DIALOGUE: Did the Apostles Die for a Lie? (with Paulogia)

Transcript:

Hey everyone. Welcome to the Council of Trent podcast. I’m your host, Catholic Answers apologist, Trent Horn.

Joining me for today’s dialogue is Paul from Paulogia, though I think I mangled the pronunciation in my previous video addressing some of his topics.

Today, we’re going to talk about the argument who would die for a lie, right? Paul has addressed that on his own channel and has engaged with the evangelical apologist, Sean McDowell, on that question. I’ve also engaged in his work. He engaged mine, and I have a very strict rule on Council of Trent podcast. When somebody rebuts one of my rebuttals, I don’t do any more rebuttals, because that would be an endless, nightmarish loop. Instead, I’d rather just chat with the person.

So here he is. Paul, welcome to the channel.

Thank you so much for having me on. It’s always great to talk to you and the Christians. Absolutely. That’s my favorite.

Sure. Maybe before we get started, maybe give our listeners a little bit of background on yourself and your channel, I guess.

Sure. The slogan of my channel is, “A former Christian takes a look at the claims of Christians.” By that, obviously, I’m inferring that I used to be a Christian. I was an evangelical, raised in Mennonite heritage, though moved on from that later in my life.

I went to a Christian missionary bible college for my formal education there. While I had regular secular jobs, I went on to be a youth leader and a worship leader for many decades, and eventually went to investigate the evidence for myself to see whether that’s a position that I should still hold. And despite desperately wanting it to be true and thinking I was going to defend my faith, I ended up losing it.

That’s kind of the short version. And then a bunch of stuff happened and I started a YouTube channel where I look at the claims of Christians, and here we are.

And here we are indeed. All right, so today I want to talk about a lot of your content, not exclusively, but a lot of your content deals with the question of the resurrection. Did Jesus rise from the dead? And part of that argument, not the whole case, but part of the argument is the question, were the original witnesses, the original people who testified to the risen Jesus, were they sincere in their belief?

And so this gives rise to a common apologetic slogan, if you will, called, who would die for a lie. The idea is that, well, we can see that the apostles were sincere, or at least the original witnesses of the resurrection, those who were preaching it, they were sincere, because they were willing to go to their deaths or they did go to their deaths for this belief.

Now, in criticisms of this argument, I’ve seen that was the point in my original video that you responded to, I would say that this argument can be overstretched, that the evidence for the martyrdom of the apostles is unequal. There is much better evidence for the martyrdom of some of the apostles than for others.

And I think that the core of the argument that you have this sincerity of their belief can be made in the fact that they were willing to suffer. And I think atheists have made rightful criticisms in the lazier approach to the argument, “Well, they were all martyrs.” Well, let’s look at the historical evidence. How good is that?

That’s what I was addressing in my video, and then you had some criticisms and replies, and so we can go through some of that. But I guess, then I’ll throw it to you, you can jump off this, how do you look at the argument dealing with the apostle sincerity, and then what are some concerns that you still have?

Sure. And I do appreciate that you take a more nuanced approach than the churches that I grew up and as an adult attended. I definitely was in a tradition that just went for everyone but John was definitely martyred for their beliefs and presumably had opportunity to recant and definitely didn’t shake their fist at the authorities. And that’s the narrative I received from both bible school teachers and from pulpits. I want to be fair, I may have been bringing some of that to the table myself, but that was definitely what I was led to believe. I appreciate that you take the more nuanced approach.

Yeah. Now, to be fair [inaudible 00:04:36]. Sure. Now, to be fair, when I’m looking at presenting evidence there, I do think based on the weight of tradition and other elements like that, I do believe that the 11 were martyred. I do hold to that belief, but I understand that when you put forward evidence, people are going to be skeptical of different kinds of evidences that you can present. I do agree that some of the evidences are strong enough to put forward to a skeptical audience to look at. I would agree.

For our audience who is listening, I think it’s important to summarize here because you and I could be going a mile a minute, because you can understand this. When someone gets in the nitty gritty of an argument and other people are on the outside, like, “What are you all talking about?” I would recommend [inaudible 00:05:26]. Oh, go ahead.

I was going to say we’re on episode four of this where the audience may not be. They might be joining us for the first time.

Right. I would recommend watching Paul’s previous dialogues with Sean McDowell. Sean, he’s actually the son of Josh McDowell, the author of Evidence Demands a Verdict. He was a very famous Protestant Christian apologist. Sean is a nice guy, very smart. I like a lot of his work. He focuses on defending mere Christianity. And so Sean was actually challenged with this, like, “Well, how do you know all the apostles died?” For his dissertation, Sean decided to do a definitive look at the fate of the apostles. I always mess up the title of the book, but I’m pretty sure it’s called The Fate of the 12 Apostles.

I think that’s correct, yeah.

