How Did the Apostles Die?

[Logicman]

Yeah, everyone seems to think their beliefs are true. Nothing new there. But belief does not equal fact.

You've proven that with your own postings which are a full quart low on facts concerning Christianity.

 

[Exquisitor]

Who here would be willing to die for something they know is a lie? I sure wouldn't...

It is not so important how the apostles died. What is important is the fact that they were all willing to die for their faith. If Jesus had not been resurrected, the disciples would have known it. People will not die for something they know to be a lie. The fact that all of the apostles were willing to die horrible deaths, refusing to renounce their faith in Christ, is tremendous evidence that they had truly witnessed the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
https://www.gotquestions.org/apostles-die.html

The funny thing about Martyrs, is when they learn that they may have to return to Earth to face further trials, which the Material world always is.

The Martyrs Convergence (Rev 6:9-11) occurs in seven-thousand years. It is the fifth Convergence, we're presently in the White Horse 2020-2026, 2030.5. The Holy Name is the Avatar concluding his activities before the fifth Convergence. The first Teacher concluded his activities before the White Horse.

 

[Logicman]

Once again, you show the readers that your personal knowledge of the early church is sadly lacking.

Good thing you weren't following Paul around with that garbage or he might well have done to you what he did to Elymas the sorcerer in Acts 13:11.

(got to look it up now, don't you, LOL)

 

[Logicman]

They did NOT see him resurrected. Not a single one of them did. Nobody did.

That's not correct. From 1 Corinthians chapter 15:3-8 -

"For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born."

 

[Questerr]

That's not correct. From 1 Corinthians chapter 15:3-8 -

"For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born."

Why should anyone believe that claim is true?

 

[Somerville]

It was well-known that Christian were persecuted. That they had willingly endured persecution should say a lot!

Tacitus (Annals 15.44:2–5), and Suetonius (Nero 16.2), had reported about the first statewide persecution of Christians under Nero (AD 64).

Tacitus on the Christians - Livius

www.livius.org

More correctly it is well BELIEVED that Christians were persecuted as early as the reign of Claudius but ancient documents that have been discovered in the past 100 years have found that the expulsion from Rome by Claudius in 49 CE and the persecution by Nero in 64 CE were late created myths. The Christian-preferred Latin of this sentence in Suetonius is as follows:

Iudaeos impulsore Christo assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit

At least one recovered document shows that some scribe altered the letter "e" in order to make it an "I", which tells the reader that the original Latin of this passage must have been the following:​

Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit

This latter version with the word Chrēsto, not Christo, is what the earliest extant manuscripts provide. Josh McDowell and other fundamentalists assert that the letter 'correction' was just making the text correct, and despite the fact that the two words are evidently related through the roots χρίω and χράω, "Chrēsto," the ablative of Chrestus, is not an "another spelling of Christ." These terms represent Latinizations of two different Greek words that sound quite similar: Chrēstos, sometimes a proper name, means "good," "righteous" or "useful"; while Christos is defined as "anointed" or "messiah." Hence, although an earlier generation of scholars believed that this Suetonian passage reflected the uprisings of Jews against Christians in Rome, we are not certain at all that this purported "reference" in Suetonius has anything to do with Christ and Christians.

For some reason, none of the early patriarchs mention the Neronian persecution of Christians until the 4th century the story is found in fake letters between Seneca and Paul. Pliny the Younger, who is often cited as 'proving' the existence of Jesus, in his letter to the Emperor Trajan asks for advice on how to deal with the group of Christians in his province. His father, Pliny the Elder, had never written anything about Nero persecution of Christians despite writing an entire book on Nero's time on the throne. So why did the Younger ask for help in dealing with these weird people that he knew nothing about if the Neronian persecutions were such a big deal in the Empire?

The passage from Tacitus Annals, 15:44

Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.

It is the phrase, "even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful . . . find their centre. . ." that causes one to think, OH maybe a Roman Senator wouldn't have written those words when his intended readers were of similar social status. Some scholars, noting the failure of other Roman authors to refer to the persecution of Christians by Nero, think the entire passage [15:44] is a late interpolation by a Christian apologist.

 

[Somerville]

Good thing you weren't following Paul around with that garbage or he might well have done to you what he did to Elymas the sorcerer in Acts 13:11.

