Zeichman

I am addressing this:
The first statement, that the apostles existed, is totally uncontested by scholars (save Achyra S, who lacks any amount of credibility and am being more than generous by including her among "scholarship"). The issue is the early apostles, those who knew Jesus, not necessarily limiting it to the twelve. James is definitely included among these, given that he was a "brother of the Lord." Josephus' passage on James is nearly uncontested in scholarship. He, with little doubt, is a historical person. Likewise, Peter and John are attested by Paul within their lifetime, so again, there is virtually no doubt of their historicity.

To address the second point, that the apostles did not die violently, again, Josephus attests that James was stoned to death, though no mention of the budding Christ-cult is mentioned. It is plausable that James did, in some way, die for the cult, despite the lack of mention in Josephus. However, that James had a post-mortem appearance of Jesus to him, however it was. Most critical scholars would say that it may have been something akin to Paul's appearance.

I will make no claim as to what happened to the others who believed themselves to have had a post-mortem appearance, given that the evidence either comes from the late and highly-biased Acts of the Apostles, or is non-existent.

Diogenes the Cynic

This is not entirely true and it's a bacwards way to look at it anyway. The existence of the apostles is certainly questioned by any number of scholars and the existence of the apostles is not something that has to be "contested" in any case. It is incumbent upon those who wish to assert their existence to prove it, not upon anyone else to disprove it and there isn't a scrap of real evidence that the traditional "Twelve Apostles" existed in that number or in that configuration of names or in any number or configuration. As it stands, the historical existence of the 12 apostles is a completely unproven premise and no skeptic needs to take a step until that changes.
The James passage in Josephus is not completely uncontested and would not offer proof as to the existence of he "12" in any case. It is not clear from Paul's letters exactly who he thought the "pillars" were and it is not a given that they were literal followers of a historical Jesus. Paul depicts them as cult leaders in Jerusalem but that's all we really know. For all we know, Paul was making them up or they were part of his hallucinations.
Again, Josephus is not undisputed. The passage does not say that James was stoned for his beliefs, nor does it say that James died willingly, that he was given any opportunity to recant or that he didn't recant.
Josephus doesn't say that. Are you referring to Paul?
Like a hallucination? Maybe. Paul does not draw any distinction between hi own experience or the experiences of Cephas and the Twelve. That would suggest that he did not perceive even Cephas' or James' experiences as physical events.

Zeichman

I never mentioned the number twelve. Perhaps if you had read more carefully what I said, James, Peter and John all knew Jesus during his life and their existence is uncontested.

Can you name six... hell, name three credible scholars who contest the existence of James? The Josephus passage, iirc is only contested by the most liberal of mythicists.
Did I not point this out in my post?
yes.
That's precisely what I implied.

EarlDoherty

From my Reader Feedback No. 12:

Klif writes:

I have an interesting point. Did you know that 11 of the 12 died painful and murderous deaths? Did 11 men allow themselves to be painfully killed for a myth?

Response to Klif: How did the apostles die?

This might be “interesting� if it could be supported by the evidence. What evidence do we have (other than later church tradition) that eleven out of the so-called twelve did indeed die martyr’s deaths, painful or otherwise?

Paul, presumably writing around the 50s of the 1st century, has nothing to say about such deaths in his letters. Let me expand on this by quoting a passage from my book Challenging the Verdict [Chapter 14, p.218]:

Hardship? Beating, ridicule, imprisonment? Yes, Paul outlines all those things. In 1 Corinthians 4:11, he says: “To this day we go hungry and thirsty in rags, we are roughly treated, we are homeless…When we are cursed, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when we are slandered, we answer kindly.� But where are the deaths of the apostles? Paul is writing at least two and a half decades into the faith movement, and he nowhere refers to the execution of a single apostle. In 2 Corinthians 11:23, he says, “Are they servants of Christ? So am I…More overworked than they, scourged more severely, often imprisoned, many a time face to face with death.� But there is no mention of actual death, particularly at the hands of the authorities, as a common or even an occasional occurrence in the missionary movement.