Yeah. The Fate of the Apostles or The Fate of the 12 Apostles. And he wrote that as his dissertation, later released it as a book. He and Paul have discussed this. And I basically would agree with Sean that all of the apostles … and of course, we have to define what that term means; I would put it to the 11 disciples who became Apostles, Paul of Tarsus and James, the brother of Jesus … were willing to suffer for belief in the resurrection for publicly preaching or being publicly associated with the Christian movement.

And I think there’s good evidence for four of them, for Peter, Paul, James, the brother of Jesus, and James, the son of Zebedee, being willing to accept death as a consequence of publicly having this witness. That’s where it comes to, and you’ve had some criticism of McDowell and of myself, so feel free to move us forward from the summary I’ve given.

Well, while I think I would like to spend most of the time on the willingness to die part, because I think that’s where the meat and the interesting part is, just for the sake of wrapping up the previous chapters, I don’t disagree with the four that you listed. Maybe James, son of Alphaeus, I might disagree. And Sean has also lowered his confidence on that one in particular because the only source for that is the Book of Acts.

You mean the son of Zebedee.

Sorry, son of Zebedee [inaudible 00:07:38]. We have so many Jameses. Yes, I have to get that straight.

Yes, that’s going … and each of us could easily mix up our Jameses here.

Pardon me. Yes, absolutely, and actually, because a little bit torn by that you were accepting that James is the brother of Jesus, and maybe we’ll get into that, maybe not.

Yes, because even among Christians, there is an argument about whether James, the brother of Jesus, is identical to James the Lesser, or James, the son of Alphaeus. There are three Jameses described in the New Testament, so everyone will have to bear with us as we sort through our Jameses here.

I do think that James, the brother of Jesus, was part of Jesus’s related kin. I in particular hold a view that the Protestant biblical scholar, Richard Bauckham holds, which is that James would’ve been Jesus’s half brother, that Joseph was from a previous marriage. Of course, that’s a whole different subject, but that he was related kin to Jesus, did not believe in him during his ministry, and then Jesus appeared to him and then he became one of the apostles. He became one of them who were preaching this. In any case, so you agree-

And I don’t mean to sidetrack. When I was a Protestant, of course I believed James was also the half brother, because it was only through Mary, because God was actually the father. It’s just weird semantics and we don’t need to get into that. But if we’re going back to the four-

Yeah, step sibling, half brother [inaudible 00:09:08]. The four, we kind of agree that that would be-

The four, so James, son of Zebedee, the only source is the Book of Acts. I tend to not put it elevated quite as high as those other ones, though the narrative in Acts is so sparse of details, it is tough for me to again say that that martyrdom necessarily meant it was for what he believed necessarily. It is very sparse in the details, so it’s tough to pinpoint that.

Just for our audience, we’ll keep them running along with us. In Acts chapter 12, so we’re talking about James, the son of Zebedee, the brother of John the Apostle, that we read in Acts 12, it says, “About that time Herod the king” … This would be Herod Agrippa, the grandson of Herod the Great, who was involved in the infancy narratives … “About that time, Herod the Great laid violent hands upon some who belonged to the church. He killed James, the brother of John, with the sword. And when he saw that it pleased the Jews, he proceeded to arrest Peter also.”

What’s interesting about this passage is I do think that it’s very good evidence that James was put to death. What I worry is that if it were a long, drawn out narrative with many elements to it talking about his valiant martyrdom, some people will call that a legendary accretion. What’s interesting is the fact that it is so brief would make it less likely to be a Christian interpolation or accretion and more just a note of something that did historically happen, but people might disagree. I think the strongest case a critic might make would be, why was James killed [inaudible 00:10:49].

Right, and that’s [inaudible 00:10:52]. And then we get to Peter and Paul. I of course dispute that Paul was a firsthand witness in the sense that he could attest to the resurrection. I don’t think that what Paul’s vision was … and we don’t need to go there necessarily … but he’s in the same category as the other 12 that you want to talk about.

But Peter and Paul, if they were both killed under Nero, and the story that [inaudible 00:11:23] tells about Nero is correct, that he was looking for scapegoats for the fire, that it’s tough to imagine that Nero cared one lick what they actually believed because he was using them for political purpose and to save his own skin. It’s tough to say that that actual death is the same guarantor that I was taught in Sunday school, shall we say. So that leads us to-

I do want to return to Peter.

… James, the brother of Jesus.

Let’s put a pin in there. I do want to go back to Peter and Paul because maybe we’ll go in reverse order. We can talk about martyrdoms, then we’ll get to the willingness to die part. But you can go ahead with James, the brother of Jesus. We can return to Peter and Paul in a little bit.

Well, and James the brother of Jesus, I believe we have really good attestation that he was killed by political forces. I think you would agree with that.

Yeah. Yes.

There seems to be wide discrepancy on the how and some of those narratives, and I think you agree that that almost doesn’t really matter here, that the core of the three different stories, I think Hegesippus was one, and I forget what the others were.

