Matthew 4:12, 18-19 and Mark 1:14-17 both say Jesus began his Galilean ministry and called Peter and Andrew *after* John was imprisoned. John 1:35-42 has Andrew and Peter following Jesus while John is still actively baptizing — and John 3:22-24 makes the chronological framing explicit: *oupō gar ēn beblēmenos eis tēn phylakēn ho Iōannēs* — 'for John had not yet been thrown into prison.'
Proposed answers
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
John the Baptist was imprisoned before Peter and Andrew were called.
12Now when Jesus heard that John was delivered up, he withdrew into Galilee.18Walking by the sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers: Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea; for they were fishermen.19He said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you fishers for men.”
14Now after John was taken into custody, Jesus came into Galilee, preaching the Good News of God’s Kingdom,15and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and God’s Kingdom is at hand! Repent, and believe in the Good News.”16Passing along by the sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew, the brother of Simon, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.17Jesus said to them, “Come after me, and I will make you into fishers for men.”
40One of the two who heard John and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother.41He first found his own brother, Simon, and said to him, “We have found the Messiah!” (which is, being interpreted, Christ).42He brought him to Jesus. Jesus looked at him, and said, “You are Simon the son of Jonah. You shall be called Cephas” (which is by interpretation, Peter).
22After these things, Jesus came with his disciples into the land of Judea. He stayed there with them and baptized.23John also was baptizing in Enon near Salim, because there was much water there. They came, and were baptized;24for John was not yet thrown into prison.
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement— a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
This is a Synoptic-versus-Johannine ordering problem, and the Fourth Gospel appears to know exactly what it is doing.
Mark 1:14 establishes the entire Galilean-ministry timeline with a single Greek clause: *meta de to paradothēnai ton Iōannēn* — "after John was handed over." The aorist articular infinitive (*paradothēnai*) marks a completed event prior to Jesus's Galilean preaching, and the verb *paradidōmi* ("hand over," later used of Jesus's own betrayal) deliberately foreshadows the Baptist's fate at Herod Antipas's hands (Mark 6:17-29). Matthew 4:12 carries the same chronological anchor forward almost verbatim, substituting *akousas de hoti Iōannēs paredothē* — "having heard that John was handed over." In both Synoptics the lakeside call of Peter and Andrew (Mark 1:16-20; Matt 4:18-22) is the inaugural act of the post-arrest period. The narrative locks Peter's call into the time after the Baptist's imprisonment.
John 1:35-42 tells a different story in a different place. Andrew is already a disciple of the Baptist when he hears John identify Jesus as *ho amnos tou theou*, the Lamb of God; he follows Jesus, finds his brother Simon, and brings him, whereupon Jesus renames him Cephas. The scene unfolds at Bethany beyond the Jordan (John 1:28), not at the Sea of Galilee. John 3:22-24 then makes the framing explicit with a parenthetical aside: *oupō gar ēn beblēmenos eis tēn phylakēn ho Iōannēs* — "for John had not yet been thrown into prison." The pluperfect-equivalent periphrasis (*ēn beblēmenos*) signals background information the narrator supplies precisely because it matters chronologically. The Fourth Gospel presents a substantial period of overlapping ministry — Jesus and John baptizing simultaneously (John 3:22-26; 4:1-2) — that the Synoptics have eliminated entirely.
The strongest harmonization, advanced by D. A. Carson in the Pillar volume, Andreas Köstenberger in the BECNT, and Craig Blomberg in *The Historical Reliability of John's Gospel*, runs a two-stage call. John 1 narrates an initial, informal meeting and provisional discipleship at the Jordan; Mark and Matthew narrate a later, formal summons by the Sea of Galilee after the men had returned to their nets. On this reading Jesus "called them again," and the Synoptic accounts simply omit the earlier Jordan encounter. This is not impossible. The grammar of Mark 1:16-17 does not state in so many words that this is first contact, and there is independent evidence that disciples could move between teachers.
But the case is weaker than it looks. The Markan and Matthean pericopes read as initial-call narratives: the brothers abandon their nets *euthys* — "immediately" (Mark 1:18) — with no narrative signal of prior acquaintance, and the summons "I will make you fishers of men" functions as a vocation-defining first encounter, not a renewal. More decisively, John's *oupō ēn beblēmenos* in 3:24 is not incidental detail but a deliberate authorial correction. A narrator only flags that an event preceded the Baptist's imprisonment if a competing chronology places it afterward — which is exactly what the Synoptics do. The remark presupposes a reader who might otherwise assume the Synoptic sequence, and it pointedly resets it.
The critical consensus (Brown, *Anchor Bible* 29; Schnackenburg; and earlier Bultmann) holds that John 1-3 preserves an independent tradition of a Judean, pre-Galilean phase of Jesus's activity that overlaps the Baptist's career — a phase the Synoptics suppressed when they compressed all of Jesus's ministry into a single post-arrest Galilean campaign organized around one climactic Jerusalem visit. Davies and Allison note that Matthew's geographical theology requires John offstage before Jesus enters "Galilee of the Gentiles" (Matt 4:15-16, citing Isa 9:1-2), so the arrest functions as a literary hinge, not necessarily a chronological datum. Marcus similarly reads Mark's *paradothēnai* as a theological signal linking John, Jesus, and the disciples in a chain of "handings over." Both Synoptists thus had redactional reasons to position the call where they did, independent of historical sequence.
