians believe they were children of Joseph only, or some other kind of relative with "brothers" being used non-literally, and purely secular historians consider them his full siblings.

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• Heel–Face Turn: They didn't support Jesus at first and on occasion tried to tell him to quit it and go back with them. After the resurrection they're among the followers mentioned in Acts.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted; all the names of Jesus's brothers are shared with other people, including Jesus's Twelve Apostles.
  • In the narratives of Jesus's crucifixion, burial and resurrection across the synoptic gospels, Mary Magdalene is accompanied by "Mary, mother of James the less and Joses/Joseph", also called "the other Mary", and some other women. Mark uses "Joses" wherever Matthew uses "Joseph" (or vice versa, if Mark was written first) both here and in the enumeration of Jesus's brothers, making commentators question if they are the same pair of brothers or not. But then this "other Mary" is usually not thought to be Mary the mother of Jesus, otherwise absent from the synoptic accounts of the above events^note If that Mary was meant, why not just call her "the mother of Jesus", and so "the other Mary" is equated with "Mary of Clopas"^note most probably meaning the wife of Clopas in the gospel of John, which does mention the mother of Jesus alongside "the sister of Jesus's mother", Mary of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. The view that James and Joseph/Joses and other "brethen of the Lord" are cousins or some other kin was started by Jerome of Vulgate fame, who argued from the gospels alone, pointed out the similarity of names and concluded that "Mary mother of James and Joses/Joseph" aka "the other Mary" was both "Mary of Clopas" and "Jesus's mother's sister", hence making James the Less, Joses/Joseph and probably the rest as cousins of some sort. This view is more prominent among Catholics today. But the older view, which is held by Orthodox based on church tradition, was that the people said to be Jesus's siblings were the kids of Joseph (by a previous marriage) but not of Mary, and that Clopas was Joseph's brother who also married someone named Mary (Mary of Clopas), and they then had kids with the same very common names as their cousins from Nazareth. If true, Mary of Clopas would then be the Virgin Mary's sister-in-law (hence "sister"). Orthodox tradition also names one Simon son of Clopas as the successor of James the Just as the second bishop of Jerusalem.
  • The Letter of Jude is thought to be written by the brother called Judas instead of the Apostle Jude (Judas) Thaddaeus, since he explicitly calls himself the brother of James. In contrast, the Apostle Thaddaeus is also called "Judas of James", usually taken to mean his father was named yet another James.
• Never Accepted in His Hometown: Jesus's brothers didn't believe in him, causing Jesus to invoke this. The way one interprets how they act is also dependent on one's beliefs.
  • For Protestants, they are Jesus's younger siblings (the children Mary had by Joseph after Jesus was born) who are trying to get through to their wayward older (half) brother.
  • Orthodox Christians and some Catholics believe they were all Joseph's children by an unspecified earlier marriage, making them older than Jesus, and so they're trying to look out for their wayward kid brother (or rather, the man they believe to be their half-brother by their dad's second wife).
• No Name Given: Jesus's sisters are unnamed, although the plural implies at least two. Orthodox tradition names one of them as Salome, possibly the same Salome as the mother of James and John. Hence the dispute among James and John and their mother vs. the rest of the Twelve Apostles about who gets to be "first in the kingdom" would become a matter of asking a family favor. (This also applies if one equates "the sister of Jesus's mother" to Salome).
• Thicker Than Water: Apparently averted by Jesus, who didn't go out to meet his mother and brothers when they came to see him while he was preaching. He claimed that whoever who heard and followed the will of God would be his mother, his brother and his sister. (Though since Mary did "hear and follow God's will" in agreeing to be his mother, this can also be interpreted as roundabout praise of her at least.) Jesus also told John aka the Beloved Disciple to take care of his mother, when this would have been a snub to his brothers who should have had priority. This is another reason why some Christians don't believe they had the same mother.

The Twelve Apostles (in general)

Jesus had many disciples or followers and from these he chose a core group of twelve. These twelve were known as "apostles", meaning both messengers and delegates, since even before his death Jesus ordered them to go in advance to places he would visit and preach there. (Jesus also ordered another group of seventy (or seventy-two) disciples to do the same.) The twelve apostles also accompanied Jesus in his travels until his death.

The gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke list the twelve apostles with a few variations, while the gospel of John doesn't list all of them. They're commonly given as: Simon Peter, Andrew the brother of Peter, James the brother of John, John, Philip, Bartholomew (aka Nathaniel in John), Matthew, Thomas, James son of Alphaeus, Judas son (or brother, the Greek is inexact) of James (aka Thaddeus), Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot the Betrayer. The Acts of the Apostles says Matthias was later brought into the group as Judas' replacement and Paul as the Sixth Ranger.