I think the other would be [inaudible 00:12:32]. Right, so James, the brother of Jesus, what makes … because the other problem here is when people say, “Well, we’re the apostles martyred?” The martyrdom of the apostles is not described in the New Testament. Well, I would say at least it’s not directly described. I do think that the martyrdom of the apostles is indirectly referenced in passages in John or second Timothy that were written after those events took place and are reflecting back on them.

James, the brother of Jesus, we would have three sources there. In the Christian tradition, we have the chronicler Hegesippus in the second century, and then Clement of Alexandria, who’s late second century, early third century, and they describe … That’s the Christian sources.

The non-Christian source would be the Jewish historian, Josephus or Josephus. And he’s describing in his book The Antiquities, he says this. I think it’s in book 20. He says that the procurator, so the guy who had Pontius Pilate’s old job, this new guy was Festus. Festus was now dead. Albinus was but upon the road, so he assembled a Sanhedrin of judges. Jesus ben Ananias, the high priest, assembled the judges, the Jewish judges, brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others. When he had formed an accusation against them as breakers of the law, he delivered them to be stoned.

What we see here is I think when you have … What’s interesting here, once again, similar to the James, the son of Zebedee issue, most scholars agree. There’s another reference to Jesus in book 18 of The Antiquities that has a longer reference to Jesus, but many people believe … Nearly all scholars believe at least parts of that were added later, where Josephus says that Jesus was the Messiah. I read one Christian who tried to defend all of it. It was very gutsy.

Oh boy. Wow. Okay.

I’ll have to send that you.

That’s interesting.

You’ll get a big kick out of it. But most scholars agree that it’s at least partially interpolated, if not the whole thing.

Now, this part, most scholars agree, most, not all, but most agree, they consider it authentic, because once again, it’s brevity, that if a Christian were adding it, he’d add more heroic elements, he’d lather it on. It’s very, very brief.

Right, and that is what you get in those other Christian traditions is like, “He was tossed off a cliff and then stoned,” but you get some of those kind of traditions-

Now, I don’t think it’s-

… happening.

Yeah, there’s some more details that are added in Hegesippus and Clement, but I don’t think that some of them are necessarily contradictory.

For example, the detail about James being thrown from the temple, I don’t think that that’s a fantastic addition that contradicts Josephus because the Talmid, which is a collection of Jewish writings from the first few centuries after Christ, talks about the punishment of stoning and how it was carried out.

And actually, what they did was they would take people on a scaffold or a high platform and throw them off the scaffold onto the stone pavement, and then if they were still alive, somebody standing on top of the scaffold would throw stones onto him, so that part, I actually don’t think it’s that contradictory if-

Well, and I wasn’t bringing that up. I’m sorry if I gave the impression that I was bringing it up to say it was a contradiction anyway. I’m on board with that these are three harmonizeable, even within my threshold, accounts, that they have enough … But what I’d like to focus on is that for me it’s clearly, again, once again, a politically motivated, if not entirely, at least in part, reason for killing him, versus that it’s purely ideological, that this whole thing wasn’t entirely because he was claiming that Jesus rose from the dead.

Yeah. I mean, I guess I could see that as the claim, like, “Well, he’s starting a rival sect that dilutes our power.” That may be part of it. It’s just very hard when you have in the ancient world that politics and religion and ideology are incredibly interwoven. We have that a lot more separated today.

But at that time, I mean, maybe there’s a political subtext, but when you read what Josephus says, he just says they formed an accusation of them as breakers of the law, which is interesting because a lot of critical scholars believe that James, the brother of Jesus, the really critical scholars will say, “Oh, he didn’t believe what Paul taught. He just wanted to be a faithful Jew. Jesus wouldn’t have believed in Paul’s gospel. James was trying to preserve, adhering to the Torah.”

To me, it seems really interesting that he’d be accused of being a breaker of the law if he had a reputation for being this upstanding Jew who kept the law, wasn’t a troublemaker like Paul. To me, it seems like the biggest law he would’ve broken to incur stoning would be something like leading Israel to worship false gods, which would really tie into preaching that Jesus was the resurrected Messiah. I guess that’s how I would look at it.

But I think we can both agree that that’s speculation and an argument from silence if push comes to shove, right?

Well, I think that all of us are going to make these kinds of inferences. Well, what do we think is most probable for these different reasons? And we’re going to have to assemble our evidence because it doesn’t clearly say that it was because of political factions or the Jews were worried about their power being diminished, even though Josephus talks about those motives sometimes. I think that what people have to do when you look at this is look at the context, what kind of punishment was carried out, what kind of accusations were made, and you’ll make different inferences based on that.

From my perspective, I guess, even those four, and I’m sorry to step on you there.

That’s fine.

For me, those four, I’m expressing why I prefer actually your willingness to die. I actually think that is a stronger place to go.

Sure. Well, let’s then-

… than even this martyr number, because for me, if I grant those four, I still have problems with them as a guarantor that it was because of what they believed.

Sure.

I guess we can maybe move on then to willingness, if you’re willing to put a pin there.

