If you can’t tell, over the course of 2009 to 2011, I gave up my christianity for atheism. However, for posterity and testimony to my time as a Christian, I will leave my old blog posts up. I have no shame in admitting I was unaware of certain truths back then, but this gives me an opportunity to dismantle my previous arguments for myself.. myself. One unpublished post from September 2009 (2 years ago) was entitled “Patrick’s Wager,” meant as a play on the classic case presented by Pascal. It was two sentances and reads as follows:
“Throw everything you know about God aside, and ask yourself this. If Jesus was a real historical human being, why would he and his closest disciples give up their lives for a lie?” – Patrick, circa 2009
One of the final strongholds of my faith was in the historicity of Jesus, and moreover the witness provided by the disciples. So lets go over why i no longer believe that this is the case, starting with the martyrdom of the apostles.
“Now the names of the twelve apostles are these; The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother; Philip, and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the publican; James the son of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus; Simon the Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed him.”
—Matthew 10:2-4 (see also Mark 3:14-19)
Judas:
First off, it is interesting to note that there are two accounts for Judas’ death, that directly contradict each other. I had a massive headache when trying to reconcile these two accounts, and you should for yourself: Matthew 27 records a suicide (and the 30 pieces of silver, while acts 1 records a body explosion. The most common consensus is that Matthew operated from old testament scripture and invented details to fulfill prophecy, rather than provide a historical narrative of what occurred (so much for historicity).
Jesus Close Disciples: James (both), Peter, John, Matthew
James (john’s brother) is recorded to have been killed by herod, but he is not given an opportunity to recant. Therefore even if this account is accurate, this does not at all prove jesus’ historicity at all; By just being killed, he may well have died for something he knew was a lie.
James (the other one) has several conflicting traditions. According to the catholic church this is the same James as jesus’ brother. If this is the case, then Josephus wrote of his death by stoning. Of course tradition holds that he was clubbed to death in Egypt.
Peter’s inverted crucifixion, as alluded to by jesus, is not corroborated by anyone until 150-200 years later in the apocryphal “acts of peter“. It is apocryphal because of its late date and numerous historical inaccuracies, and Eusebius puts it in with rejected (read:non-true) writings. It also contains a miracle-off, among other things.
John, Son of Zebedee’s death was reportedly natural, after being submersed in oil and miraculously surviving. He supossedly died in 100 AD, living for ~80 years. Of course the only evidence of this is speculation and church tradition that came about a century after-the-fact
Matthew: no one knows. According to Catholic.org, “Nothing definite is known about his later life”, and furthermore it is “uncertain whether he died a natural death or received the crown of martyrdom” and the Christian History Institute says, “We have nothing but legend about Matthew’s death.” For the record, Matthew did not write the book “the gospel of matthew.” Thats another post though.
Lesser Known Disciples:
Andrew was crucified according to legend, and the legend originated from the second-century Acts of Andrew (also apocryphal)
Philip: Hung upside down according to the 4th century Acts of Philip. The catholic encyclopedia regards this work as “purely legendary”
Bartholomew: Crucified in Armenia, Beheaded in India. Nothing is truly known about this disciple besides his name being in the list of one of the most important legendary 12 people in all history. Oops.
Thomas: Tradition states that he went to india to preach and was then killed by spearing. There is no corroboration for this story, and the apocryphal gospel of thomas is the only place we have this recorded.
Jude: conflicting traditions. Clubbing from the catholics, the apocryphal acts of thaddeus says he died of natural causes. There is also a legend that he died by crucifixion. Meanwhile these legends are corroborated by no other sources.
Simon, the Zealot: Conflicting traditions. Catholics believed he was martyred by crucifixion in persia, but the eastern orthodox tradition is that he died in naturally in Edessa. There are several other possible locations of death given by other sources as well.
Matthias: Nothing until the 14th century, when the tradition of crucifixion in (modern) Georgia arose.
Very few of the martyrdoms are recorded in a remotely historical way. There is simply no evidence besides legend that these chosen 12, again the most important humans of all time, were ever killed for their faith. Furthermore even if they were killed, there is no justification for them believing a lie; there were no deathbed requests for renouncing their faith or suffer punishment except in a handful of cases (that are supposed as legend).
In summary, there is no reason to believe the disciples died for their faith at all. Or (judging from the distinct lack of historical corroboration) that any traditions about their lives is true. When I learned the truth, this final stronghold of my faith based in reality came crashing down. The resurrection stands on very shady ground indeed, and I will examine that in my next post.
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