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• Flat-Earth Atheist: Thomas has this reputation, for example being the inspiration for the term "doubting Thomas", but it's fairly unjustified. All the Apostles had trouble accepting Jesus' resurrection without physical proof; Thomas was just singled out because he arrived late. In addition, Jesus readily offered said proof and they immediately believed upon seeing it.
• Literal-Minded: The Apostles were often clueless about the things Jesus taught. They thought that Jesus was coming to restore the monarchy that David started even after Jesus rose from the dead. It wasn't until after Jesus sent the Holy Spirit that the Apostles understood everything.
• Numerological Motif: It's popularly thought that the reason why twelve Apostles were chosen - not, say, ten - was because there were twelve tribes of Israel.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted with two Jameses, the two Judases, and also with a second John (the first being John the Baptist). Played straight with Simons, as Jesus named one "Peter"—but even then, yet another Simon was involved in the crucifixion.
  • Some traditions give Thomas's original name as Judas as well. "Thomas" derives from an Aramaic word meaning "twin", and he is also called "Didymos" which also means "twin" in Greek, so both might be nicknames.
  • If Levi son of Alphaeus is the same as Matthew, Matthew's father has the same name as the father of one of the Jameses. But no tradition of Matthew and that James being brothers has survived.
  • Historically, Western Christianity (Roman Catholics, post-Reformation churches) has tended to distinguish the two apostles named James as "James the Great/Greater" (James brother of John, son of Zebedee) and "James the Less/Lesser" (James son of Alphaeus). This comes from Mark's gospel where one James is called ho mikros in Greek and minor in Latin. More recent translations have favored the translation "younger" instead of "lesser". Others believe this James to be the same as the James who is called "the brother of the Lord" , who was believed to be a biological son of Joseph ^note And depending on who you ask, Mary or not Mary. and dubbed "the Just" by the early church. However, Eastern Christianity (Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Eastern Catholics, etc.) tends to identify James "the lesser/younger", James son of Alphaeus and James the brother of Jesus as three different people. An ancient Christian writer lampshaded this, saying "yep, there are many called James". This is because James is a mutation of Jacob, a very common Jewish name, as it passed through different languages to English.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Jesus gathered together fishermen, a tax collector and a freedom fighter (or two), among others.
• Real Men Love Jesus: Since many of the apostles worked in blue-collar occupations such as fishing (especially since this was the time when much of the work came from manual labor unaided by machines), it's fair to assume they were manly men—and loved Jesus, of course.
• La Résistance: Simon the Zealot. The Zealots were freedom fighters/terrorists who opposed Roman rule, later famed for their last stand at Masada.
  • Possibly Judas Iscariot as well, if "Iscariot" is derived from the Sicarii, another anti-Roman group who carried out assassinations with daggers (sicae). So yeah, Judas might have been an Assassin. Though some historians say this is anachronistic and interpret Iscariot as "from Kerioth (a town in Judea)".
• The Sixth Ranger: Matthias, who replaced Judas after his death.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome/We Hardly Knew Ye: In the Gospels James the brother of John is one of the three most prominent Apostles, after Peter and John, and the three of them apparently were Jesus's "inner inner circle" given the way they're singled out. Early in the Acts of the Apostles he's executed with the sword by Herod Antipas (likely and traditionally beheaded). In fact he's the only Apostle whose death is recorded in the New Testament.
• Undying Loyalty: Subverted. They all swear not to abandon Jesus when when he says he will be arrested, but they all scatter when the moment comes. Except in the Gospel of John which has the unnamed "beloved disciple", usually accepted to be John, as the only one who stays true.
  • On the other hand, after the Resurrection, the apostles all spent the rest of their lives dedicated to Jesus, and all of them suffered persecution as a result and all (except John) martyred.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Tradition states that, except for John, they were all martyred in different places around the world. Without any concrete evidence, their fates still remain vague.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Jesus did this to the disciples after they rebuked people for bringing their children to see Jesus.

Peter the Apostle

"And I tell you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it."

Originally named Simon, he was one of the first disciples. Jesus gave him the name Peter, so he is often called "Simon Peter". The most prominent of the twelve apostles. He and his brother Andrew used to be fishermen. Traditional author of the Letters of Peter.