Well, could we finish up Peter and Paul-

Sure.

… and then we’ll go to willingness to die. That would be nice, I think. McDowell says this, and I agree, and I think most scholars hold to this, like Bart Ehrman and others, hold to the view that Peter and Paul were martyrs, that they had been killed because of their belief in Christ.

There’s going to be a separate question, of course, about whether they were allowed to recant or not, because usually to be a martyr you have to like, “Okay, I’d rather die than give up my belief in Christ.” But I think it’s pretty clear from the evidence, which we even have, I mentioned earlier about the New Testament, John 21:18 through 19, Jesus talks about how when Peter is older, they will stretch out his hands and someone will carry you where you do not wish to go, and many commenters see that as a reference to him being a martyr.

And of course, John’s gospel was written after Peter’s death, so he would have knowledge of that. And then similar, in second Timothy, puts Paul in Rome knowing that he’s going to die. And most scholars think second Timothy wasn’t written by Paul, but it was written later after he died. This was someone who would’ve had knowledge of that.

But going to … I’m trying to think. I had a pin in earlier … Peter and Paul, Nero, Tacitus. I think a lot of this goes down to … Let me bring up here why they were … They were killed under … because you have, for example, James was killed by Herod. You have threats of persecution by the Jewish authorities. You also have threats from the Roman authorities that would start with the persecution under Emperor Nero.

And so there’s two relevant parts from Tacitus in book 15 of the Annals. He talks about Nero, the great fire at Rome in 64, in AD 64. Did he do it? Did he not do it? And so it says, “Consequently, to get rid of the report, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace.” He goes on, mentions where the name comes from, mentions Pontius Pilate.

But here’s the part I find interesting that I should have included in my previous video for you to reply to, and I guess I can get your reply to it now. At the end of it, he says something interesting, because you were saying, well, Peter and Paul, they just got caught up because Nero had to put a scapegoat on somebody. He had to blame somebody else for the fire.

Tacitus is interesting though, because he says this. He says, “Accordingly,” referring to Christians, “An arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty. Then upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city as of hatred against mankind.” It seems like Tacitus is saying that the persecution against Christians, it might have started a bit with Nero, but most of it seemed to be convicting people of having a belief system that was dangerous to the state essentially. I don’t know if we can just call them Nero’s scapegoats. What do you think?

I think if you are the head of state looking for scapegoats, if that part can be accepted as truthful, the two most prominent members of that are going to be the people you want to have the most public display. And again, it’s very difficult to put ourselves in the place of someone from 2000 years ago, very difficult. But if politics are politics, it just seems incredibly unlikely to me, and other Christians like Jonathan McClatchy agree with me, that you are going to, at that point, even care.

Let’s say John, Peter and Paul both came forward and said, “You know what? We were totally wrong. This Jesus thing, we just made it up,” whatever, whatever they want to do to save themselves, that Nero would still not just publicly execute them. Why would he leak that? Because at that point, at least at the start, the point isn’t that they are ideologically opposed to me, the point is people already hate them. And so if people already hate them, it’s easy for me to use them to cover my tracks.

Again, it’s just very difficult to be conclusive. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it’s very difficult to be inclusively and pointing to that as a guarantor.

Sure. I guess the question will be, did during the Neronian persecution, were Christians indiscriminately killed in the sense that they’re determined to be Christians, they’re given no opportunity to recant and they’re just killed to make an example, or are they located and then given some kind of Roman judicial process where they’re allowed to recant, for example, they’re convicted of guilt?

Because what I see here in Tacitus is, and there’s another point that I brought up in my reply that you replied to, and we can go a little bit on that, because I guess my question too would be both of us are going to be speculating a bit on what happened in these texts because it’s not explicitly clear, the scenario you are describing, or scenario that I’m describing.

But I mean, we see here, they talk about … If Nero’s going to go out, it’s not like there’s going to be publicly available information to know who are the leaders of this Jewish sect, this Christian sect, right? You’re going to have to find some Christians and then get information out of them. For other people, it’s not like he can just go. And I highly doubt that he just would’ve known right off the bat Peter and Paul were leaders of this, right?

Yeah, tough to know.

I mean, it’s not like we have today, they would know there’s these people, these rabble rousers-

I mean, if Peter was the first Pope, it seems like that wouldn’t have been too hard to suss out.

Sure, but you also have Christians being concerned about their identities being discovered. You have in first Peter, which of course, there’s debate about whether Peter actually wrote this letter. Richard Carrier’s even said that it’s not off the table that Peter wrote first Peter, because in first Peter 5:13, “I write to you from Babylon,” which he wasn’t writing from the city in modern day Iraq. That was a code word that was used for Rome.

I think Christians at that time were frequently doing that. I think that would make my point that you would have to find people and then go through the chain. But it seems your Tacitus is saying that only a part of it was related to the fire. The rest was the Romans just didn’t like what these people believed.

