Jesus, according to the information that John gives us in the beginning of his Gospel, had a strange system of recruiting his disciples. Two of John’s disciples left the Baptizer when he identified Jesus for them as "the lamb of God" and spent the rest of the day with Jesus. Andrew was one of the two, and he recruited his brother, Simon, whom Jesus immediately labeled "the Rock." The next day Jesus encountered Philip and said to him, "Follow me!" - and he did. Philip went out and found Nathanael, or Bartholomew, and gave him the good news. But Bartholomew reacted quite differently from Simon, didn’t he? He asked Philip, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?" "Come and see" he was told by Philip, and Bartholomew did just that.

Jesus apparently did his homework before Bartholomew arrived; …