Post Author: Bill Pratt
One of the most compelling apologetic arguments for the truth of the resurrection of Jesus is the fact that most of his closest followers were martyred for their beliefs. Since these followers would have had first-hand knowledge of whether he actually did come back from the dead, their willingness to be persecuted and eventually die for this belief is hard to explain if the resurrection never did occur.
One of the challenges with making this argument is that the quality of the historical evidence for these martyr deaths varies greatly. C. Michael Patton, of the Parchment and Pen blog, attempted to sort out the historical evidence for the deaths of 12 apostles in this blog post. In his post, he grades the quality of the historical sources based on his own research. He assigns a grade of “A” to the deaths with the best historical evidence (highest probability) all the way down to a grade of “D” for deaths where he considers the historical evidence to be weak (lowest probability).
For reference, here are each of the disciples along with their alleged year of martyrdom and the grade Patton assigned to their martyrdom accounts:
The Apostle James: year of death – 44-45 A.D.; grade of A
The Apostle Peter: year of death – 64 A.D.; grade of A
The Apostle Andrew: year of death – 70 A.D.; grade of B
The Apostle Thomas: year of death – 70 A.D.; grade of B
The Apostle Philip: year of death – 54 A.D.; grade of C
The Apostle Matthew: year of death – 60-70 A.D.; grade of B
The Apostle Nathaneal: year of death – 70 A.D.; grade of C
James the Brother of Jesus: year of death – 63 A.D.; grade of B
The Apostle Simon the Zealot: year of death – 74 A.D.; grade of B
The Apostle Judas Thaddeus: year of death – 72 A.D.; grade of C
The Apostle Matthias: year of death – 70 A.D.; grade of D
The Apostle Paul: year of death – 67 A.D.; grade of A
Out of the 12 martyrdom accounts he grades, 3 merited an “A,” 5 merited a “B,” 3 merited a “C,” and 1 merited a “D.” In my opinion, the three accounts that garnered “A”s are enough evidence to uphold the apologetic argument. What Patton demonstrates is that there is even more evidence than just these three.
Historical research can be very tricky, and these kinds of analyses are somewhat subjective. I’m sure skeptics of Christianity might grade harder than Patton did, but I commend him for his attempt. Please read the rest of his blog post if you want to know more of the details surrounding the deaths.