I’m not saying any of that is implausible. I’m not even saying it’s least likely scenario, though I personally think it is less likely. But what I’m saying is if you want to go to a skeptic and say, “Hey, look, the martyrdom guarantees their sincerity,” it doesn’t do so in a solid way as perhaps a Christian thinks, because there’s all these caveats. There’s all these what ifs. There’s all these unknowns about it that make it less of a … I guess that’s really the word for me. It’s not a guarantee. And I know you put forth in your video, “Well, this is part of cumulative case, obviously, and is only appropriately used as cumulative case.” I guess you and I are both addressing then the type of Christian who would put it forth more solidly than perhaps they ought. Is that fair?

Right. Yeah. And I think, though, what’s hard here is that if we’re trying to reconstruct history and figure out what happened in the past, if we say, “Well, here are three possible things,” and then we just leave it at that, you could have, when you’re trying to figure out anything, all kinds of possibilities, but you would end up with a kind of historical agnosticism if you only make everything possibilities instead of trying to assign probabilities of certain things, because for example, because you would agree, is there a source within this time period within 100 years of the resurrection that says Christians were captured and immediately executed upon being discovered to be a Christian?

Not that I’m aware of.

Right. But we do have evidence, and that was what I gave in my previous reply, that when you do have under Emperor Trajan, when Pliny the Younger was persecuting Christians because they’re being very suspicious, they’re meeting in the morning, they secretly meet like rebels do, and Trajan says, “Look, leave them alone. But if they say they’re not Christian, leave them alone. If they sacrifice to the gods, leave them alone. If they don’t do all that, then dole out the punishment.”

It seems like when we look at any of the examples of how Christians are treated during this time period, within the first 100 years after the crucifixion, the only examples we have are we have a judicial process under Trajan, and it seems like we have something alluded to under Tacitus where an arrest is made-

Well, can I just jump in on Trajan for a sec?

That’s fine. Yeah.

With Trajan, would you not agree that the reason he had to write and get clarification on what happens or what’s to be done is that it was unclear to him what the procedure should be and thereby it would be very hard to put forth there was this clear rule about how Christianity was to be dealt with, if in fact he had to write to his superiors to get clarification?

No, I agree there wasn’t a clear rule about how to deal with Christians because to many people, they would’ve been considered just a splinter sect of Judaism. And Judaism was a tolerated religion within the Roman Empire, so I agree there wasn’t a uniform policy dealing with Christians. My contention would be that ancient Rome did have … Now, the principle of innocent until proven guilty wouldn’t really be implemented in Roman law, formally implemented. I want to say it was under Hadrian or Antonius Pius in the second century. But I do think we see these general principles in how the Romans dealt with criminal justice, that they cared a lot about weighing of evidences, the rights of citizens, gathering testimony and convicting based on evidence. I think the Romans did care a lot about that versus just indiscriminate punishment doled out based accusations.

For example, there’s Pontus Pilate and the story for him about when he put up the golden placard, so there was the first time when he put up the standards and then the Jews put up more of a resistance than he thought and he was forced to take them down. But he later put up the unmarked golden ones, seemingly thumbing his nose at them, because they met the letter of the law, but not the spirit of the Jewish law. And at that point when there was resistance, he literally just had his armies wearing civilian clothes and just start stabbing people.

Right.

It’s mixed, right?

Sure, yeah. But I would say that the example of Pilate doing that, that would be an example of something taking place outside of a judicial context and also something that gave him a bad reputation in the province in general that put him on his last legs with the emperor in trying to maintain peace in the region in general. And I think other people, other leaders, would learn from that, that you get posted in these rural outposts anyways. It was a backwater province where he was posted in Judea, and I think that would serve as more as an example, I think, to other Roman leaders of what not to do, but [inaudible 00:31:32].

But again, I would put Nero in that … Specifically, if what Nero’s trying to do is throw people off of his scent, then having standard operating procedure for trying them seems like that would be the first thing to go, at least as far as me looking back at history.

I mean, all this to say, as I look back at that first century and even the second century, what I see in the history is a lot of unevenness. There was pockets of terrible stuff happening. It seems like in other places, no one really cared and that unevenness ruled the day and that we are largely, again, talking from silence because we can’t know how in this town it was treated versus that town, in this decade versus that decade.

Well, let’s go to the stronger argument. I’m going to bridge to that argument actually, because one could modify even the deaths of Peter and Paul to say at the very least, “Hey,” and I would still contend to this. It would’ve taken some work for Roman officials to discover the identities of Christian leadership. Even later when you get to Ignatius of Antioch in the second century, he writes a letter to Rome. He doesn’t include anybody’s name, because he is under imperial guard. He’s going to be executed.

First Peter 5:13 has a code name. It would take some time, so I think word would get around to Christians, “Hey, the Romans are gathering people. They’re going to kill people. They’re going to kill Christians.” And you can make a choice. You can either flee, hide, abandon this whole thing, or you continue knowing you might be killed even if you don’t get a chance to recant later. That would lead us to the willingness to suffer and possibly die. We could put that in parentheses as well for that. And this makes [inaudible 00:33:28]. Go ahead.

