Martyrdom of the apostles, revisited

Number of posts : 77 Registration date : 2007-05-31

I haven't posted any of my crazy stuff here in a while; here's one that won't strain the brain too awfly bad...

MARTYRDOM OF THE APOSTLES, REVISITED -by sirhemlock

In his book More Than a Carpenter, Josh McDowell claimed all the apostles but one were martyred. For McDowell, this demonstrates their utter sincerity in that "no one would die for a lie knowing it was a lie."

Unfortunately, (A) the manner of death of many of the apostles, as listed by McDowell, rest in most cases on traditions which are uncertain and/or of dubious historicity, and (B) it is not self-evident that recanting could have saved them even if they wished to do so (it is not self-evident, for example, that James could have saved his life by recanting his Christianity before Herod Agrippa I (cf. Acts 12:2).

However a modified claim is still possible if a very real and present risk of death existed during the period during which Christianity emerged; that this was indeed the case is very well attested. The evidence is overwhelming that Paul was beaten repeatedly almost to the point of death in many different times and regions for proclaiming Christianity; Paul himself reports the severe persecution of Christians at his own hand prior to his conversion (this is attested in firsthand autobiographical letters and secondhand source material in Acts; the disciple’s terror of governing authorities is multiply attested in the Synoptic Gospels and John. This permits the modified question: Would the apostles have RISKED DYING to proclaim what that they knew was a lie?

And what did they proclaim? Not that they “believed” Jesus was risen, but that they had seen him risen. For this proclamation they were indeed willing to risk death (that the early proclamation was that they had seen Jesus risen is established on firm historical critical grounds according to the earliest source materials which establish the parameters of the primitive Christian kerygma within a period of less than a decade after Jesus crucifixion). That the disciples in fact risked death in making and sustaining this proclamation during the protracted period of the emergence of nascent Christianity is not conjecture, it is fact; without such a proclamation no church would have early emerged which believed it.

Jesus' own brother James, who did not believe in Jesus when he was alive (Jn 7:1-10; cf. also Mk. 6:4; Mt. 13:57, etc.), believed after the crucifixion (due to having seen Him risen according to 1 Cor 15:7, universally recognized as a pre-Pauline tradition received earlier by Paul, datable via Paul's firsthand testimony in Galatians to within a few years of the crucifixion, i.e. VERY EARLY); it is historically well established that Jesus' brother James became leader of the Jerusalem church (Acts 21:18; cf. Gal 1:9; 2:11-21; Acts 15:13); his martyrdom over 30 years later as well as his leadership of the Christians in Jerusalem is well attested historically (cf. Josephus, Ant. xx, 197-203; Josephus was 25 years old and living in Jerusalem at the time, i.e. it was for him a local news story). I am not aware of any adequate explanation for James' conversion if the testimony recorded in 1 Cor 15:7 is rejected. Nor is there any adequate explanation for the testimony in the Gospels that this highly respected leader did not believe on Jesus before the crucifixion if it was not actually the case.

The NT witnesses to multiple appearances of Jesus during a period of over forty days to many witnesses who soon would sustain their faith under severe pressure and persecution; the "population explosion" of new followers of Jesus proceeded faster --by far-- than it did before the crucifixion. It is historically unprecedented that a large number of people in any culture began zealously following an individual immediately upon the occasion of their death.

Among scholars who shy away from the NT message, sufficient explanations of this phenomenon are lacking. Our documentary sources concerning the resurrection and the appearances of Jesus after his death in the New Testament are variegated and reflect different times, persons, and perspectival provisionalities; collusion is out of the question. Even Jungian archetypical ingression cannot explain mass hallucination. As Princeton scholar Bruce Metzger points out, whatever we make of the resurrection, the fact that a significant number of people believed with utter sincerity that they had seen and spoken with the risen Jesus after his death is historically undeniable (cf. Metzger, The New Testament: It's Background, Growth, and Content, 2003). They persisted in this affirmation in the face of great personal danger from the very beginning. The message of the earliest witnesses was not merely that they "believed something" (ala Kierkegaard) but that they had seen Him alive after His death (Acts 4:1-22). Even the martyrdoms of central figures such as James and Stephen, and repeated instances of barely escaping of death by Paul, could not dissuade such stubborn and prevalent adherence to this testimony that the entire world had began to be turned upside down by the early Christians in a single generation. Even their deaths would not silence them.

The inconceivable predictions would ultimately prove true: "And this gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world for a witness to all the nations" Matthew 24:14; All the ends of the earth will remember and turn to the LORD (remember what? cf Psalm 22:16!), And all the families of the nations will worship before Thee (Psalm 22:27; notice when this inconceivable event was to occur); “Thus He will sprinkle many nations, Kings will shut their mouths on account of Him; For what had not been told them they will see, And what they had not heard they will understand.” (Isaiah 52:15). That non Jewish nations first turned en masse to worship the God of the tiny nation of Israel, even on the eve of the virtual destruction of Judaism in 70AD, is a matter of record.

"The light of the world shines with his brightest intensity during darkness. It was dark when He was born; it was dark when He was suspended between heaven and earth; it was dark at His resurrection - but then, the inextinguishable light!" (James D. Strauss)

Guest

Belief is a strange thing, my friend. Something does NOT have to exist to be real. If you believe it is real, then it is. Regardless of the facts, reality exists on an individual basis. The quicker we can come to that understanding, the better this world will be.

Cheers,

Ian

Number of posts : 77 Registration date : 2007-05-31

If all reality is radically individualized and subjective, there is no possible justification for the supposition that the account of reality as radically individualized and subjective is true.