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• Character Development: Post-Pentecost, Peter becomes one of the top leaders of Jesus's movement and gains maturity from it.
• Cock-a-Doodle Dawn: Jesus predicts that this will signal Peter's Friendship Denial. He's right.
• Commander Contrarian: He's often depicted as the contrarian second-in-command to Jesus, also in apocryphal works and later legends. This works as a contrast between Jesus and a fallible human, which sometimes forces Jesus to lay the plan down word-for-word for him, while also making a point that in spite of all his faults, he apparently had the best grasp on who Jesus really was.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: As the Gospel of John (likely written after his death) might allude, he was crucified. Tradition says he was crucified upside down. He specifically requested to be crucified upside down; he felt he didn't deserve to die the same way as Jesus.^note This is why one of the symbols of Christian fealty is an upside-down cross, before Satanists ignorantly appropriated it as an Anti-Christian symbol.
• Friendship Denial: Peter was warned by Jesus that he will deny Him three times before the rooster crows, and a few moments later, Jesus was right. This didn't go well for Peter at all.
• Hot-Blooded:
  • During two accounts of Jesus's arrest scene, Peter cuts off a soldier's ear with his sword (and one of these accounts makes it clear that, yes, Jesus healed it).
  • Also, the time when Jesus tells Peter that anything he asks by faith will be granted. The first thing Peter asks for? That Jesus doesn't have to die. Jesus immediately rebukes it, repeating that his death is preordained. This is just one of the many times Peter opens his mouth and inserts his foot.
• Meaningful Rename: Jesus gave Simon the name Peter, which means "(a/the) rock". Catholics thus take Jesus' pronouncement "On this rock I will build my church" to mean that Jesus would establish Peter as leader of his church on earth, making Peter essentially the first Pope. However, the phrase is ambiguous enough that other Christians have understood it to mean that Jesus would establish his church upon Peter's faith, or prior statement of faith, that Jesus was the Messiah. Some take is established on the truth of his statement. Catholics do believe this as well, but emphasize Peter's personal role.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: After His resurrection, Jesus tells the women to "Go tell the disciples and Peter." This is an inversion of the trope, however, since Jesus is saying "Despite his Friendship Denial, make sure that Peter knows he's still included."
• My God, What Have I Done?: His reaction after realizing that not only was Jesus right about his Friendship Denial, Jesus was right there and heard him say it. He weeps bitterly because of this.
• Noble Bigot: Like many Jewish people, harbored prejudice against Gentiles. In the book of Acts, God calls him out on this and he helps Cornelius come to faith. Later on, while he is willing to speak with Gentiles on his own, he ignores them when Jewish Christians are around. Paul calls him out on this.
• One-Steve Limit: Enforced. Since there was another Simon among the twelve, Jesus gave him the Peter nickname instead.
• Open Mouth, Insert Foot: Peter does this a lot. It's even pointed out by the narrator:
  As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, "Master, it is good for us to be here. Let us put up three shelters—one for you, one for Moses and one for Elijah." (He did not know what he was saying.)
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Called by Paul a pillar of the church in Jerusalem, along with John and James the Lord's brother. When religious disputes between Gentile Christians (a faction identified with Paul) and Jewish Christians (a faction identified with James) began breaking out, Peter had a history with both sides and helped James work out a compromise at a council of all the Christians.
• Red Baron: His real name was Simon, and Jesus called him Peter - in very literal English Simon the Rock.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Initially, Peter was the Hot-Blooded foil to Jesus's calm demeanor, but post-Pentecost, he got better.
• Rule of Three: Peter denies Jesus three times. Later Jesus asks Peter if he loves him three times.
• Take Up My Sword: According to Catholic dogma, Jesus left Peter in charge of the movement he started. The Orthodox also believe in the primacy of Peter and his successor the Bishop of Rome aka the Pope, but not supremacy. Protestants tend to believe even his primacy was only temporary.
• Translation Convention: In the earliest surviving manuscripts, written in Greek, he is named Petros. This becomes Petrus in Latin and Peter in English. But the gospel of John clarifies that Jesus really named him Cephas, which means the same as Peter. Cephas is a Greek-style rendering of the Aramaic word kepha which means rock. Paul also preferred to call him Cephas in his letters. For extra complication, his original name in Aramaic was Simeon or Shimon and Simon is the Greek form.
• Unbuilt Trope: Catholics consider him the first Pope but they acknowledge that the position has developed a lot through the centuries. They just maintain that the essentials can be traced back to Peter.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Soon after Jesus praised Peter for declaring he was the Messiah, even saying this was divine revelation, Peter didn't believe him when he said he would die and come back from the dead. When Peter tried to talk him out of it, Jesus called him Satan and an obstacle.
• You Can't Fight Fate: The Quo Vadis ("Where are you going") tradition associated with Peter leads to this. The story goes that Peter tried to escape the persecution of Christians in Rome but a vision of Jesus made him change his mind and go back. Peter asked "Where are you going, Lord?" and Jesus answered that he was going to Rome to be crucified again, so Peter accepted his fate to die like his master.

John the Apostle

"He who does not know love does not know God because God is love."

One of the first disciples besides Peter, Andrew and his own brother James, like them he was a fisherman. A son of Zebedee and Salome. Traditionally the author of the Gospel of John, the Letters of John and the Revelation to John.

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• ...And That Little Boy Was Me: The ending of John's Gospel reveals that the unnamed "disciple whom Jesus loved" was the Narrator All Along. At no point does the Gospel name the disciple as John (once referring to "the sons of Zebedee" in third person), but it's pretty clear from inference.
• Hot-Blooded: Their nickname "Barjonah," which translates to "sons of thunder," may refer to this, though it's also possible that it simply references their actual dad, who was named Jonah.
  • After Jesus and his followers were rejected in a village, John and James got so angry that they asked Jesus if they could call down fire from Heaven to destroy the village. Jesus said no, of course.
  • On another occasion, they (and their mother) asked Jesus to let them sit beside him on his left and right in his glorious "kingdom", which caused a quarrel between the brothers and the other apostles.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: With Jesus, if you think that "the disciple whom he loved" was him.
  Though given that other interpretations see John as significantly younger than the other disciples (with Jesus arranging for Mary to practially adopt John at His death), this could also refer to parental love; making the trope Parental Substitute instead.
• Last of His Kind: Traditionally the last of the Twelve Apostles to die, and the only one not to be killed as a martyr. The Gospel of John is universally considered the latest-written of the four canonical Gospels.
• Literal-Minded: He and James were probably thinking of an earthly kingdom reconquered from the Romans in the incident above.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted with John the Apostle and John the Baptist.
  • The author of the Book of Revelation explicitly names himself John unlike the author of the Gospel and Letters, but some modern critics and even a few ancient ones believe the former to be different from the latter, because the latter have a similar literary style while the former is different. Thus the author of Revelation is sometimes known as "John of Patmos" (after the island he was on), or "John the Presbyter" (noted as a disciple of John the Apostle by one early Christian writer).
• Red Baron: Jesus called James and John "Boanerges" or "sons of thunder."
• Tagalong Kid: Downplayed. John was traditionally the youngest of the Apostles.^note In art, he is often beardless to contrast with the others, as in famously Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper where he also has long hair, making him look feminine to modern eyes and fueling stuff like The Da Vinci Code...
• Take Care of the Kids: The beloved disciple and Jesus's mother Mary were among the people who witnessed Jesus's crucifixion. When Jesus saw them, he said to Mary "Behold your son", and to the disciple he said "Behold your mother". From that point, the disciple took care of Mary as if she was his own mother^note though his real mother was still alive - and according to the other Gospels, also there. Many Christians, including Catholics and Orthodox, have seen this passage as symbolic of Mary being made the Team Mom to the whole Church, with the disciple representing the Church in general.
• Undying Loyalty: According to the Gospel of John, the beloved disciple was the only Apostle to be with Jesus as he died.