Can I ask one quick question that I think is relevant?

Sure.

Did you have a thought about my note in the video where I heard your argument there and you said, “Well, no, they definitely all had a chance to recant and if they recanted that they weren’t put to death,” does that not diminish if everyone is walking around with a get out of jail free by recanting card in the early first century, in the 60s, say?

Right.

Does that not diminish the whole rest of the argument that you’re making?

I don’t think so. Yes, I see the point you’re saying is that the argument will go like this. They’re sincere because who would die for a lie? You go and do this, you got nothing to gain by dying. Well, perhaps an insincere person would get a Christian leadership position and people, they fawn over you, like people fawn over pastors today. And then if the authorities catch you just say, “Nevermind, I don’t believe in this.” You offer a sacrifice, a pinch of incense to the gods and they let you go free.

I don’t think it’s a get out of jail free card because while you don’t pay with your life, you pay with shame and scandal in the Christian community, because the Christian community would hear, “Oh, Peter was taken to the Roman palace. They’re definitely going to kill him like they’ve killed all these other Christians. Oh Peter, what happened? They let you go.” Well, they know there’s only one reason you get let go. It’s if you recant.

And I think in doing that, you would never be welcome back to your leadership position. You would be treated as a traitor. In fact, in the early church, there was a controversy called the Donatist Heresy. And that was the idea that a priest in the church, if you were … I think this was during the persecution of Diocletian … that you could get out of it by just offering worship to other gods or denying Christ. So some people would do that, then they would go and try to be priests again, and the Donatists would say, “Hey, no, you can never validly be a priest again. You can never be welcome back. Your sin can never be forgiven.” And they were given the Latin term traduttore. That’s where we get the word traitor.

Sorry for the long-winded answer, but I don’t think that it would be a get out of jail free card because it would not cohere with the testimony we have about Peter and Paul from Clement and others, how they are faithful to the end, they’re models of endurance. I think the word of shame, we get to them. And we do have in scripture examples of other Christians who fall away being reprimanded by name. In first Timothy 1:19, the author of first Timothy says that Hymenaeus and Alexander made shipwrecks of their faith, for example. I don’t think the fact that Peter and Paul retain their sterling reputation, and I think just in general that it is a mark of sincerity because you couldn’t maintain the ruse after that, I guess, if that makes sense.

Well, so three quick notes on that. Thank you for that clarification. One, Peter is a weird example because Peter is on record as having denied Jesus three times before the rooster crowed and yet was still welcomed back. I mean, there is obviously in Christianity, there’s built in opportunity to be forgiven of things, so there is-

I think it’s different though. I think it’s different when the boss does it himself.

Yeah. Well, just, Peter was an interesting example you used because he definitely did deny, obviously, if you accept the gospels at face value.

Sure.

Number two-

And I think the only reason he would’ve been welcomed back would be the testimony in John about Jesus himself doing that.

Right. Point number two is that I actually wasn’t actually specifically … and I didn’t make this clear, so my apologies … I wasn’t actually specifically referring to Paul and Peter when I say you’re watering down the willingness to die. I meant for everyone.

It could be anyone.

Right. And so we don’t know how everyone you’re potentially going to put into the willing to die category did they endure to the end as well as Peter and Paul did. And then … Oh, I lost my number three. Well, I guess, yeah, that is my third one is that my question of watering it down applies just to everyone who’s going … Oh, I remember number three. Do they care?

If you are now, “Okay, this is my life versus not,” much like a criminal, like, “I’m willing to take all the risks with my buddies. We’re going to steal some stuff from a store,” knowing that they’re potentially going to be caught and face consequences.

When put in that place, you very often will see the people not caring whether they can go back to their old community or not. They may turncoat in that sense, knowing full well that it will cost them within their community. It doesn’t seem like that is necessarily a huge problem to me.

Well, I think that you’re right that martyrdom will demonstrate whether someone is sincere or not, though I think somebody … and we’ll then get to the apostles here very quickly … the willingness to suffer, the willingness to have the threat of violence hanging over one’s head, including unexpected violence that could lead to death that one cannot escape, because I think that in some formal settings you would be given an opportunity to recant, or at the very least if you have an understanding of martyrdom that, “If I continue in this, I’m probably going to end up getting killed,” that you’re very, very sincere in that.

An example that I might give, I think that Martin Luther King Jr, and this will tie into the whole apostles here, because I know you have a interesting skepticism about which of them preached the gospel-

Thank you.

… and who didn’t, so I want to get to that. An example that might help bridge into that, I think Martin Luther King Jr was very sincere in his preaching that racial segregation was evil, that racial segregation was evil, the law ought to promote racial integration, and then he was eventually assassinated. Obviously he wasn’t given an opportunity to give up his belief, but he knew there were people gunning for him and eventually he was assassinated.

