…during his own adult life in the Bible?
Tradition says that John was fairly young, maybe in his teens. There is some dispute about James’ relationship to Jesus- depending on who and which church you ask, he was either the cousin, stepbrother, or actual full-sibling brother of Jesus. At least one church (the eastern Orthodox) believe he was the stepbrother of Jesus from Joseph’s previous marriage, so if that was the case then he would have been older than Jesus. I don’t know about the ages of the rest, but you could probably look at early hagiographies.
Since they were working stiffs - fishermen, tax collector - presumably they were old enough to be out earning a living, and old enough to drop what they were doing without their father telling them to smarten up and get back to work.
The bible recounts Jesus arriving at Peter’s house and curing the mother-in-law (“Gee, thanks a lot, Jesus!”) He cured her so she could wait on him… So Peter at least had a wife at one point, and owned(?) a house.
The Bible doesn’t say. There are “traditional” ideas about the ages, based on inference and suggestions.
As noted, John was thought to be pretty young. I suspect this is because he’s thought to be the author of the Gospel bearing his name (but which doesn’t actually name him), near the end of which Jesus asks his mother to accept him as son. He’s also traditionally held to be the author of Revelations, which was written well after the Gospels, so he’d have to had been young during the ministry. (There’s also a tradition that he was the groom at the wedding at Cana, where the water was turned to wine)
Peter was held to be older, probably because he was seen as the Leader who was given the Keys. The nuns at my parochial school also rationalized this by the way John was supposed to have run to the empty tomb ahead of the others, so John must’ve been young and Peter older.
While not a disciple, John the Baptist is said in Luke to be slightly older than Jesus. Mary visited Elizabeth when the latter was pregnant and shortly thereafter she became pregnant herself. Traditionally, John’s birthdate is six months before Jesus’.
Some of John’s disciples later joined up with Jesus. In the Gospels, John mentions Andrew and another disciple of John following Jesus early on. (Andrew then persuaded his brother Peter to follow Jesus.) In Acts, there is some mention of disciples of John becoming followers of Jesus.
My take on this is that these were generally young people. To first follow John and then later Jesus when both were fairly young compared to most Jewish religious leaders of the time implies a more youthful bent. (Although there are some older exceptions among the followers. Generally “foreigners” or family members of other followers.)
Revelation. Singular.
There’s more than one “James”:
James, son of Zebedee, brother of John, one of the “inner circle” of Jesus’s disciples
James, son of Alphaeus, another one of the Twelve Disciples, but one of the more obscure ones
The James you’re talking about, who was not one of the Twelve Disciples, but became a leader of the early Church after Jesus’s death (and whom the New Testament book of James is named after as its supposed author).
As noted, there’s some dispute over this James’s precise relationship to Jesus. The Straight Dope: Did Jesus have siblings?
ISTR something on the Dope about the writer of Revelation being a different John, possibly from Crete or a different island. He was writing about the Roman destruction of the uprising around 70 AD. Yes/No
The Revelation is apocalyptic literature, which is usually anonymous or pseudonymous. So when the writer names himself as John we can draw this conclusion; we don’t know what his name was, but it probably wasn’t John.
Plus, internal evidence (like language use) make it unlikely that the Revelation and the fourth Gospel were written by the same person.
Really, this is primarily a Catholic hangup, because the Church believes in Mary’s perpetual virginity. I would think that Protestants wouldn’t have a problem with the idea that James was a younger child of Mary’s, with Joseph.
Is this John the same as John the Baptist? (Sunday school was a long time ago, although I still can sing the song that names all the disciples).
No.
Some Anglicans also believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary as a doctrinal matter (one of the first seven Ecumenical Councils, I think the fifth, officially pronounced on her perpetual virginity). And you can still believe it even if you are a Protestant (Luther and Wesley did, after all). Something can be true even if Rome says it is.
I think the perpetual virginity / James being a cousin or stepbrother is more likely than not mostly because the arguments I’ve heard in favour of the “James was the actual son of Joseph and Mary” seem to be terrible arguments that aren’t faithful to the way people use language. There is also some positive evidence- the fact that Jesus bequeathed the care of his mother to John at his death, the fact that there are very early traditions attesting to her perpetual virginity, etc…
Well, he may have been writing about any number of things. The ‘preterist’ case is that he was referring entirely to the Roman destruction of Jerusalem, but there are also people who think he was prophecying future Christian history, or the end of the world. I think he was describing cyclical tendencies and broader themes that recur through history, so that what he was writing was applicable to the events around 70 AD, but also to the end of the world, and to any number of conflicts between good and evil in between those dates.
The ‘traditional’ reading of Revelation is that it was written late, under Domitian in the 90s AD. I believe most ‘historical-critical’ modern scholars agree, though I don’t really have a great deal of regard for most of these folks so I’m not entirely sure what their consensus is. Some people have also made a case though- John AT Robinson, for example, who I find very convincing- that the references to Nero and the Temple really mean Nero and the Temple, which would mean the book was written after the death of Nero and before the fall of the temple (i.e. within a very narrow two year period).