Apostles?

[Collecemall]

With Easter having been this past weekend I've seen quite a few posts on social media along the lines of "According to church tradition Apostle XYZ was killed by (insert gruesome death here)" with them going down the list of apostles and their martyrdom.

My question is do any of you know of what we can know historically about them? Or is church tradition all there is? And is that in any way reliable? (I realize not likely)

Any reliable discussion of this in book form or on the web would be appreciated. Discussion is nice as well if anyone has time and interest.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about. Some of them included the location of the remains although this one I don't think does.

 

[Steelmage99]

What I wonder is why people would post such statements? To what purpose?

I mean, according to Lord of the Rings tradition Gollum died by falling into the lava of Mount Doom and according to One Flew Over The Cucko's Nest tradition Randal was suffocated by his friend.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Perhaps Laurens or SpecialFrog will come and give a better answer, but from my lay understanding, there is nothing to just about all these stories but tradition that started centuries after the fact. Basically, the stories were created because of the inherit martyr complex built into Christianity. They were created to show that Christians were persecuted from the start.

What I wonder is why people would post such statements? To what purpose?

I mean, according to Lord of the Rings tradition Gollum died by falling into the lava of Mount Doom and according to One Flew Over The Cucko's Nest tradition Randal was suffocated by his friend.

Whether they know it or not, this is done to reinforce the idea that no one would die for a lie. "The Apostles had to have truly believed in Jesus in order to go to their grave without recanting the story." They are basically trying to give more weight to their evidence by showing that the eyewitnesses never recanted.

 

[Laurens]

I'm on my phone and at work right now so I can't give a detailed answer with references, but here is my brief reply which I can clarify further when I get home.

Paul mentions Cephas (or Peter) as an apostle. Apostle however is defined as someone who had a vision of Christ after his death, thus also making Paul an apostle.

I'm not certain that Paul mentions any other apostles by name. He mentions that there are more than just himself and Peter though. He also refers to James brother of the Lord which I would contend is a title used for any Christian (that isn't an apostle) rather than a reference to Jesus's brother, although it might be.

To my mind the apostles were the founders of Christianity with Peter being perhaps the most revered and Paul being an outlier who thought that Gentiles could also be Christian. I think the gospels fictionalise them as being followers of Jesus and the inheritors of his ministry rather than the originators of it. I may be wrong in that conclusion, however I do think it is reasonable to state that the apostles were real individuals, however I would not accept the gospel accounts of them, or apocryphal tales about their deaths.

 

[Collecemall]

I posed the question to Carrier on his blog. He didn't go into detail but opined that it's "It’s all bollocks". He says he might blog on Paul, Peter, and James as there is at least some case to be made for those. It's really nice to have access to the authors and minds behind many of the books that have educated me.

 

[Collecemall]

I haven't read it yet but Carrier did blog on this subject if not exactly what I was after it still touches base with some of it.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/carrier/archives/9978

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

I haven't read it yet but Carrier did blog on this subject if not exactly what I was after it still touches base with some of it.

I actually thought he did well in answering your question.

One example:

Richard Carrier[/url]"]The only account we have of the martyrdom of any of these men prior to 4th century and later legends is solely for Peter, and solely in the Acts of Peter, which as I already mentioned is the most ridiculous tale ever told, with wizards flying through the sky over Rome before crowds of thousands, talking dogs in the public street, and the resurrections of smoked fish. And even that one ridiculous account for Peter has him officially killed for not praying to Roman gods (in other words, for not renouncing his Judaism), not even for failing to recant that he saw a vision of Jesus (much less touched his body). And that was just as a pretext for what the story relates was actually a political vendetta unrelated to his theology. This also of course comes a hundred years late and cites no sources. Not even its author is known. It’s an obvious fiction.

So we can’t use that. Unless we are the most gullible of rubes.