tiro3

Good point about James, Don.  And excellent questions Cheryl.

I think James puts another kink in the whole thing because he is believed to be the author of the epistle of James. He addresses the leaders when they came together in Acts 15 admonishing them from the OT, siding with Paul on not troubling the new Gentile Christians with Jewish “rules”.  I believe he was also an apostle, a fellow laborer in laying the foundations of doctrine and a pillar of the early church to whom many looked to for direction including Paul. (Acts 21:18).

So, it seems that the twelve were not the only ones who laid the foundational beliefs of the early church. So then the question is, what exactly did the 12 do that was different than the other first leaders of the church?

I still maintain that all of the apostles were chosen directly by God even those who were not verbally named by Christ when he walked the earth.  So the twelve seemed to be a transitional group of some sort, with their mapping to the 12 tribes.  Yet, God still called others to lay foundations, set doctrines, etc.  And that group when the foundations were laid, were not repeated in the next group of called apostles.  Once the foundations were laid, they were laid.