The answer for question no. 1 is
A.) Mattathias. “
In those days Mattathias the son of John, son of Simeon, a priest of the sons of Joarib, moved from Jerusalem and settled in Modein. He had five sons, John surnamed Gaddi, Simon called Thassi, Judas called Maccabeus, Eleazar called Avaran, and Jonathan called Apphus.” I did play around a bit here: the names ‘Matthew’, ‘Matthias’ and ‘Mattathias’ are all derived from Hebrew name
Mattatyahu.
Johnnyc176, oettner, and Tietjen got this question right. Congratulations!
By the way, question no. 2 is actually a trick question. Nowhere in the New Testament is the length of Jesus’ ministry specified.
The Synoptic Gospels make mention only of a single Passover, which is Jesus’ last. Based of this, as well as what is seen as clues within the Synoptics - for example, in the Gospel of Mark 2:23-28 grain is eaten raw, which suggests early summer; in 6:39 it is spring since the grass is green; Jesus then goes to Jerusalem for Passover in 11:1, presumably during the same spring as chapter 6 - there are some folks who believe that Jesus’ ministry actually lasted only for more or less a year: between one early summer or late spring and the next spring. They argue that this shorter time period is compatible with the references to some other contemporaneous prophetic and messianic figures who also had apparently short careers before the authorities crushed their movement, as well as with Jesus’ itinerant lifestyle and His disciples’ lack of formal occupations (having abandoned them), which they think would not work as well in the long run.
The problem with this idea, however, is that it fails to consider that Matthew, Mark, and Luke often arrange their (episodic) material differently. Hence, to use, say, the time indicators in Mark one would have to assume that the events happened in the
exact order as Mark placed them, which would place one into a dilemma when you compare his Gospel with say, Matthew or Luke, both of whom place some pericopes in a different order than Mark.
In John’s Gospel meanwhile, there are
three Passovers (2:13; 6:4; 11:55ff.): John’s version of the Cleansing in the Temple occurs during the first Passover, the feeding of the five thousand occurs in the second, and Jesus dies around the last Passover. Besides Passover, John also mentions an unspecified “
feast of the Judaeans” in 5:1, while chapter 7 is set during
Sukkoth, aka the Feast of Booths (cf. verse 2) and 10:22ff is set during
Hannukah, aka the Feast of the Dedication. Three years, right? Not really, as according to this reckoning, Jesus began His public ministry somewhere before the first recorded Passover, which would make the length of time that He was in public only slightly more than
two years. And this does not take into account the possibility that John only recorded a small portion of what Jesus did (cf. 21:25)!
Now much speculation has arisen over the identity of the unnamed feast of chapter 5: some have suggested that it also refers to a Passover (which would make the total of Passovers in John into four, hence supporting the idea of a three-year ministry), others think that it is a reference to
Shavuot, aka Feast of Weeks or Pentecost, still others take it as referring to Purim.
Late March-late April (Spring): First Passover (2:13)
??: Unnamed feast (5:1)
Late March-late April (Spring): Second Passover (6:4)
Late September-late October (Autumn): Booths (7:1ff.)
Late November-late December (Winter): Dedication (10:22ff.)
Late March-late April (Spring): Third Passover (11:55ff.)
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