Have you ever heard the martyrdom argument for the resurrection of Jesus? It goes something like this. Jesus’ apostles faced persecution and martyrdom for their confession that God raised Jesus from the dead, sealing their witness with their blood. Why would they die for a lie? Their martyrdom unequivocally proves that they sincerely believed in Christ’s resurrection. Since they were in a position to know if it was true or not, we have every reason to trust their testimony.
However, if I asked you to prove to me that these apostles suffered martyrdom, how would you do it? How do you know they died as martyrs? The only apostle whose execution the bible records is James, the brother of John (Acts 12.2). Furthermore, critics like Candida Moss have argued that the martyrdom stories we have are historically unreliable and are full of exaggerations at best and completely made up at worst. This is where Sean McDowell’s research is so helpful for us. He’s taken the time to sift through countless pages of primary documents to collect and then evaluate the martyrdom accounts of the apostles. After rating the historical likelihood of each on a nine-point scale, he’s concluded that four of them definitely died for their faith: Peter, Paul, James the brother of Jesus, and James the brother of John. In addition, he argues that two more have a probability greater than 50%, including Thomas and Andrew.
—— Links ——
- Check out Sean McDowell’s book The Fate of the Apostles
- Follow McDowell on twitter: @Sean_McDowell
- Visit his personal website at seanmcdowell.org
- Listen to more Restitutio podcasts on apologetics
- Intro music: Jazzy Frenchy by bensound.com. Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License.
