Elijah

Socrates didn't go about to cause his own death. His ego got him into trouble with the people. It is a completely different story. The only semblance is that Socrates didn’t try to escape his situation but the situation he was in was not of his willful doing. He was no more a martyr then Saddam Hussein was.

Soldiers in a battle aren’t Martyrs no matter what the odds are. Like I said it just depends on how loosely you want to use the word, but if you want to understand why his followers imitated him by self sacrifice then you need to realize that Jesus was the first of his kind.

What makes him unique is that he is giving his life up willfully as part of a plan to change the world. Now if you don’t want to use the scripture to validate this idea I don’t really have any thing else to offer, I wasn’t there.

driver8

That's what Mark says at least.

If his supposed death was both predicted and willing, why are his last words:

That's a real puzzler. The godman sounds totally clueless about his whole mission on earth, you know salvation of humanity and all. Forsaken? Its all part of the divine plan, surely the godman has better short-term memory than this. The story tellers had a real brain cramp with this one. I think they got stuck with cross-purposes here as they developed the story lines and forgot to come back and edit this blooper out. Famous last words?

Elijah

Death before dishonor is different and much older then Christ. Plenty of people have died for stupid beliefs from eating pork to capitalism but it doesn't make them martyrs.

Diogenes the Cynic

Neither did Jesus.
The same could be argued of Jesus.
not really.
The same could be said of Jesus.
Why not? If a soldier dives on a grenade, is he a martyr? That's essentially what the Spartans did at Thermopylae.
I haven't really broadened the definition at all. You seem to want to narrow it somehow to fit one person, but you haven't really defined how Jesus' death was unique.
There is no evidence that his direct followers did any such thing. have you read this whole thread?
How did his death change the world?
You're the one who wants to assert that Jesus' death was somehow historically unique. That's a historical claim, not a theological one. It means you need to use historical evidence, not the presumed authority of scripture. When it comes to historical evidence, we have no reason to believe that Jesus was crucified voluntarily, that he thought it would change the world in any way (Christian ideas of sacrificial atonement had no precedent in Jewish Messianic expectations), or that his followers were voluntarily martyred for their beliefs (nor do we know what their beliefs actually were).

Mythra

I've seen this apostle martyrdom argument so many times, yet no one offers any reasonable evidence that this is indeed how the apostles met their end. It seems to be a given.

Does anyone here know what is the source(s) the apologists use to make this claim?

Everyone knows the story of Peter being crucified upside-down. And, as I recall, there is a story for the method of each apostle's death.

So, where does this tradition originate? It seems that this martyrdom claim falls flat on its face if it's based on legends that began in the fourth century.

Elijah

He is not acting of his own free will, he is a soldier. The word you’re looking for here is hero. A soldier is trained and a man is raised to give his life up to save his loved ones.

Your way of looking at martyr is pretty much everyone who dies of violence where beliefs come into play.

I have tried to say it was his control and willingness in the giving of his own life up. Eventually I’ll figure out a way to say this so that someone gets it.


Stephen, but that is if I’m allowed to use scripture.


He is the most famous person in the history of this planet. Believe or disbelieve him, but not being able to see his influence is crazy.

Believe what you want, but until I see another preexisting example of what Christ was trying to pull off I’m going to call him the first and unique. I won’t be able to prove his uniqueness but you might be able to prove him a knock off. Best anyone has done so far is Socrates.

I’m not going to pull historical evidence out of any drawers regarding the validity of the early Christian martyrs, like I said I wasn’t there.

Malachi151

Your way of looking at it is nothing except Jesus.

We are talking about a fictional story here first of all. Of course no one died "in order to take away all the sins of the world" before, because this is of course nonsense, and if you really believe in this stuff then of course you would admit that no one else even could have done this if they wanted to.

Plenty of people died for a cause throughout history in places from the Americas to China. People all over the world died for causes, singularly and in large groups.

You are taking a staged dramatized story which was written for dramatic effect and trying to hold up reality against it.

And by the way, the seven brothers in the 2 Maccabees story proclaimed that their death was to atone for the sins of Israel so that God would bring favor on the nation again, so this was hardly a story about simply "death before dishonor", it was a story about atonement for the "sins" of others, but in this case it applied only to Israel... hmm.. funny how that story evolved eh?

Diogenes the Cynic

The Spartans at Thermopylae were acting of their own free will. They were all volunteers and they all knew they would die. The whole point of that battle was not to try to win but to cause a delay.
I'm defining it as anyone who dies for a cause.
But you haven't shown either that he was willing or that he would have been the first who was willing.
Even if we accept Stephen for the sake of argument, he was not an apostle or an eyewitness of Jesus, so his death is of no use to Strobel's argument.
That's not really an answer to my question.
You still haven't proven that Jesus chose his own death.
Socrates is pretty on the nose, actually.
Well, if you can't prove the apostles were martyred, then you can't use them to draw any conclusions about Jesus and Strobel is refuted.

Johann_Kaspar

2) The 2 terrorists crucified with him.

3) No.

You should open an historic book about Eretz Israel in the 39th century.

Johann_Kaspar

I would call it a fanatic.