rizdek

I realize many here consider the gospels to be total fiction.

But does anyone recommend a book/website where the whole concept of whether any disciples were actually executed BECAUSE THEY PERSONALLY preached that Jesus died and rose again? Of the apostles who wrote epistles, I can only find that Peter indicates IN HIS EPISTLES that he believes Jesus RFTD. The epistles by James, Jude and John do not mention it, do they? So does anyone claim to know exactly what all these disciples were actually preaching...not what the writer of Acts CLAIMS they believed and were preaching?

I guess that even if we grant that any or most of the disciples were martyred (and that's not known for sure), we can't tell IF they were martyred specifically because they preached a risen savior. Granted many accounts in the gospels and Acts suggest these disciples were all present at various sightings of Jesus after the crucifixion, but those are all just reports...perhaps the results of a very few hallucinations/dreams by individals. EG, in Acts, there is a claim that Jesus appeared to 500. But of course that is just the report; someone probably dreamed it or has a hallucination. All it means that in the DREAM they dreamed there were "500" people who saw Jesus. There's no hint that there really was a crowd of 500 people actually standing there seeing a risen savior. The writer of Acts was probably just reporting what was before him in notes, anecdotes or stories. Likewise each "appearance" in the various gospels appear to be the result of 3, perhaps 4 dreams where someone dreamed they (and one or more others) saw Jesus. There was the garbled accounts of Mary at the tomb. Each one is a little different, but in my mind, it was likely the variations of one dream Mary probably had...and it need not have been anytime close to when Jesus might have been crucified. She might have had the dream days, weeks or months later. True, the report included apostles running too and fro, but so what, that's just a report. And by the time her "dream" surfaced, these apostles were off on their own preaching whatever it was they preached.

And weren't all the gospels compiled after most of the disciples (who were executed) were executed? So even IF their names were mentioned as being present in sightings of Jesus, they didn't attest to those sightings and indeed may not have even been aware of them at the time they dispersed and went about preaching.

It is Paul who makes a big todo about IF Jesus Christ did not rise, their faith is in vain. Is there any reason to think the various other individuals that went forth even before Paul was converted thought that way? They may have just thought of themselves as followers of a cult leader who they believed in and who they thought was in some way a special emmissary of God. They might even be willing to die for such a belief without ever preaching or believing in a Jesus who rose from the dead.

My question again is, who writes about this particular angle. I read some where skeptics try to invoke mass hallucination to explain the disciples and crowds seeing Jesus. But I wonder why bother? We don't have a hint from a crowd, or even from the disciples themselves (except Peter, who may be the source of one or more hallucinations) that they ever thought Jesus RFTD or that they claimed to see him thus.

When I read the accounts in the gospels, they read very much like dreams and the repeated accounts appear to just be the same dreams repeated over and over with variations.

Toto

You might find this of interest, from our own Steven Carr:

The Martyrs

sotto voce

And yet, works of almost the same antiquity that contradict the gospels are given serious treatment.

Every NT writer believed that Jesus died and was raised to life. There was no purpose in writing without that belief, because, for them, faith was mainly 'investment' for an afterlife. The existence of an afterlife was for them demonstrated by the raising of Jesus; the potential to share it was made possible by the sacrificial nature, as perceived, of Jesus' death. To take Jesus' death and resurrection out of its then existing Scriptural context is to make it meaningless.

Nobody knows what happened to any of 'the Twelve', Paul, Luke, Silas, Barnabas, Titus, Timothy or any other apostle or associate, though some have a vested interest in saying that they know, via sourceless 'tradition', which has the validity of deliberate rumour. It is possible that any of them apostasised. All of the letter writers except James indicated that apostasy, or at least false leadership, was incipient at the time of writing. This is one reason why those aforementioned later works are untrusted. The emphasis on valid authorship by non-believers is not shared by believers.

stephan huller

clement of a makes reference to disciples who were not martyrs. john the evangelist was another. he is said to have dug his own grave and fallen in

sotto voce

Old wives' tales.

