The Twelve

The Twelve (Russian: Двенадцать, Dvenadtsat) is a controversial long poem by Aleksandr Blok. Written early in 1918, the poem was one of the first poetic responses to the October Revolution of 1917.

Background

The poem describes the march of twelve Bolshevik soldiers (likened to the Twelve Apostles) through the streets of revolutionary Petrograd, with a fierce winter blizzard raging around them. The mood of the Twelve as conveyed by the poem oscillates from base and even sadistic aggression towards everything perceived bourgeois and counter-revolutionary, to strict discipline and sense of "revolutionary duty." In a violent clash with a vigilante deserter, a prostitute (who is accused of killing an officer) is killed by one of the Twelve (Peter), who appears unusually struck by the accident and later reveals to his comrades that he had been in love with the woman. However, after the others remind him that in these revolutionary times one's personal tragedies are nothing, the murderer regains his determination and continues the march. In the last stanza of the poem, most controversially, a figure of Jesus Christ is seen in the snowstorm, heading the march of the Twelve.

Apocalypse: The Twelve

The Twelve is a comic book crossover storyline published by Marvel Comics in March 2000.

Background

The story of the Twelve begins with a young mutant by the name of Tanya Trask, who would later become Madame Sanctity. Adrift in the timestream, Tanya was rescued by Rachel Summers, in her guise of Mother Askani, who took her to the future and there healed her mind. This future, under the rule of Apocalypse, was somber and grim, and Tanya sought to change it. She traveled back in time, three years before the formation of the X-Men, despite Mother Askani's warnings not to do so, and attempted to contact her father, Bolivar Trask. Rachel followed her and stopped her from revealing herself to her father, but not before Tanya could tamper with her father's creation, Master Mold, and upload a program called "The Twelve".

Years later, as Cyclops pondered his relationship with Madelyne Pryor in Alaska, he was attacked by Master Mold, who claimed Cyclops was one of the Twelve and had to be killed. Master Mold was stopped, but not before revealing several other possible members of the Twelve, such as Charles Xavier, Apocalypse, Storm, Jean Grey and Franklin Richards among others.

Quorum of the Twelve

In the Latter Day Saint movement, the Quorum of the Twelve (also known as the Council of the Twelve, the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Council of the Twelve Apostles, or the Twelve) is one of the governing bodies (quorums) of the church hierarchy organized by the movement's founder Joseph Smith, and patterned after the twelve apostles of Christ (see Mark 3). Members are considered to be apostles, with a special calling to be evangelistic ambassadors to the world.

The Twelve were designated to be a body of "traveling councillors" with jurisdiction outside areas where the church was formally organized (areas of the world outside of Zion or its outlying Stakes). The Twelve were designated as being equal in authority to the First Presidency, the Seventy, the standing Presiding High Council, and the High Councils of the various stakes.

After the death of Joseph Smith in 1844, permanent schisms formed in the movement, resulting in the formation of various churches, many of which retained some version of the Quorum of the Twelve.

Acts of Peter

The Acts of Peter is one of the earliest of the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. The majority of the text has survived only in the Latin translation of the Vercelli manuscript, under the title Actus Petri cum Simone. It is mainly notable for a description of a miracle contest between Saint Peter and Simon Magus, and as the first record of the tradition that St. Peter was crucified head-down. The Acts of Peter was originally composed in Greek during the second half of the 2nd century, probably in Asia Minor. Consensus among academics points to its being based on the Acts of John, and traditionally both works were said to be written by Leucius Charinus, whom Epiphanius identifies as the companion of John.

Acts of Peter and the Twelve

The Acts of Peter and the Twelve is one of the texts from the New Testament apocrypha which was found in the Nag Hammadi library.

The text contains two parts, an initial allegory, and a subsequent gnostic exposition of its meaning. The allegory is thought to have been originally a work in its own right, and to have dated in that form from around the 2nd century.

The allegory describes the tale, similar to the Parable of the Pearl in the Gospel of Matthew, of a pearl merchant who is selling a pearl at a great price (note—this text is not to be confused with the Mormon scripture The Pearl of Great Price). The merchant is shunned by the rich but the poor attend him in droves, and learn that the pearl is kept at the home city of the merchant, "Nine Gates", rather than being carried on him. As such those who desire it must trek the arduous journey to Nine Gates.

The name of the merchant is Lithargoel, which the text translates as being "lightweight, glistening stone", i.e. the merchant himself is the "pearl". Ultimately the merchant reveals himself to be Jesus.