Simon + Peter + Thomas in the Gospels 153x (First 3 Names in John 21:2)

Summary

In the Gospels of the King James Bible there are precisely 153 pure mentions of the names Simon(‘s), Peter(‘s), and Thomas when they are referring to the actual persons of Simon Peter & Thomas.

In the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John)

Simon | Simon’s = 45x (Pure)
Peter | Peter’s = 97x (Pure)
Thomas | Thomas’ = 11x (Pure)

Total (45 + 97  + 11) = 153 pure mentions of Simon* + Peter* + Thomas* in the Gospels.

A pure mention is a search result unique to a person, place or thing. A raw mention is a search result that is shared by two or more persons, places or things (E.g. “Saul” could be talking about Saul the first king of Israel, or Saul of Tarsus (later named Paul), or the man named Saul in Genesis 36:37-38. In this case, we have several mentions of “Simon” in the Gospels that are not referring to Simon Peter. These look-alike mentions are removed from the count to give us what we call a “Pure” count. Pure mentions are obtained by removing all “antimentions” from the search.

For Simon | Simon’s, there are 62 raw mentions. The antimentions are the following;

Simon, Jesus’ half-brother (2x)
Simon, of Cyrene, the cross bearer (3x)
Simon Zelotes, the apostle (3x)
Simon, father of Judas Iscariot (4x)
Simon, the Pharisee (3x)
Simon, the leper (2x)
(The last 3 Simon’s listed here may be one and the same Simon, but it’s unclear in scriptures)

Removing these 17 antimentions from the 62 raw results gives us a pure count of 45x for Simon*, referring to Peter.

This search result includes possessive mentions as denoted by the wild card (*) at the end of the names. Which will find every mention of the name plus any characters appended to it (“Simon” & “Simon’s”). Note: there are no possessive mentions of Thomas’ (with the apostrophe) in the Bible.

In the Scriptures

This pattern serves as a secondary witness to a much greater 153 pattern involving all the primary names of the fishers who take part in the miraculous catch of 153 fishes in John 21 (Peter, Thomas, Nathanael, James, and John).

The significance of these 3 names (Simon* + Peter* + Thomas*) being mentioned 153 times in the Gospels is that they are the first 3 names appearing in the list of fishers who catch the 153 fishes in John 21:2-11.

There were together Simon Peter, and Thomas called Didymus, and Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, and the sons of Zebedee, and two other of his disciples.
Simon Peter saith unto them, I go a fishing. They say unto him, We also go with thee. They went forth, and entered into a ship immediately; and that night they caught nothing.

…
Simon Peter went up, and drew the net to land full of great fishes, an hundred and fifty and three: and for all there were so many, yet was not the net broken.
John 21:2,3,11

Therefore, abiding by the law of first mention- at least in the sense of this chapter/passage- we find great intrigue with these 3 names appearing exactly 153 times combined in the Gospels. Besides the greater pattern associated with this one, we have not found any other group of names in the entirety of the gospels that produce a total of 153 mentions. Nor does it seem to be possible to produce any sort of logical grouping of names into a perfect count of 153 – see the NetCount program created specifically for this scenario, which was ran and detailed in this video at timestamp 26:25.

References

Visual Chart: The 153 Fishes / Under the Triangle in Blue

Video: 153 Fishes: Blatant Evidence the Bible is from God / Timestamp 25:42