Prof

Title says it all, really.

Roughly: A typical argument from Christians in trying to establish warrant for believing in the resurrection goes roughly like this:

The apostles were there, would have known whether Jesus was resurrected or not, and clearly believed he was resurrected. They were persecuted for their belief Jesus was the resurrected God, and were willing to die for their belief. And it is reasonable to believe their account because (drags out the hoary quote):

"No one would willingly die for something they knew to be a lie."

Over and over we hear from Christian apologists (e.g. W. L. Craig).

So, leaving aside some other fundamental problems with the argument, I'd like to know this since I'm no bible scholar:

What actual evidence is there that these people died for their beliefs?
I'm talking specifically of course about those who claimed to have witnessed Jesus resurrected (since that is what the argument pertains to).

I'm mildly curious about what it says in the bible about this. But of course that would hardly count as convincing evidence - believing the account of a particular religious scripture, which is already making all sorts of wild claims about Jesus walking on water, a man coming back from the dead, turning water into wine, casting out demons, and other various supernatural miracles.

So what extra biblical evidence do we have that people who claimed to have seen the resurrected Jesus actually died for that belief?

Many thanks,

Prof

James Brown

Well, there are martyrs and there are martyrs...

Your first problem will be identifying exactly who were the eyewitnesses. Apologists like to trot out the purges of Nero, etc., but the problem is that those martyrs weren't eyewitnesses of the resurrection. Only a handful of people are named in the Gospels as actually witnessing a resurrected Jesus. Of those, the only name that I know that's mentioned outside of the Bible is Peter, and that comes from the Gospel of Peter, a gnostic work that few Christians have ever supported. Christians don't rely on the GofP for other things, like the idea that Jesus' resurrection was spiritual, not physical, but they'll happily proclaim that Peter was crucified upside down for his steadfast faith. That's cheating, in my opinion...

Your next problem is sifting through the reasons for martyrdom. Suppose a hypothetical man claimed to be an eyewitness of the resurrection, and twenty years later he is put to death. An apologist will hold his name up high as proof that he wouldn't die for a lie. But then, say, we found out the man was put to death for committing mass murder. Would his testimony still be valid then? A portion of the eyewitnesses who were martyred were put to death for other reasons than preaching a risen Jesus. They may have been executed for political meddling, rabble rousing, preaching without a license, etc.

My bet is that there is zero non-Biblical evidences of the handful of "known" eyewitnesses actually martyred for their resurrection claims. But then again, I could be wrong...

Malachi151

Well, since all of the apostles were probably fictional character, aside from Paul, the "13th apostle", I'd say that none of them died for their beliefs.

Paul perhaps died for his beliefs, but he plainly said that he never saw Jesus, and he wasn't a witness to anything, so there we have that.

andrewcriddle

Biblical Evidence

Acts 12 refers to the death of James son of Zebedee
2 Timothy (whether by Paul or not) has Paul about to be killed.
John 21 probably refers to the execution of Peter.

ExtraBiblical Evidence

1 Clement (and other early Christian sources) refer to the martyrdom of Peter and Paul.
Josephus and the 2nd century Christian writer Hegesippus refer to the killing of James the brother of Jesus.

On the other hand the only one of the 12 apostles for whom there is a tradition of a natural death is John son of Zebedee.

Opinions will vary as to how convincing this evidence is but IMO the absence of much non-Christian confirmation is hardly surprising most of these deaths would have been of limited general interest.

Andrew Criddle

Toto

Martyrs - by Stephen Carr from "the UK's leading atheist page" does a good job of dissecting the evidence.

Godless Dave

Not to mention, even if the apostles were executed for being Christians (if there was such a label at that time), renouncing belief in the ressurection wouldn't necessarily have saved them. Due process wasn't exactly a hallmark of the Roman justice system.

Toto

The records that we have do not indicate that belief in the resurrection was ever an issue. The question was whether the person in question was willing to sacrifice to the Emperor. A Christian who stuck to his monotheistic beliefs and refused to make that sacrifice (it could be a small amount of wine or incense, or a small bird) was subject to the death penalty for treason, presumably.

Dargo

If any alleged eyewitnesses to Jesus's resurrection had been executed by Jewish leaders, renouncing their claims probably wouldn't have saved them either. Claiming Jesus was god would be blasphemy, and the Torah allows no repentance from that crime.

Even if you could prove eyewitnesses to Jesus died as martyrs so what? Joseph Smith never recanted even when faced with death by an angry mob. Most of the Waco Branch Davidians died, yet some of the survivors still believe Koresh to be god.

aa5874

I hope you see the difference in the questions. People, in general, have great difficulty dying for something they know to be a lie, however throughtout the world, believers and non-believers have willingly died for what they believe is true, whether the cause be spiritual or secular. Soldiers fight and die for their countries because they believe its the right thing to do.

Now, with regards to the apostles, it has not been verified that they actually lived. The writings of the Gospels have not been confirmed to be independent of each other. There are many theories, however, if Mark was written first and is not credible and Matthew, Luke and John copied from Mark, then the entire Gospels may not be credible.

Gamera

Curiously, except for Stephen, none of the apostles die in the Christian scriptures, either for their faith or otherwise. Paul's death is conspicuously missing from Acts. Nor is a death narrative tacked on to the canon.

My view is that's appropriate to the tenor of the apostolic writings, especially Paul's. After having "run his race" his death is irrelevant and not really part of the story of the gospel. Only in hagiography do the deaths of saints become thematized, and that generally comes from a wholly separate heroic tradition (complete with death quips).

I'd say that the lack of saintly death narratives in the Christian Scriptures is another unique thing about them.