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Were the apostles martyred?
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blueswan374

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June 27, 2017 - 6:52 am

I am sure this must have been covered somewhere on the site, but I can’t seem to find any details.

It’s the standard Christian rebuttal – the apostles wouldn’t die for something they knew was a lie. 

My question is; – how do we know they were martyred? 

Any pointers in the right direction appreciated.

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Rthompsonmdog

26 Posts
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June 29, 2017 - 10:11 am

The stories of the Apostles’ martyrdom come from church traditions and apocryphal texts. 

Here is a blog post from December 2015. The post raises the question that we don’t know how or why the Apostles died.

** you do not have permission to see this link **

I have no doubt that there were Christians who were martyred. More important for me then is that being willing to die for a belief doesn’t say anything about whether that belief is true. The terrorists on September 11 willingly died for their beliefs.

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Stephen
4766 Posts
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June 29, 2017 - 11:07 am

Yes undoubtedly Christians were martyred but scholar Candida Moss has ** you do not have permission to see this link ** that the stories of widespread persecutions of Christians were overblown and exaggerated. 

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webattorney

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July 25, 2017 - 10:17 pm

The difference between the September 11 terrorists and the allegedly martyred Christians is the terrorists died while trying to intentionally kill others while the allegedly martyred Christians were killed for refusing to renounce their faith.  I don’t know if there is a significant difference but I feel there is one.  lol

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Rthompsonmdog

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July 27, 2017 - 5:16 pm

webattorney said
The difference between the September 11 terrorists and the allegedly martyred Christians is the terrorists died while trying to intentionally kill others while the allegedly martyred Christians were killed for refusing to renounce their faith.  I don’t know if there is a significant difference but I feel there is one.  lol  

It may not be a perfect analogy. Laugh

OK, I’ll leave it at strength of belief has no obvious relationship to truth of belief.

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