Matthew the Apostle

Traditionally the author of Matthew's Gospel. The figure of "Levi son of Alphaeus" (whose name doesn't appear in the Apostle lists) in Luke and Mark is equated to him in Matthew.

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• Author Appeal: As an ex-tax collector, he showed much interest in money.
• Evil Debt Collector: Subverted Trope, Matthew/Levi was a repentant tax collector.
• Heel–Faith Turn: See above.
• Irony: Tax collectors were seen as Les Collaborateurs/The Quisling to the Jews, but Matthew's Gospel focuses on the Kingdom of God^note using the term "The Kingdom of Heavens" in respect of the Jewish taboo against saying the name of God out loud and Jesus' identity as the King of the Jews.
• Shown Their Work: Quoted Old Testament passages to appeal to Jews.

Judas Iscariot

"Have you come to betray the Son of Man with a kiss?"

The one who betrayed Jesus, leading to Jesus' subsequent arrest and execution by torture.

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• Because Destiny Says So: Possibly: debates abound to this day in Biblical scholarship over Judas's actual agency in his betrayal of Jesus.^note Considering that Judas' actions lead directly to Jesus' arrest, trial, and death by crucifixion - which are obviously as central of events to Christianity as central can get - those debates can often expand to the nature of salvation itself: whether there are some people destined not to be saved - with all that entails in Christian teaching. Safe to say, it's a hot button issue, one of many over which Christianity has split into a myriad of different denominations Jesus, in his final prayer for the disciples, refers to Judas as "the son of perdition". "Perdition" means "being lost" - so considering the "Parable of the Lost Son" elsewhere in the Gospels (whose eventual return after leaving of his own will is a plot point), the meaning of this is ambigous: is it a foreshadowing and lament of Judas betraying Him which Jesus can already observe ^note (but neither He nor God the Father change because of non-interference in Judas' free will), or a (re-)statement of the fact that this was always going to happen?
  While I was with them, I kept them in thy name which thou hast given me: and I guarded them, and not one of them perished, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.
• Biblical Bad Guy: Betraying Jesus would qualify him as one of the worst. It's commonly held, however, that Judas hadn't intended for this betrayal to end in an actual arrest, much less an execution; rather done it as a push to finally bring on Kung-Fu Jesus by forcing Jesus to take defensive (and then hopefully offensive) action against the authorities. Understanding less than half of what was actually going on, Judas deeply regretted betraying Jesus as soon as said unintended consequences went down, and hanged himself out of guilt - which would make him more of an Anti-Hero.
• Les Collaborateurs: Judas is a villainous example, collaborating with the Roman authorities and their local Jewish allies to undermine Jesus and the other Apostles. It's a bit of a curious mixture with him being one of the Sicari, who were the (often violent) resistance against said Romans - so all of it adds up to a Well-Intentioned Extremist acting out an act of collaboration to further the cause of the terrorist resistance - and in this not well thought out false flag operation meant to make Jesus cross the Godzilla threshold^note Confused yet? So was Judas. getting Him murdered instead.
• Continuity Snarl: Matthew says he hanged himself, while Acts of the Apostles says he died in a fall, spilling his guts. Some reconcile this by assuming his dangling corpse fell and then burst open. (Note, however, that in those days, "hanging on a tree" was also used as a euphemism for impalement and/or crucifixion.)
• Deceptive Disciple: Judas was sincere enough in following Jesus for Jesus to call him into the inner circle of the twelve apostles. However, he then went on to sell Jesus out to the authorities as soon as it was clear that Jesus was not going to lead (or even have any part in) a people's resistance against the Roman occupation by violent means which Judas thought nescessary and justified.
• Deliverance from Damnation: hinted at and somewhat implied. By some^note but by no means the most! interpretations Judas' last minute heel realisation during his suicide led to God forgiving him, and Jesus taking him out of hell and along to heaven after death. Usually downplayed in favor of emphasizing Judas as a Hate Sink, however.
• Demonic Possession: It's said "the devil entered into him" when he went to betray Jesus. If taken literally and not as a metaphor for crossing the Moral Event Horizon, then it amounts to this trope.
• Driven to Suicide: After learning that Jesus was going to be executed.
• Et Tu, Brute?: See the folder quote.
• Face–Heel Turn: The betrayal, obviously.
• Finding Judas: Trope Namer via the Gnostic Gospels but somewhat averted and not canon in the Four Gospels.
• Hate Sink: Somewhat of an Unbuilt Trope. As written on the Gospels themselves, Judas isn't subject to a lot of characterization beyond his one defining betrayal moment. Matthew writes him as overcome with grief and guilt, and hanging himself after the fact. It is until Acts that he's written as a remorseless traitor. This characterization would later influence early Church's traditions, in which Judas and Judas alone is subject to the Greedy Jew stereotype, in which all the worst traits are projected onto him by nature of him being the murderer of Jesus - hence, committing deicide - by proxy.
