Apostle, Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve by Tom Bissell, book review

An atheist with a deep knowledge of the Bible, Bissell is a wonderfully sure guide to these mysterious men

Mysterious men: stained glass (Alamy)

Raised in the bosom of the Church, I received a fixed idea of the Apostles. They operated as a kind of Praetorian Guard surrounding the boss and answered things in chorus. Only a few of them had any real personality or role. There was Doubting Thomas and Treacherous Judas, of course, he who delivered that mysterious kiss. Jesus named fisherman Peter "the rock" on which the future Church would be built and handed him the spiritual keys to the enterprise. Most of the rest were an interchangeable mass.

Even to a child's eye, there was something odd about the Apostles. They were always there, hanging around, and you might think after watching Jesus perform a miracle a day, more or less, that they would have understood the nature of his mission. But no, the Apostles got it wrong time after time, so often that Jesus was always "rebuking" them – telling them off. You wondered why he'd selected them in the first place, unless it was to show that literally anyone – no matter how dense – could be a vessel of divine grace.

What I hadn't realised, until I read Bissell's expertly researched and fascinating book, was how fuzzy the descriptions of the Apostles in the Bible actually are. There is no agreement in the New Testament, he notes, on how many Apostles there were, what their names were and whether they were Apostles – that is, messengers, or just Disciples, which hints at a more passive role. If you imagine them posing in a group photo, is that James standing on the right or Phillip – and if it is James, which James? There seem to be at least two. Peter is also called Simon, which is equally confusing, as any number of Simons appear.

If the Bible writers were hazy about the Apostles and their precise function, the Church has never been, which explains why my own childish memories of them remain so strong. For the Catholic Church, the entire edifice of papal supremacy turns on the business of Jesus calling Peter "the rock" and entrusting him with the keys of the kingdom. But even some of the Reformed churches, the Anglicans in particular, cling to the Apostolic Succession – the doctrine that the Apostles live on in a mystical way through the bishops, each of whom receives his powers through the laying-on of hands, one bishop to another, all the way back to the Twelve. You don't hear so much about the Apostolic Succession these days but the churches fought over it – who had, who didn't – for centuries.

Bissell is a wonderfully sure guide to these mysterious men. An atheist with a deep knowledge of the Bible, like a surgeon he delicately separates the sparse details about the Apostles in the scriptures from a mass of legends that grew up later on.

Touring the sites where the Apostles' bones are believed to have come to rest, he takes in Jerusalem, Rome, Greece, Turkey, France and India, and mixes lightly worn but learned material about them with some superior, often hilarious, travel writing. Bissell has a gift for reproducing his encounters with the various priests, pilgrims and guides he met at the shrines. Unsurprisingly, it turns out he also writes film scripts.

You night not think there is anything new to say about getting diarrhoea in India but Bissell's account of a catastrophic visit to Chennai to inspect the remains of St Thomas is a treat. This is a serious book about the origins of Christianity that is also very funny. How often can you say that?

Faber, £20. Order at £17 inc. p&p from the Independent Bookshop