When Jesus is talking to his disciples at the last sword and he tells them to prepare themselves by buying swords and such…one could interpret that as what they did when they then have two swords. But I think instead it’s telling us a little bit about society back in the day: a reasonable number of people went armed for self-defense, such that several of the disciples already had swords. This would line up with a lot of what the rest of history has looked like with respect to people defending themselves.

A further interesting and amusing question about this chapter in Luke is regarding when the swords get used a bit further, and Jesus then heals the ear that was cut off…did they just leave an ear on the ground for someone to discover the next day?