Where can one find mention in the epistles of the execution of James, son of Zebedee, as outlined in Acts 12? Nowhere. Where, for that matter, is there any mention by Paul in his letters about the imprisonment of Peter, described in that same chapter of Acts? And what of the most dramatic death of all attributed to the early period, the trial and stoning of Stephen, as described in chapter 7 of Acts? No reference to it can be found in the entire early record of Christianity, not even in Paul at whose feet Acts says this stoning took place. When Paul speaks of the fate suffered by apostles of the Christ, could he possibly leave out such a vivid and personally-experienced example? Stephen himself is not to be found anywhere in the early record, and it is very possible that he is simply a fictional character.

As for the martyrdoms which later tradition attributed to key figures like Peter and Paul, I have already pointed out that there is very little evidence to indicate that even those deaths took place as tradition says. The writer of 1 Clement, at the end of the first century, speaks vaguely of Peter and Paul’s life and death in the service of the faith, but he fails to bring either of them to Rome, or to mention an execution for them in that city.

It’s telling to note that Josephus has nothing to say about this vast martyrdom of followers of Jesus. He can tell us (Antiquities 5,2) such minutiae as the sons of Judas the Galilean, James and Simon by name, being crucified during the governorship of Tiberius Alexander in the 40s, but he has not a word to say about the sanguinary fate of so many apostles of Jesus of Nazareth. In fact, the dramatic and supposedly widespread activities of the early Christian apostles and faith movement as recounted in Acts go completely unmentioned by Josephus. It is much more likely that the 2nd century author of Acts modeled much of his ‘historical’ features on prototypes found in the Josephan histories.

(Since the "James" of Antiquities 20 was not even allegedly one of the twelve, and since we cannot even be sure of the reliability of this passage, or of its identification of the "James" Josephus as speaking of the Christian James the Just, I will not address it.)

In any case, if some apostles were killed in the process of preaching their faith (a common occurrence in many religions), this tells us nothing about what the nature of that faith was.

Diogenes the Cynic

Thanks for an excellent response, Earl. I wish you posted here more often.

mata leao

you think maybe the fact that Jesus sent his apostles out to the fringes of the Roman empire and beyond to the foreign and barbarian tribes to preach the gospel in the "great commission" might possibly have somehting to do with the fact that records of their distant travels and deaths are hard to come by? if they had stayed behind in Jerusalem drinking wine and shagging the ladies and holding forth in the synagogues we might have much better records of them!

Diogenes the Cynic

Neither one of those statements is completely uncontested. It is not a foregone conclusion that Peter et al, even if they existed, were followers of a historical Jesus.
I haven't said that many scholars contest the existence of James, I was saying that some of them doubt the authenticity of the passage in Josephus. I think it's reasonable to assume that Paul was talking about a real person, though, so some sort of "James" existed. What is not certain is whether the Paul referred to by James was actually a literal sibling of a historical Jesus. Accepting the existence of early leaders in the proto-Christian movement called Cephas and James does not automatically mean that those leaders were "apostles" in the sense that word is used by Christians.

Diogenes the Cynic

There is no convincing evidence that a historical Jesus sent historical apostles anywhere. When you accept historical claims made in the Gospels as being factually accurate, you are already presuming your own conclusions.

mata leao

presuming nothing really...the proof of the pudding is in the eating of it.....the gospels say they went out..and the gospel DID go out and it GOT out..and it spread by evangelists to the far corners of the roman empire and beyond....possession is nine tenths of the argument my friend....we won, you lost, diogenes! burden shifts to you brother!

Diogenes the Cynic

What do you mean by the "gospels?" A faith tradition? Whoop-de-doo. What is your evidence that the tradition was spread by historical apostles of a histtorical Jesus?