And I think that you could say, imagine that there was a cohort of his 11 trusted officials, and some of them will go and they would give these talks too, and they would say the same message. I would say they sincerely believed it also. And some of them, we don’t hear about them maybe publicly talking about it, but if you’re driving Martin Luther King Jr around knowing people want to assassinate him, you have to be really hard for a paycheck or I think you believe in it as well, because you’re taking those same risks in being a close associate, even if you’re not publicly preaching the message. I don’t know. Does that make sense? That’s when I look at the apostles, maybe some of that logic could be applied there.

Are you saying that that is analogous to post-resurrection or post-ascension activities of the apostles?

Yeah. Let’s say Peter is going around giving all these big time speeches, and he speaks on behalf of the group the entire time. Maybe John does as well. They’re more of the public speakers of the group, like Martin Luther King Jr was a public speaker and the other … Now, actually, though, I’m giving you what would be a minimalist scenario, because I do think all of the apostles were preaching. I think there’s good evidence for that.

But even under a minimalist scenario, the fact that they are publicly associated with the Christian movement as being core members of its leadership, its founders, being … Luke, when he talks about apostles, it almost always just refers to those 11, that they would’ve known there would’ve been a target on their back for continuing with the group, even if they weren’t necessarily preaching everything.

I would say that their motivation there, sincerity in the message itself being preached, that Jesus rose from the dead, would make the most sense of their continued participation in such a dangerous occupation.

And I would say, I guess, that’s only analogous if in fact, with the Martin Luther King 11, and I’m assuming that’s a hypothetical 11-

Yes [inaudible 00:42:04].

… that Martin Luther King 11, that there are photos of them, because it was in a time where there would’ve been photos of the cavalcades and all those kind of things. We would know that they were indeed part of the group and not just said to be part of the group, shall we say. Now-

Do you think that there was a group of distinct people, these 11 disciples, who are now called apostles, who had a special status within the Christian community as having been witnesses or proclaimed to be witnesses to the resurrection?

What I accept is that there was a group of probably 12, though it’s possible 12 was also a symbolic number because 12 is quite a symbolic number with the 12 tribes and all kind of thing.

Sure.

And it was probably more than 12, frankly. There was probably hangers-on that numbered more than that, that were followers of Jesus up until the point of crucifixion. That is where my confidence stops that we know much, if anything, about what those alleged 12 individuals did. I accept that probably some of them scattered. Who knows if they did when Jesus was crucified? And that’s as far as I can know. That’s as far as I think the evidence takes me.

For your audience’s sake, my skepticism in this is a little bit unusual in that my skepticism is that indeed we have evidence that eyewitnesses were indeed out preaching beyond the people we’ve already talked about, beyond John-

Peter.

… beyond Peter-

Paul.

And Paul’s in a different category for me, and then of course James, the brother of Jesus, so [inaudible 00:44:06]. We’ve already talked about those. Go ahead.

Well, with Paul though, here’s the definition I want to give, and this also takes us back to an important element of this argument that we probably should have addressed an hour and 45 minutes ago. But a retort to this argument that misses the point is, who would die for a lie? Well, there are martyrs in other religions. There are suicide bombers. Lots of people will die for many things that are not … Is their religion true? No.

This argument is only meant to address the claim that the apostles were insincere, that they invented the story. It’s about their sincerity, and hopefully we’ll have a conversation one day on that, about their sincere testimony, at least of the ones you’ll agree to, whether their sincere testimony reflected a vertical experience that actually happened objectively, or whether it was a report of some kind of subjective hallucination or something like that.

What I would say is that, so that who would die for a lie, the 9/11 people died for a lie, completely misses the point of the argument that it’s about … I agree, most martyrs in any belief system are quite sincere, but they’re sincere about a belief that they receive from others, so they’re not in a great place to know whether it’s true or not.

What I find interesting is the sincerity of Christians who the source of their belief was some kind of what they perceived to be a supernatural experience. The fact that you have a Christian martyr in the third century doesn’t tell me that much, but if Peter, Paul, the 11, James, the brother of Jesus, if the source of their belief was that they had something that they thought was a supernatural experience of the risen Jesus, whether it turned out to be objective or not, that’s really interesting to me that they’re being sincere, that they thought they had some supernatural experience of the risen Jesus.

And I would apply that to Paul as well. Paul is not like somebody who just heard about Jesus and just believed it just based on testimony. He says in Galatians, “Christ was revealed to me.” I have no reason to doubt in the testimony in Acts, the description in Acts. Your point seems to be, well, Paul’s experience was not like the other 12. Even if it was not, I would say his was rooted in what he thought was a supernatural experience. Does that make sense?

Understood. It makes sense. But I guess I would put him in the same category of … I am aware of Christians who would say in the last decade that Jesus has appeared to them. I totally buy that they sincerely believe it, and I don’t necessarily … I didn’t dig into the details enough to even posit a separate explanation-

Sure [inaudible 00:47:10].

