Mary was a young woman from Nazareth told by the angel Gabriel that she would conceive the Messiah by the Holy Spirit. Joseph, a carpenter descended from David, was engaged to her and raised Jesus as his own.

Joseph planned to break off the engagement quietly until an angel told him in a dream to marry her. Through Joseph, Jesus had the legal descent from David that the Messiah needed. Mary appears again at the cross, and Joseph disappears from the story after Jesus is twelve, suggesting he died before Jesus's ministry began.

Luke 1:30-33

A prophet and relative of Jesus who preached repentance in the wilderness, baptised people in the Jordan River, and pointed to Jesus as the one coming after him.

He wore camel hair and ate locusts and wild honey, deliberately looking like Elijah. He baptised Jesus and called him "the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world". He was imprisoned and beheaded by Herod Antipas after criticising Herod's marriage to his brother's wife. Jesus said no one born of women was greater than John.

John 1:29

Peter, Andrew, James and John (the sons of Zebedee), Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddaeus (also called Judas son of James), Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot.

Twelve was deliberate: it matched the twelve tribes of Israel, a sign that Jesus was reconstituting God's people. Several were fishermen, one was a tax collector who worked for Rome, and one was a Zealot, from the movement that wanted to overthrow Rome. After Judas died, Matthias was chosen to take his place.

Mark 3:14-19

A Galilean fisherman who became the leading disciple, confessed that Jesus was the Messiah, denied him three times on the night of his arrest, and was restored to lead the early church.

Jesus gave him the name Peter, from the Greek for "rock". He was impulsive: he walked on water and then sank, and cut off a man's ear at Jesus's arrest. After the resurrection Jesus asked him three times, "Do you love me?", matching his three denials. He preached at Pentecost, and tradition says he was crucified in Rome.

Matthew 16:15-18

Two fishermen brothers who, with Peter, formed Jesus's inner circle, and whom he nicknamed "Sons of Thunder".

The three were the only ones present at the transfiguration and the raising of Jairus's daughter, and the ones Jesus took with him to pray in Gethsemane. James was the first of the twelve to be martyred, executed by Herod Agrippa. John is traditionally identified as "the disciple whom Jesus loved" and the author of John's Gospel, three letters, and Revelation.

Mark 3:17

The disciple who betrayed Jesus to the chief priests for thirty pieces of silver, identifying him to the arresting crowd with a kiss.

He was the treasurer of the group and, John says, stole from it. After Jesus was condemned, Judas was filled with remorse, threw the money into the temple, and killed himself. The priests used the money to buy a field for burying foreigners. His name has become a synonym for traitor.

Matthew 26:14-16

One of the twelve, who refused to believe the others had seen the risen Jesus until he could see and touch the wounds himself.

A week later Jesus appeared and invited him to do exactly that, and Thomas responded, "My Lord and my God!", one of the clearest statements in the Gospels of who Jesus is. Jesus replied that those who believe without seeing are blessed. Tradition says Thomas later took the gospel as far as India.

John 20:27-29

A follower of Jesus from whom he had cast out seven demons, who stood at the cross and was the first person to see him risen.

Magdalene means she came from the town of Magdala in Galilee. Nothing in the Bible says she was a prostitute; that idea comes from a sixth-century sermon that merged her with other women. In John's Gospel she mistakes the risen Jesus for the gardener until he says her name, and he sends her to tell the disciples.

John 20:16-18

Two sisters and their brother from Bethany, near Jerusalem, who were close friends of Jesus. He raised Lazarus from the dead after four days in the tomb.

In one story Martha is busy serving while Mary sits listening at Jesus's feet, and Jesus says Mary has chosen the better part. At Lazarus's tomb, "Jesus wept", the shortest verse in most English Bibles. In John's Gospel, raising Lazarus is what finally convinces the authorities to have Jesus killed.

John 11:25

A Pharisee and member of the Jewish ruling council who came to Jesus by night and was told he must be "born again".

The conversation in John 3 is where John 3:16 comes from. Nicodemus appears twice more: once cautiously defending Jesus before the council, and once helping Joseph of Arimathea bury Jesus's body, bringing an enormous quantity of spices — about seventy-five pounds, a burial fit for a king.

John 3:3-4

A wealthy chief tax collector in Jericho who climbed a tree to see Jesus, and who gave away half his possessions after Jesus invited himself to his house.

Tax collectors worked for Rome and routinely overcharged, so they were despised as traitors and thieves. The crowd grumbled that Jesus was going to be the guest of a sinner. Zacchaeus promised to repay anyone he had cheated four times over, and Jesus said the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.

Luke 19:8-10

Herod the Great, who ruled when Jesus was born; his son Herod Antipas, who beheaded John the Baptist and questioned Jesus; and his grandson Herod Agrippa I, who executed the apostle James.

Herod the Great was a brilliant, paranoid builder who expanded the temple and killed several of his own family, so the killing of Bethlehem's infants fits his character. After his death his kingdom was divided among his sons, and Antipas ruled Galilee, where Jesus lived. Jesus called Antipas "that fox". Agrippa II, before whom Paul made his defence in Acts 26, was the great-grandson.

Luke 13:31-32

The Roman governor of Judea from AD 26 to 36, who sentenced Jesus to crucifixion.

Only the Roman governor could order an execution, so the Jewish leaders brought Jesus to him. The Gospels show him finding no guilt in Jesus yet giving in to the crowd, and washing his hands as a sign he was not responsible. An inscription bearing his name was found at Caesarea in 1961. His name is in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds: "crucified under Pontius Pilate".

Matthew 27:24

The Jewish high priest who led the council that condemned Jesus and handed him over to Pilate.

The high priest was the most powerful Jewish figure under Roman rule, and Caiaphas held the office for about eighteen years, which required close cooperation with Rome. John records him saying it was better for one man to die for the people than for the whole nation to perish, meant as politics but read by John as unintended prophecy. His family's ornate bone box was found in Jerusalem in 1990.

John 11:49-50

The Gospels name four brothers — James, Joses, Simon, and Judas — and mention sisters. Christians differ on whether these were children of Mary and Joseph, children of Joseph by an earlier marriage, or cousins.

Most Protestants read them as Mary's younger children. The Orthodox tradition holds they were Joseph's from a previous marriage, and the Catholic tradition generally that they were close relatives, since both hold that Mary remained a virgin. The brothers did not believe in Jesus during his ministry, but afterward James led the church in Jerusalem, and the letters of James and Jude are traditionally attributed to two of them.

Mark 6:3