(got to look it up now, don't you, LOL)

Once again, attack me instead of responding to my actual words.

Do you have any idea as to how many different groups called themselves Christian during the first four centuries? Do you know that your - Protestant Bible - is not seen as canonical by other churches?

Funny that the blinding of Elymas is the same thing that happened to Paul/Saul.

8 Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus. 9 For three days he was blind, and did not eat or drink anything.

 

[MamboDervish]

It's not the same. Soldiers do it out of patriotism, or as an obligation (where-in there are immediate consequences if they don't follow orders).
Some do it for financial reasons or advancement in careers later on. Some see it as an adventure!

All the reasons you have given - patriotism, adventure, financial advancement - are all rationalizations apparently worth dying for, none of which implies that they needed to believe in the cause of the war. Ergo, they conform to the question posed in the OP, which was . . . .

"Who here would be willing to die for something they know is a lie? I sure wouldn't..."

So, clearly, many people have been, and are today, willing to die for something they know - or at least believe - is a lie.

The disciples were fearful before the Resurrection of Jesus - they abandoned Jesus and went into hiding.
The changes in them was dramatic (to say the least). The transformation was sudden!
In a matter of days, from cowering fearful disciples, to fearless gungho!

Your romantic interpretation not withstanding, even granting the existence of disciples/apostles of Jesus, the accounts handed down through time do not present them all as being of monolithic recollection or belief.

 

[MamboDervish]

That's not correct. From 1 Corinthians chapter 15:3-8 -

"For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born."

And yet even their own accounts and recollections are not the same. Sorry. No sale.

 

[PeacefulWarrior]

They flew too close to the sun on their way back to their home planet, and they burnt up?

 

[RAMOSS]

Honestly, would you freely die for something you didn't believe in?

Did they die that way, or is that just a story that believers made up to reinforce the belief among the followers? Can you prove any of those stories are actually true?

And, why would Heaven's gate follow their leader into death if they didn't know there was actually a UFO picking them up.

 

[Yakshi]

In my version of how it all went down, in The Bible: The Revenge, they all got machinegunned, did backflips into the Red Sea of all places, resurrected as vampires through the confused power of the Holy Spirit, and headed down to Denny's for a Grand Slam Breakfast, where all of the waitresses were on the menu.

 

[beefheart]

I heard that the Romulans got a few, and Darth Vader's forces got a few, Voldemort, of course got some, and Freddy Krueger got a few while they slept.

 

[it's just me]

No one knows how the apostles died. There is nothing recorded in the bible or any other writings of the time. It's all made up mythology used to promote the religion.

Huh?

 

[MamboDervish]

Wow, must be the real deal then!

Persecution of Buddhists - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Well played.

It never ceases to amaze me how much effort alleged christians put into desperately trying to distinguish their religion from the others. I can't help but suspect those efforts are really nothing more than attempts to convince themselves that they're right, and others are wrong. It shows a lack of faith on their part in their own professed beliefs.

 

[Questerr]

Well played.

It never ceases to amaze me how much effort alleged christians put into desperately trying to distinguish their religion from the others. I can't help but suspect those efforts are really nothing more than attempts to convince themselves that they're right, and others are wrong. It shows a lack of faith on their part in their own professed beliefs.

As I’ve pointed out twice in this thread, the Baha’i religion and the persecution of the followers of its founder, the supposed prophet Bab, is also extremely problematic for the logic of the OP.

Christians in this thread are trying to claim people won’t martyr themselves “for a lie”, which means if they are willing to die from persecution, their beliefs must be true.

The Baha’i throw a monkey wrench into that reasoning. It forces them to either admit people are willing to be martyred “for a lie” or they have to say Baha’i (a religion mutually exclusive to Christianity) must be true.

Or, an even worse outcome, they have to admit someone can sincerely believe something, believe it enough that they are willing to die for that belief, but that belief can still be false.

 

[it's just me]

As I’ve pointed out twice in this thread, the Baha’i religion and the persecution of the followers of its founder, the supposed prophet Bab, is also extremely problematic for the logic of the OP.

Christians in this thread are trying to claim people won’t martyr themselves “for a lie”, which means if they are willing to die from persecution, their beliefs must be true.