• Heel Realization: Judas regretted betraying Jesus as he hadn't intended for it to end in an actual arrest (rather as a push to finally bring on Kung-Fu Jesus), much less an execution; tried to return the bribe money (the bribers were not interested), and then hanged himself out of guilt and shame. By some^note but by no means the most! interpretations this last minute heel face turn led to God forgiving him, and Jesus taking him out of hell and along to heaven after death. And then Suicide is Shameful further complicates the matter.
• Greed: The Fatal Flaw that led to Judas betraying Jesus for 30 pieces of silver.
• Kiss of Death: How he identifies Jesus to the Romans coming to arrest Him. Though - as Jesus drily lampshades - those who wanted Him arrested saw Him in the temple preaching every day, and knew who He was: they could just have arrested Him there without the need for anyone to point Him out.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Judas is the Greek form of Judah, the brother who got the idea to sell Joseph into slavery.^note And whom not only the name of Judas; but also those of the tribe of Judah, the Kingdom of Judah, the Roman province of Judea, Judaism, Jew and Jewish are all derived from
  • The meaning of "Iscariot" is a subject of debate: some hold that it means "of Kerioth", referring to his home town, while others believe it to be mean "the Sicarius", referring to membership in the Sicarii, a rebel movement that violently opposed the Romans.
• My God, What Have I Done?: After he betrayed Jesus, he had a Heel Realization and was Driven to Suicide.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted by his being one of two^note or three, if one accepts non-canonical sources (the Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of Thomas, and some Aramaic variant copies of John 14:22) that give Thomas' full name as "Judas Thomas" or "Didymus Judas Thomas"—"Didymus" and "Thomas" both being nicknames meaning "the twin" apostles called Judas: the other ends up going by Thaddeus. One of Jesus' brothers (who wrote the Book of Jude) is also named Judas.
• Only in It for the Money: Possibly. Even before the Face–Heel Turn Judas allegedly stole from the poor and took from the till, and afterwards betrayed Jesus for money.
• Spell My Name With An S: Or without an s, rather: the very name "Judas" became a byword for treachery, so that other people with the exact same name (like Jesus' brother) got theirs translated as "Jude" into English. The other apostle called Judas is often referred to as "Judas (not Iscariot)" - or outright called by his second name, Thaddaeus.
• Stealing from the Till: This is noted of him in John 12:6 when he is among those to complain when Mary of Bethany anointed Jesus:
  "He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it."
• Token Evil Teammate: Especially John's Gospel goes out of its way to show that Judas was evil from the beginning; but the other three don't hold back in unequivocally stating this is someone beyond the Moral Event Horizon, either.
• Trope Namer: To call someone a "Judas" is to say he is a traitor, hence trope names including Obvious Judas, Finding Judas, etc.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: In the books of Mark, Luke and John, Judas just disappears after betraying Jesus. But the Gospel of Matthew mentions his death, as does Acts, the sequel to Luke.

Jewish and Roman authorities

Herod the Great

The King of Judea at Jesus's birth.

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• Ambition Is Evil: He's remembered so negatively because as good a governor he was, his clinging to rulership led him to some highly questionable actions.
• The Magnificent: He got the moniker "the Great" for a reason. He was bad in the moral department, not in governance.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Herod: The Trope Namer and Trope Maker.
• Offing the Offspring: History records that he had three of his own sons executed for showing a bit too much ambition.
• One-Steve Limit: Due to Jewish naming conventions, all his sons (Archelaus, Antipas and Philip) have the prefix Herod too. Antipas is also generally called Herod in the Gospels.
• Puppet King: Though he's the nominal Jewish ruler, everyone knows that the Romans are really in charge.
• Would Hurt a Child: According to Matthew, he ordered the murder of all the male children in Bethlehem two tears old and younger in order to kill the Messiah. (It didn't work.)

Herod Antipas

The King of Judea at Jesus's death.

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• Affably Evil: Had John the Baptist imprisoned, but liked him and had him well-treated.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: On his birthday, he was forced to kill John the Baptist, whom he considered his friend.
• Even Evil Has Standards: Despite his many dark deeds, he was clearly appalled at his stepdaughters request to be given the head of John the Baptist on a platter, but he reluctantly went along with it.
• I Gave My Word: Tells his stepdaughter he'll give her anything she wants if she dances for him. She does, then upon her mother's instruction, demands the head of John the Baptist.
• Puppet King: Though he's the nominal Jewish ruler, everyone knows that the Romans are really in charge.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: The last we hear of him, he orders John the Baptist's death. Based on Josephus and other historians, the King Herod in the Acts of the Apostles is yet another Herod, Agrippa (Herodias's brother), and it's he who gets Laser-Guided Karma for other actions. That said, Josephus does say that a later military defeat of Antipas was attributed by the Jews to his execution of John the Baptist out of jealousy, because of John's esteem among the people.