Where the critical reading lands: genuine contradiction. Mark and Matthew place the call after John's imprisonment; John explicitly places the disciples' first following before it. The two-stage harmonization is possible only by importing into the Synoptic accounts a prior encounter they neither narrate nor imply.
Sources for this reading
Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel According to John (i-xii): Introduction, Translation, and Notes (AB 29; Doubleday, 1966) pp. 73-79, 154-156on the independent Johannine tradition of a pre-Galilean ministry overlapping the Baptist
Joel Marcus, Mark 1-8: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (AB 27; Doubleday, 2000) pp. 178-186on paradothēnai and the lakeside call
W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Gospel According to Saint Matthew, vol. 1 (ICC; T&T Clark, 1988) pp. 374-381, 391-401on the arrest of John as a literary hinge into Galilee
Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel According to St John, Vol. 1, trans. Kevin Smyth (Crossroad, 1980) pp. 308-318on the overlapping ministries in John 3John 3
D. A. Carson, The Gospel According to John (PNTC; Eerdmans, 1991) pp. 154-159advancing the two-stage call harmonization
Andreas J. Köstenberger, John (BECNT; Baker Academic, 2004) pp. 78-86on a provisional Jordan discipleship preceding the Galilean call
Craig L. Blomberg, The Historical Reliability of John's Gospel (InterVarsity Press, 2002) pp. 79-85on reconciling the call accounts
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
This is a Synoptic-versus-Johannine ordering problem, and the Fourth Gospel appears to know exactly what it is doing.
Mark 1:14 establishes the entire Galilean-ministry timeline with a single Greek clause: *meta de to paradothēnai ton Iōannēn* — "after John was handed over." The aorist articular infinitive (*paradothēnai*) marks a completed event prior to Jesus's Galilean preaching, and the verb *paradidōmi* ("hand over," later used of Jesus's own betrayal) deliberately foreshadows the Baptist's fate at Herod Antipas's hands (Mark 6:17-29). Matthew 4:12 carries the same chronological anchor forward almost verbatim, substituting *akousas de hoti Iōannēs paredothē* — "having heard that John was handed over." In both Synoptics the lakeside call of Peter and Andrew (Mark 1:16-20; Matt 4:18-22) is the inaugural act of the post-arrest period. The narrative locks Peter's call into the time after the Baptist's imprisonment.
John 1:35-42 tells a different story in a different place. Andrew is already a disciple of the Baptist when he hears John identify Jesus as *ho amnos tou theou*, the Lamb of God; he follows Jesus, finds his brother Simon, and brings him, whereupon Jesus renames him Cephas. The scene unfolds at Bethany beyond the Jordan (John 1:28), not at the Sea of Galilee. John 3:22-24 then makes the framing explicit with a parenthetical aside: *oupō gar ēn beblēmenos eis tēn phylakēn ho Iōannēs* — "for John had not yet been thrown into prison." The pluperfect-equivalent periphrasis (*ēn beblēmenos*) signals background information the narrator supplies precisely because it matters chronologically. The Fourth Gospel presents a substantial period of overlapping ministry — Jesus and John baptizing simultaneously (John 3:22-26; 4:1-2) — that the Synoptics have eliminated entirely.
The strongest harmonization, advanced by D. A. Carson in the Pillar volume, Andreas Köstenberger in the BECNT, and Craig Blomberg in *The Historical Reliability of John's Gospel*, runs a two-stage call. John 1 narrates an initial, informal meeting and provisional discipleship at the Jordan; Mark and Matthew narrate a later, formal summons by the Sea of Galilee after the men had returned to their nets. On this reading Jesus "called them again," and the Synoptic accounts simply omit the earlier Jordan encounter. This is not impossible. The grammar of Mark 1:16-17 does not state in so many words that this is first contact, and there is independent evidence that disciples could move between teachers.
But the case is weaker than it looks. The Markan and Matthean pericopes read as initial-call narratives: the brothers abandon their nets *euthys* — "immediately" (Mark 1:18) — with no narrative signal of prior acquaintance, and the summons "I will make you fishers of men" functions as a vocation-defining first encounter, not a renewal. More decisively, John's *oupō ēn beblēmenos* in 3:24 is not incidental detail but a deliberate authorial correction. A narrator only flags that an event preceded the Baptist's imprisonment if a competing chronology places it afterward — which is exactly what the Synoptics do. The remark presupposes a reader who might otherwise assume the Synoptic sequence, and it pointedly resets it.
The critical consensus (Brown, *Anchor Bible* 29; Schnackenburg; and earlier Bultmann) holds that John 1-3 preserves an independent tradition of a Judean, pre-Galilean phase of Jesus's activity that overlaps the Baptist's career — a phase the Synoptics suppressed when they compressed all of Jesus's ministry into a single post-arrest Galilean campaign organized around one climactic Jerusalem visit. Davies and Allison note that Matthew's geographical theology requires John offstage before Jesus enters "Galilee of the Gentiles" (Matt 4:15-16, citing Isa 9:1-2), so the arrest functions as a literary hinge, not necessarily a chronological datum. Marcus similarly reads Mark's *paradothēnai* as a theological signal linking John, Jesus, and the disciples in a chain of "handings over." Both Synoptists thus had redactional reasons to position the call where they did, independent of historical sequence.
Where the critical reading lands: genuine contradiction. Mark and Matthew place the call after John's imprisonment; John explicitly places the disciples' first following before it. The two-stage harmonization is possible only by importing into the Synoptic accounts a prior encounter they neither narrate nor imply.
Sources for this reading