Chris Weimer

Tradition doesn't necessarily equate to fabricated story.

Evidence for that assertion?

Toto

You could send your critique to Steven Carr. He does invite responses. That essay has been up for a while, and he might appreciate the chance to revise it.

After all, the idea that Josephus was not a Pharisee is a revision of what used to be the scholary consensus.

Flavius Josephus and the Pharisees by Steve Mason (2003)

Riverwind

To get back on track...

The sources I've quickly come up with so far for the legendary accounts of the martyrdom of Jesus' disciples from the above posts (and not very many good posts, I might add) are:

Origen
Eusebius
Hippolytus

Any others? I'm short on time, so any specific book/verse references in the above works would be of interest and greatly appreciated as well.

Doug Shaver

Necessarily? No, of course not. That is not the point. The point is that neither does it equate to historical fact. Tradition is unreliable, period. It is not reliably false and it is not reliably true.

Not today. I don't have time. Make of that what you will.

David B

One thing that really has me scratching my head is that, generally, when I read someone claiming that all the disciples died for Jesus, they seem to be trying to make a case for saying that the claims of Christianity are true, and so important as to be worth dying for.

Whereas to someone like me, who is reasonably well informed about people like Jim Jones, Charles Manson, the Heaven's Gate dudes et al, what it comes across as is showing (if it is in fact true that many, if not all, of the disciples did die for Jesus - if Jesus in fact existed) that a view of Jesus as megalomaniac death cult leader fits the bill far the image of a gentle Jesus, meek and mild.

David B

Chris Weimer

It's unreliable, but that doesn't mean it's not sometimes accurate. That's the whole point of discernment - figuring out what is accurate, what is not. You don't trash all of it because it's tradition.

Doug Shaver

That depends on exactly what I'm trashing.

If someone says, It is reasonable for me to believe that the disciples died for their beliefs because tradition says so, then I'm not justified in trashing that person's belief, so stated.

But if someone says to me, It is not reasonable for you to doubt that Jesus rose from the dead, because his disciples died for their belief that he rose from the dead, then I think I can justifiably trash the logic of that sort of thinking. Even assuming that their martyrdoms would be evidence that their belief was well justified, extraordinary claims need support from evidence of undisputed reliability. The disciples' martyrdoms cannot be evidence for anything until it is established beyond reasonable doubt that they in fact died as martyrs.

Roger Pearse

I'm not sure whether this is something that has been dealt with elsewhere in the thread. We see a lot of this vague use of the word 'tradition', and, without attacking Doug, this seems like a good point to raise a query.

Tradition normally means, in current English, something along the times of something of uncertain origin handed down (lat. tradito) verbally to the present day. This is not what we are discussing, and I think that it is very unhelpful to use the term.

I note also that it is used endemically as a boo-word rather than a form of description, which makes it still more liable to pervert understanding. Don't we prefer our language straight? (Unless, of course, we know all the facts already and are merely engaged in telling fairy-stories for reasons of personal religious hatreds or biases; let those who want to do that carry on).

We are discussing, surely, statements which we learn, not from tradition, but from specific statements in specific books. Would it not be more useful to everyone to stop talking vaguely about tradition and to refer specifically to who said what where?

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Chris Weimer

It's not a matter of belief, it's a matter of probability. Is it more probable than not that the disciples died?

The person to have brought that up was David B, who, I think, is an atheist, and repeated by you, also an atheist. No one in this thread is claiming anything of the sort. Riverwind wanted to know sources. It somehow turned into "stupid arguments apologists make" strawman that you can easily knock down.

(If there's someone in this thread other than David B whom I missed, I apologise. I put a good number of the ignorant here on ignore.)

PS - Roger - Lt. trado (or transdo), ppp. traditus, hence traditio.

Solo

How does one establish the probability that the disciples died in a particular manner for a particular cause ? That is the question.

Unless you can give us some methodological grounds for that, the disciples dying for Jesus should be viewed as Doug says, as "a belief sustained by tradition".

If you have anything interesting on the cult of martyrdom spreading before Ignatius, now would be the time to show it. (I just happened to read Streeter's analysis of Ignatius. He interprets I's letter to Romans (iv.3) in which Ignatius describes himself a 'a convict' unlike Peter & Paul who were 'apostles', as arguing against the existence of the tradition of P&P's martyrdom at the time. I take seriously Streeter's subtle argument that it was none other than the "neurotic" Ignatius who "popularized" the idea of seeking death as vindication of one's beliefs in the early church.)

Jiri