Herodias and Salome

Herod Antipas's wife and stepdaughter.

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• Demanding Their Head: At the behest of her mother Herodias, Salome demands the head of John the Baptist be brought to her on a platter, after her dancing for King Herod pleases him so much.
• Femme Fatale: For dancing so "well" that Antipas rashly promises even up to half his kingdom if she so wished, Salome becomes an iconic example in dramatizations and other Biblically-inspired media. The dance became known as "the Dance of the Seven Veils", basically a striptease belly dance. But we don't actually know how old she was, and the text just calls her a girl. So she was possibly a Fille Fatale with all the modern squick that entails. Even at best, it's a bit weird, given that Salome is both Antipas's stepdaughter and niece (see below)
• Karma Houdini: Herodias and Salome get off scot-free for causing John the Baptist's death.^note Not in Oscar Wilde's Salome, where Salome, being a spurned yandere for John, kisses his severed head which prompts Antipas to have her killed on the spot. Still had to face God's judgement in the end. This trope is ineffective against Him.
• Lady Macbeth: Herodias was this to Herod on the subject of John, pushing him to kill the man.
• Misblamed: Based on the text, it's Herodias who actively wants John the Baptist dead, not Salome, who is just callous about his death at worst. Some adaptations play with this so that Salome either wants him dead too or doesn't, but just goes along with her mother.
• No Name Given: Salome is not named in the gospels but we know her name thanks to historians like Josephus.
• One-Scene Wonder: The unnamed daughter of Herodias only appears once, doing her dance which is not elaborated on in any way, and then asking for the Baptist's head. But this single scene has inspired tons of artists in various fields.
• One-Steve Limit: Yet another aversion, though you have to look outside the gospels for it. Salome is also the name of the mother of the apostles James and John. The name likely derives from the Hebrew word for peace, "shalom", so it was understandably common.
• Settle for Sibling: Herodias not only divorced her first husband while he was still alive to marry Antipas, but her first husband had been Antipas's half-brother. There are several elements of this that were frowned upon in Jewish law, and John the Baptist calls Herodias out on it, which earns him her mortal ire.

Pontius Pilate

The Roman governor of Judea.

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• Anti-Villain: Depicted as a mostly fair ruler who was caught between killing an innocent man or setting him free and risking the people's rebellion.
• Batman Gambit: When carrying out the tradition of freeing one prisoner on the Passover, he had the other choice be the criminal Barabbas in hopes that people would pick Christ over him. It didn't work.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: One reason historical records outside of the Gospels have little-to-no mention of his trial of Jesus. Pilate likely didn't know much about Jesus, if anything, before meeting Him, and most of the information he got came from the very biased Pharisees; Jesus could have been "another day, another internal dispute they need me to settle" to Pilate. Also, while he had a lot of leeway on what constituted justice, sentencing an innocent man to death could've made Pilate look bad, giving him another reason to downplay or omit Jesus' trial from records at the time.
• Between A Rock And A Hard Place: Free an innocent man and risk causing major civil unrest when it's your whole job to prevent that, or execute the innocent man?
• Culture Clash: To the Jews, Jesus' claim to be the Son of God was a Blasphemous Boast deserving the death penalty, but Pilate likely believed in Classical Mythology where a mortal being the actual son of a god was quite possible, and where killing a demigod would be a very bad idea.
• Exact Words: He wrote a placard for Jesus' cross with the words "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." When the Pharisees protested it should say "This man said he was King of the Jews," Pilate retorted, "What I have written, I have written."^note Note that in Hebrew the first letters of those words spell out the name of God... which, whatever else the writer may have intended (or not), is a very probable reason to take offence at the sign.
• Heel–Face Turn: Some stories say he converted to Christianity.
• Historical Villain Downgrade/Historical Villain Upgrade: Zig-Zagged between the two. By all contemporary accounts (based on various historical records) Pilate was a rude, undiplomatic, chauvinistic, and authoritarian colonial Prefect who went out of his way to rub the Jews down with his Cultural Posturing before getting recalled when it got too much even for Tiberius Caesar. Granted, as far as Roman officials went (especially in uncooperative regions) this was not unusual and we don't have much reason to believe he was overly corrupt, bloodthirsty, or venal; just that he was not exactly passive. Despite this, he's often depicted as the man directly responsible for ordering the death of Jesus while in the Gospels themselves he only does so reluctantly because he has no choice and after trying to have Jesus pardoned more than once. It's reasonable to assume that, despite his rudeness and often rubbing the (supposed) superiority of Rome in the Jews faces, he'd balk at sentencing an innocent man to death.
  • This might also triple as a Historical Hero Upgrade: Given as Josephus describes him as a tyrannical and antisemitic judge, whereas in the Bible he was reluctant to crucify Jesus whilst being egged on by the Pharisees. Though, it's possible Josephus exaggerated the accounts a little bit, being a Jew himself, thus making it hard to pinpoint the exact personality of the actual Pontius Pilate.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Symbolized by washing his hands.
• Never My Fault: The whole "washing his hands" was done because Pilate wanted to disavow having anything to do with Jesus' death on the cross. Unfortunately for the Jews, it worked all too well. The good news is the Apostles' Creed sets the records straight by stating that Jesus "suffered under Pontius Pilate."
• Scrubbing Off the Trauma: Some say he went mad with guilt and spent the rest of his life cleaning his hands with snow.
• Somebody Else's Problem: He sent Jesus off to be tried by Herod when he found out He was from Nazareth. Unfortunately for Pilate, Herod saw through this ploy and sent Jesus right back.
• To Be Lawful or Good: Rather than risk the wrath of an angry mob, he chooses Lawful rather than do the morally right thing and release a man he believes to be innocent.