The Baha’i throw a monkey wrench into that reasoning. It forces them to either admit people are willing to be martyred “for a lie” or they have to say Baha’i (a religion mutually exclusive to Christianity) must be true.

Or, an even worse outcome, they have to admit someone can sincerely believe something, believe it enough that they are willing to die for that belief, but that belief can still be false.

Bahai has nothing to do with Christianity.

 

[HonestJoe]

Who here would be willing to die for something they know is a lie? I sure wouldn't...

From your own link (my emphasis);

The only apostle whose death the Bible records is James (Acts 12:2). King Herod had James “put to death with the sword,” likely a reference to beheading. The circumstances of the deaths of the other apostles are related through church tradition, so we should not put too much weight on any of the other accounts.

Of course, the link goes on to put lots of weight to those accounts anyway to manufacture the conclusion you repeated, which strikes me as more than a little dishonest. Isn't it at least possible that "church tradition" of all the apostles being martyred was developed (consciously or not) precisely to artificially support their legitimacy and to (self) fulfil prophecy?

 

[Daisy]

From your own link (my emphasis);

Of course, the link goes on to put lots of weight to those accounts anyway to manufacture the conclusion you repeated, which strikes me as more than a little dishonest. Isn't it at least possible that "church tradition" of all the apostles being martyred was developed (consciously or not) precisely to artificially support their legitimacy and to (self) fulfil prophecy?

Big deal...people also refuse to acknowledge the truth of the Bible......why would Christ be so hated? Bottom line..."Christ is hated because sin is loved" - Matthew Henry

 

[Somerville]

Big deal...people also refuse to acknowledge the truth of the Bible......why would Christ be so hated? Bottom line..."Christ is hated because sin is loved" - Matthew Henry

Why would one hate a mythological being?

 

[Questerr]

Bahai has nothing to do with Christianity.

It has everything to do with the standard being set by the OP and reinforced by Christians in this thread: that no one would be willing to “die for a lie” via torture and execution, and thus the people who were persecuted (the apostles) must have therefore died for truth beliefs.

Well, the “apostles” of the Bab were willing to die in the name of their beliefs in the face of torture and execution. So Christians either are forced to say they “died for a lie” (meaning it’s possible the Apostles did too and the entire premise of the thread is false) or they have to say the Baha’i religion must be true because the Bab’s followers died for “true beliefs”.

Or they are forced to admit that someone can hold beliefs they believe to be true, and he will to die for them, but those beliefs can in fact be false. And that is just as much a refutation of the entire premise of the thread.

 

[Gordy327]

You've proven that with your own postings which are a full quart low on facts concerning Christianity.

While christianity seems to be factually bankrupt. Or at least gullible.

Big deal...people also refuse to acknowledge the truth of the Bible......why would Christ be so hated? Bottom line..."Christ is hated because sin is loved" - Matthew Henry

"Truth" needs some facts behind it for it to be truth. Empty claims and stories are not automatically equivalent to truth.

 

[it's just me]

It has everything to do with the standard being set by the OP and reinforced by Christians in this thread: that no one would be willing to “die for a lie” via torture and execution, and thus the people who were persecuted (the apostles) must have therefore died for truth beliefs.

Well, the “apostles” of the Bab were willing to die in the name of their beliefs in the face of torture and execution. So Christians either are forced to say they “died for a lie” (meaning it’s possible the Apostles did too and the entire premise of the thread is false) or they have to say the Baha’i religion must be true because the Bab’s followers died for “true beliefs”.

Or they are forced to admit that someone can hold beliefs they believe to be true, and he will to die for them, but those beliefs can in fact be false. And that is just as much a refutation of the entire premise of the thread.

You dont know what you're talking about, read about the Church Fathers.

 

[Questerr]

You dont know what you're talking about, read about the Church Fathers.

I know exactly what the OP was talking about. They’re claiming the Apostles must have had true beliefs because no one would be tortured and executed “for a lie”.

If Christians are going to hold that standard, then they must also say the followers of the Bab who were tortured and executed had true beliefs.

 

[Logicman]

While christianity seems to be factually bankrupt. Or at least gullible.

The same kind of mentality put Biden in office, LOL.