(February 1, 2017 at 6:44 am)Firefighter01 Wrote: What makes you think any of them had to brave martyrdom or even existed at all? All you have is sketchy evidence in the Bible.
That is a good point to bring up which I think is a great objection to the argument that says: the Resurrection is true otherwise the apostles wouldn't have died for it.
Even more interesting however is that the Bible doesn't record the martyrdom of any apostle besides James the Greater. Now my reply to martyrdom argument is that first off, we don't really know that all of the apostles (except John) were martyred. All our evidence comes from Christian sources (Notably Eusebius' "Church History") which have a vested interest in portraying the apostles in a positive light. So right from the get go, we know that anything we are told about their deaths will reflect positively on Christianity. And what better way to have the death of an apostle reflect positively on Christianity than by creating martyrdom narratives that imitate the martyrdom of Christ?