The Pharisees, priests, etc.

"Woe to you Pharisees, because you give God a tenth of your mint, rue and all other kinds of garden herbs, but you neglect justice and the love of God. You should have practiced the latter without leaving the former undone."

The Jewish religious institutions and groups of the day - the Pharisees, Sadducees, priests, scribes and elders, who were a frequent target of Jesus's preaching and butted heads with him many times.

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• Corrupt Church: They constantly disobeyed and twisted the Law of Moses for their own personal ends while claiming that everyone else should follow the law to the letter.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: See quote. They followed the ceremonies of the law to a T, but they completely over looked the more important spirit of the law.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: "If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent."
• Greed: Some turned the temple into a bank, especially for their personal use. Unfortunately, by lumping all of them into this together, the Gospels reporting it contributed to the Greedy Jew stereotype.
• Hate Sink: They are portrayed as the collective primary opponent of Jesus during his ministry, constantly conspiring to either incriminate Him or turn the people of Judea against Him. The Gospels tend to lump them all together, though they were not all united (for instance, the Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the body at the end of time, while the Sadducees didn't) and there was overlap (the priests tended to be Sadducees).
• Hiding Behind Religion: Jesus accused them of this.
• Holier Than Thou / Pride: Their besetting sins, according to Jesus.
• Hypocrite: They followed the ceremonies of the law to a T, but they completely over looked the more important spirit of the law. Their religion was more to make them look good in front of men than out of any real love for God. For example, they got mad at the disciples for eating with unwashed hands, but they themselves plotted murder and stole from people.
• Irony: They had a reputation as being very religious. They also were some of Jesus's worst enemies.
• Insane Troll Logic: They accused Jesus of being Demonically Possessed because He healed people and cast out demons.
• Jews Love to Argue: A lot of space in the Gospels is taken up by the Pharisees' arguments with Jesus (who was Jewish himself too, of course) over the correct interpretation of the Torah.
• Kangaroo Court: According to religious commentators and historians the trial of Jesus was held by one. Normally the Sanhedrin or high council composed of people from all these groups and headed by the High Priest wouldn't have been convened in the dead of night, etc.
• Loophole Abuse: Sort of; they had to make up a new rule to do it. They had a tradition that if something was declared "Qorban" or "devoted to God," it was not to be used for secular use, and they would use that as a excuse not to use whatever it was to help their parents.
• Malicious Slander: They called Jesus crazy, demon-possessed, and a blasphemer (among other things), and they considered the people to be "uneducated rabble".
• Misblamed: Given that Jesus and all the Apostles were canonically Jewish themselves, it should be clear that Jesus' criticism of the Pharisees and other Jewish groups/institutions is not meant to say that all Jewish people are bad or hypocritical, just the particular Holier Than Thou religious leaders being criticized.^note Some religious scholars have observed that, doctrinally speaking, Jesus was a Pharisee, and their arguments amounted to an in-house disagreement. Regrettably, this context is largely lost on some later interpreters who have used such texts to justify antisemitism in the name of Christ— who, it's worth repeating, was Jewish. While the scribes and pharisees get a less pronounced version of being a Hate Sink than Judas does; there are also indicators that they as well became more and more of this in the retellings during the time the Gospels were oral history between the time of Jesus and being codified as written texts about three hundred years later. And as with Judas, the Hate Sink spread to include all Jews sordidly often in Christian history - to the point of almost defining the relationship between the two religions at times.
• Morton's Fork: One of their preferred strategies for trying to entrap Jesus: Should we execute this woman for adultery (defying the law of Rome), or not (defying the law of Moses)? Should we pay taxes to Rome (a very unpopular idea) or not (Caesar would like to have a word with you)? (In each case, Jesus Took a Third Option.)
• Necessarily Evil: Caiaphas the High Priest justified their actions in getting Jesus killed as this, reasoning it was better for one man to die to prevent an uprising that would wipe out the nation.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Jesus called them out not only for being holier-than-thou, but for putting unnecessary restrictions on the average folk.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: Caiaphas argues for the death of Jesus saying, "It is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish." He presumably meant that it was better for the Romans to execute Jesus and prevent an uprising that would affect everyone, but John observes that it could also be taken to refer to Jesus dying for the sins of the world.
• Rules Lawyer: And really didn't like it that Jesus' Rule Fu Was Stronger.
• Screw the Rules, I Make Them!: As rabbis, it was their job to interpret the Laws of God. Jesus pointed out that they did so in extremely hypocritical and self-serving ways.
• Strawman Has a Point: Out of all the things they do to antagonize Jesus, their accusations of blasphemy in response to his A God Am I claims are, ironically, rather understandable. After all, such claims would've been incredibly blasphemous coming from anyone else.
• Tautological Templar: Most of them. They had become corrupt in their positions, to the point that when the Messiah their faith prophesied appeared before them, even performing miracles, they tried to discredit Him and arrange his death when He called them out on their corruption.
• To Be Lawful or Good: They criticized Jesus for healing the sick or feeding the hungry on the Sabbath; Jesus countered that human life takes precedence over following religious rules. ^note Worth noting that Jesus' position is the one affirmed by present-day Judaism, a principle known as Pikuach nefesh.
• Token Good Teammate: Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea. Early in Christ's ministry, Nicodemus came to him in secret to ask about his doctrine. He also assisted in burying Christ, while Joseph gave his own pre-bought tomb for Jesus to be buried in.
• Touché: A number of times when Jesus manages to outsmart them, they are said to be "impressed".
• What the Hell, Hero?: They were not really heroes; they only claimed to be, but the they made the temple into a den of thieves and Jesus rebuked them for this.