Conversely, if there are objective reasons to believe that all reality is radically individualized and subjective then the idea that all reality is individualized and subjective is false.

The most interesting of your comments is the idea that the world would be "better." I suppose on your view any reality is "better" if you believe it to be. Perhaps even the Nazi concentration camps could be enjoyable to a prisoner if he/she were a sadist, though in practice the individual capable of enjoying such an environment is probably rare.

"Better" on your view, would have no objective meaning; indeed shared meaning of any kind would also become problematic. If hermeneutical reality, for example, is radically subjectivized, cross cultural communication would be impossible; paradigms would be incommensurable. Yet interpersonal communication is not impossible (e.g. our posts constitute interpersonal communication and presuppose shared meaning beyond our respective individual subjectivities; cf. scholarly treatises on radical hermeneutical subjectivity are given "favorable reviews" and even create movements which look suspiciously like communities of practitioners affirming the same thing). The growth of scientific knowledge also seems to buttress the objective reality of shared meaning beyond radically individualized subjectivity. Hiroshima seems to suggest E=MC2 is not as subjective as your epistemological assumptions suggest beliefs are. Hiroshima in my view is an example of a connection of belief (E=MC2) with reality; it was not just perceived reality, though it was and is also perceived reality.

Still, a given individual might take their every belief for reality. In psychology this is understood as madness. Our postmodern, post-Christian world does seem to be more than slightly tainted with madness, so perhaps your view has some merit as a sociological description. As an epistemological description, however, it is quite problematic.

"Better" the world would be? Perhaps, or perhaps not; in the final analysis that would only be your own radically individualized subjective opinion, unless of course your view of reality as radically individualized and subjective is false. And at best on your view you could only believe it to be "better" without ever being able to know it is actually so, except at best as an incorrigible datum.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solipsism
http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/solipsis.htm

Any informed person today has to admit, of course, that naive realism is dead (cf. especially the collapse of foundationalism in mathematics and logic, Godel's theorem, multipicity of axioms and schools of mathematics, Russell's set theory paradoxes, etc). But I resist the idea that reality is radically subjective as a critical realist; I wouldn't side, for example, with those who say science is a mere "tissue of lies" (e.g. Paul Feyerabend; when I have a toothache, I would not want medieval dentistry, for example; some things are objectively preferable IMO), nor would I even go as far as Thomas Kuhn or the Frankfurt Sociology of Knowledge theorists and their like, though I have a great deal of respect for many of the arguments of Michel Foucault and Thomas Szasz. The outmoded Enlightenment idea of scientific "neutrality" is just too much for any informed person to believe today IMO and is better termed scientism than science, however solipsism has nothing whatsoever to commend itself. One simply believes it or not. As for myself, I do not.

Number of posts : 159 Registration date : 2007-07-12

I'm sorry Ian, I have to take issue with this comment.

Reality is absolute. We have limit senses and facalties with which to reason, but the more we learn, the more we believe, because that which we have yet to understand is slowly being uncovered.

There is something to the power of faith. There is a reality that runs deeper than what we see on the surface, and our inability to fully recognize what is true doesn't make it untrue, only unproven.

The problems the Church commonly runs into in regards to our understanding of the truth is that we, as creative and imaginative creatures, will sometime venture beyond what is plainly stated and enter into the world of speculation.

Our pet doctrines come to represent so much to us that when a better understanding of the truth is presented we don't know what to do with that. Entire structures within our belief systems might be supported by erroneous assumptions.

The older I get, the less dogmatic I become over doctrines build on "implied" ideas.
There is a place where Wesley and Calvin meet, where neither are "wrong", but merely expressing either end of an apparent paradox.

As for the "basics" of the orthodox faith, they remain clear and constant through out eternity. They are neither subjective nor mutable.
Without the saving grace of Jesus Christ and genuine faith in his sacrificial death upon the cross there can be no salvation from the consquences of our sins.

We start from this place, Jesus Christ (Y'shua) the only begotten Son of God, born of a virgin, lived a sinless life, and surrendered that life to sinful men that in his sacrifice his blood might pay the penalty for all who would place their faith in him, in fulfillment of the scriptures.
Acceptance of this fact means surrendering your dead life and recieving Jesus Christ into your heart in exchange.

Now we move on to other orthodox matters that may or may not be necessary for salvation (though people love to argue these points). But clearly, who Jesus is and what he has done IS the Christian faith. And that faith is what makes up that "deeper" reality that is absolute and unchanging.

Number of posts : 77 Registration date : 2007-05-31

For more on this topic, check out the video lecture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVHMHf7ue18
The lecturer in the above video is William Lane Craig; Craig spent two years under a research grant from the Alexander von Humbolt foundation specifically on the resurrection, which was also the topic of his second doctoral dissertation under Wolfhardt Pannenberg of the University of Munich (his first doctorate was under John Hick at the University of Birmingham). Pannenberg is considered one of the world's leading authorities on that topic. It would be a mistake to lightly dismiss Craig on this subject especially!

Another very good video lecture by Dr. Craig on the resurrection can be viewed here; it's very much worth the time if you have some to kill.

Subject: Re: Martyrdom of the apostles, revisited Mon Oct 01, 2007 2:02 am

Just gotta be careful what you read out there..
I wanted to study on early church history and found different things on different websites. Finally found a book at the library on it and half way through I decided to read "about the author" and check out the website for him. Turns out he was some loon who formed his own cult and living communities.... weird... kinda like the movie "The Village" LOL!

Anyhoo... back to topic....
They say John of Revelation was boiled in oil and survived...
He's the only one who didn't die a martyr's death.