Toto

What old wives? Don't you mean old husbands' tales? Or old sexually repressed celibate ascetic's tales?

outhouse

we dont even know if paul killed them all before taking the religion in opposite directions

sotto voce

Those as well, no doubt.

rizdek

How do you know? I mean Jude, John and James don't mention it in their letters. The gospel writers don't really count in that they were probably not eyewitnesses. Luke is only reporting what others told him. Paul believed it, but that's because he had a "vision" and believed it was the Lord. Peter apparently did, but that's about it. Who else is there?

That might be what everyone thinks now, but why do youthink they thought that then? I think that's overstating what can be gleaned from the scriptures. As I said,in the gospels, there are accounts reported where disciples in various groups supposedly saw the risen Jesus, but it is just as possible that they didn't at all, and that those accounts are the results of one or a few dreams that folks spread and eventually became "gospel." I see no logical reason to think they couldn't be spreading the "gospel" as Jesus preached it before he died.

Again, that's Paul, but it does not follow automatically. Jesus could "died for our sins" and just stayed dead. I mean, it was a substitutionary sacrifice, him dying for us and our sins. True, the "god" part of Jesus would return to heaven, but where's the need to think the human part had to come back to life. If he had died and was not believed to be risen, Christians today would be saying, of course he need not come back to life for his sacrifice to be meaningful. It's all a matter of what you're taught to believe.

sotto voce

Not explicitly, but these events underlie everything they wrote.

Jude mentioned 'the salvation we share'; he used the word 'Christ' several times, and this implied priesthood, i.e. sacrifice. He wrote of Jesus as 'Lord', which signified the practical consequence of christhood. He wrote that Jesus would bring his readers to eternal life, which indicated the eventual consequence of Jesus' own resurrection. Jude mentioned the agape, the breaking of bread meetings of Christians based upon Jesus' crucifixion.

John also wrote of Jesus as Christ several times, and that 'Jesus Christ laid down his life for us'. He wrote of 'the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world'; that 'your sins have been forgiven on account of his name'. (The word 'name' meant a whole political or religious stance.) He wrote that Jesus Christ came with blood as 'witness' that signified Jesus' crucifixion. He wrote that Jesus the Christ is 'the true God and eternal life'. John's focus was on what Jesus had done for his readers, and that 'we love because he first loved us'.

James' focus was on the tendency of his readers to take the above for granted, who supposed that what Jesus had done did not entail loving in return. But nevertheless, he refers to them as 'believers in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ'. James' strongly cautionary letter takes as a given his readers' belief in justification by faith in the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. He cautions against just hearing 'the word of truth', which must mean the news of Jesus death and resurrection, without acting on it. This was a word that 'gives us birth' and made his readers 'a kind of firstfruits', which indicated something consecrated to God, and therefore (in this case) morally acceptable to him. So the cross and resurrection are implicit in James at a fundamental level.

So Jude, John, James, Peter, Paul and the author of Hebrews all founded their exhortations on belief in the cross and resurrection of Jesus, and they could hardly have reached for a quill without that belief.

The gospellers are not explicitly exhorting to faith; they are acting as recorders, so it does not matter what they believed. (It doesn't matter if they were not eyewitnesses either, but that's another subject.)

Perhaps that's true, but it is neither here nor there, anyway. Let's remind ourselves of the OP. The issue is what the disciples preached, and therefore what they believed; rightly, or wrongly. Every book of the NT portends belief in the death and resurrection of Jesus. That does not mean that any of the apostles were killed because of that belief. Neither does it mean that people were not killed for some other, related belief. Romans executed people for all sorts of reasons. They were not all that fussy with those who were not their own citizens.

It's the Old Testament, plus, we may reasonably say, the lore, oral or not, in respect of the ministry of Jesus.

Then he would not have died for anyone's sins. Then there would have been no disciples at all. The whole thing would have been forgotten.