Others

The Magi

Also known as The Three Wise Men, they were astrologer-priests from the East (most likely Zoroastrian) who came to see the baby or child Jesus according to Matthew. Tradition calls them kings, but this isn't in the text. In Western Christianity they're also often assumed to number three because they brought three kinds of gifts (gold, frankincense and myrrh), but they're not numbered in the text either. In Eastern Christianity they're said to be twelve.

The names of the Magi are not given in Matthew but tradition gives the names Gaspar, Melchior and Balthazar.

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• Astrologer: The Magi interpret the Star of Bethlehem to announce the birth of Jesus; they're exactly right.
• All Myths Are True: An element of this is implied. For those who don't know, Zoroastrianism is a very old religion, such that even Jesus himself would've considered Zoroaster an ancient figure. Now, the freaky thing is that, much like King David, Zoroaster also predicted that one of his descendants would save the world from evil!
• Court Mage: Some historical interpretations of the word "Magi" see their role as closer to this rather than being kings themselves.
• Cross Cultural Kerfuffle: Should kids in Hispanic America (especially in Puerto Rico) get their presents from Santa or the Magi? The eternal debate!
  • The Magi are often pictured in Arabic headgear despite not actually being Arabs. (Then again, what people might call "Arabic Headgear" is generally common less because of ethnic identification and more because it's one of the best things to use in a desert.)
  • Oriental Orthodox traditions say that at least one of the Magi came all the way from China.
• My New Gift Is Lame: While gold and frankincense are valuable and holy gifts, myrrh was used in burials and thus was unusually morbid to give to a newborn. It's implied it may have been as a Call-Forward to Christ's eventual death to atone all sins.
• Numerological Motif: Three Kings, three presents.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Like traveling around the world on camel to deliver presents to the Son Of God personally.
• Rule of Three: The Magi bring Jesus three gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. This led to the tradition that there were three Magi, one for each gift. Thus they're almost always depicted as three, despite the Scripture not actually specifying how many there were. (Some Eastern Orthodox traditions say there were as many as twelve.)
• Star of Bethlehem: Led them to Jesus.
• Token Minority: Melchior is often depicted as being black.
  • Five-Token Band: Many depictions actually make them three different races to symbolize the entire world coming together in awe of Christ.

Joseph of Arimathea

A Jewish councillor who inters the body of Jesus into a tomb which he had intended for himself.

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• Ascended Extra: In the legend of King Arthur and the Holy Grail, he took possession Holy Grail after the Crucifixion, eventually taking it to Britain (specifically, to the Isle of Avalon which is heavily associated with Glastonbury in Somerset).
• Reasonable Authority Figure: One of the few in the Sanhedrin to oppose Jesus's death. While probably powerless to stop it, he ensures that Jesus got a decent tomb.

Nicodemus

Another Jewish councillor who meets with Jesus in secret and later helps bury him in Joseph's tomb.

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• Literal-Minded: When Jesus speaks of being "born again" (or "born from above" - the phrasing allows for both), Nicodemus asks how an old man can re-enter his mother's womb. To be fair, Jesus was probably the first person to use the phrase in this way.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Like Joseph. Jesus calls him a "teacher of Israel". He later brings several pounds of spices to anoint Jesus's body, but apparently it was a rush job since the women who go to the tomb later bring their own supplies.
• What You Are in the Dark: Literally so, as he went to Jesus at night (ie. in secret) to learn from Him.

Barabbas

A prisoner marked for execution but released in place of Jesus. Pontius Pilate offered to release one prisoner and the people in attendance chose Barabbas.

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• Meaningful Name: Barabbas is Greek for the Aramaic name Bar Abba, a Patronymic that means "son of the/his father". So the "son of the father" was spared while the "real Son of the Father" was crucified.
• One-Steve Limit: Averted in some manuscripts which give his full name as Jesus Barabbas, taking the irony even further. (In first century Palestine, if a Jewish man wasn't named Joshua/Jesus, Jacob/James, or Judas/Jude, he probably had a brother with that name.)
• The Pardon: He gets it instead of Jesus.
• Shaped Like Itself: His listed surname translates to "Son of his Father".
• La Résistance: He was imprisoned for taking part in an insurrection and thus was a rebel against Roman rule. Some critics suspect he was a Zealot, though the texts don't state this.
• Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Apparently a celebrity to the Jewish people, though a public enemy of the Romans.

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