Somehow, I never realized before that the first disciples to join Jesus were all brothers. That’s got to mean something, though I’m not sure what. I went further and made two of the younger brothers disciples of John the Baptist before they leave him for Jesus. (The text only says that two unnamed disciples of John did this.) The result was a survey (far from complete) of the different kinds of relationships brothers might have, and the different reasons the disciples might have had to join Jesus.
One oddity about these stories is the conversion of Nathanael, which occurs when Jesus tells him he saw him under a fig tree talking to Phillip, but: really? Is that really all it took? And if you were Nathanael and Jesus said, “I saw you under the fig tree”, wouldn’t you assume he meant he happened to be nearby and saw you normally? And if he then said, “No, I wasn’t anywhere near you,” wouldn’t you then suspect that Phillip had simply told him about the conversation?
What’s happening here, I think, is that a Believer was writing an account meant for other Believers, and didn’t feel it necessary to connect all the dots. The reader understands that a miracle is being presented, and will fill in any blanks left in the account by the writer. I suspect that many of the oddities I’ve been finding in the Gospels have this source. It’s understandable, I suppose, but annoying to someone trying to approach these stories fresh, looking only at the words themselves and not relying on any pre-existing interpretive frameworks.