But other than to say that, that is in the same category as Paul. Anything post-ascension, you are not seeing the resurrected body in the same way those first witnesses did.

Okay, so you would just say that the claim is that what Paul saw was not the same as what the 11 saw prior to the ascension, but after the resurrection, or claimed to have seen.

Right, so it can’t at that point be a guarantor for me that Jesus rose from the dead. For example, there was the transfiguration, right? Moses was on the mountain and people could see him. Well, no one’s saying that Moses rose from the dead, right? If I was to just generally accept Jesus is in the style of Moses, Jesus may well have died, but God granted him the ability to speak to other people later. To me, that’s the same category. And so again, that’s why Paul can’t guarantee it. Does that make any sense?

Yeah. I actually have a theory about that with Moses and Elijah, because the Old Testament talks about Elijah being assumed into heaven. I also think there was a common Jewish belief before and even after the time in the New Testament, that Moses had been assumed into heaven as well, that his body had been taken up into heaven. People don’t talk about that as much, but I think it’s alluded to in the letter of Jude, for example, and so it would make sense those were the two who were seen with Jesus because their bodies, they had been assumed, but not necessarily gloriously resurrected. But I don’t want to get too far [inaudible 00:48:47].

Doesn’t Exodus explicitly say that Moses died?

Well, it says that he died, but one could be assumed, one’s body could be taken up into heaven and prevented from seeing corruption even after death.

Okay. But I guess that again puts them in a different category for me than that they rose from the dead.

Correct. Yeah. And I think that belief that Jesus had risen from the dead would come from testimony that he had given to the apostles to show that he has a glorious resurrected body. He promises resurrection to others. He raised himself and fulfilled his own divine promises.

But with Paul, now, it’s interesting here, because I think we have to be careful for an atheist, not say to a Christian, “Well, that’s speculation, what you’re doing. The text doesn’t say that.” How do we know that Paul’s experience when he says in first Corinthians 9:1, “Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord?” How do we know that that is different from the apostles who said they saw Jesus after the resurrection? I don’t think there’s anything in the text that says that really.

Not in the text, but I guess you would for it to have been the same, for them to be seeing Jesus’ resurrection body, if what Paul saw was Jesus’s resurrection body, that means Jesus has already had his second coming. That means Jesus’ resurrection body has been in our atmosphere, at least, if not on our ground again.

Well, it was there the 40 days before the ascension.

Right, but you would grant that Paul’s conversion was at least two to three years after the ascension?

Correct. Yes.

That would mean that Jesus would’ve had two or three years away from the Earth, and if it was that same resurrection body, that it came back, and that’s normally not where Christians want to go.

I don’t see why not. I mean, I think if you take Acts as a complimentary description of what happened to Paul, the vision that he saw on the road to Damascus or what he saw with his companions, it would seem that he beholds Jesus and it has the character of something like theophany where God gloriously manifests himself. But I would say that it wasn’t just a private vision or something like that. But anyways-

You probably know where my problems are with that, of course, is the different ways that Acts tells the story, and does Acts even reflect Paul [inaudible 00:51:27]? Why doesn’t Paul talk about that when Paul talks about visions [inaudible 00:51:32].

Right, but we both agree Paul was sincere, though, it seems.

Oh, I agree Paul was sincere. I just don’t think that his category of being a witness is in the same category as the others if you wanted to convince me that Jesus rose.

But I guess so, yeah, but I do believe that what motivated Paul was something that he thought was a supernatural encounter of Jesus.

You and I will sign off on the same statement. That’s fine.

And what is kind of interesting here though, is that, because you said, “Well, there’s Christians who think they see Jesus today.” Fair enough. Yeah. But I think they’re primed to see Jesus, that if you pray enough, you’ll have this experience of him. That would seem harder to place with someone who was a hardened persecutor of the church who wouldn’t have had that preconceived idea of Jesus. You see how that would be different?

Unless you have studied post-traumatic stress.

Oh, PTSD?

Mm-hmm.

Oh, like Paul was stressed out from killing people?

Right. Yeah. It’s a common … My daughter’s in the military now, so I’ve taken up to studying some of these kind of things of concern, and it certainly seems to be a trope that the visions of those you’ve been persecuting seems to linger for people who have done atrocities beyond what their conscience may be normally would want them to do. That’s all possible, but that’s kind of a sidetrack [inaudible 00:53:02].

Sure. I’ve heard that, but I feel like the charge of speculation would apply here, because my question would be … We’ll go back, because I feel like you’ve very critical of the idea that the apostles either believe this or they were out preaching it because of a lack of explicit testimony about it. But I would say, is there anything in Paul’s letters where he says that he was grieved or saddened by what he was doing prior to his conversion?

That is not … No. I will answer your question, because I owe you a yes or no answer to that.

Or whatever you think is the best answer.

I don’t think Paul is a good candidate for post-bereavement vision, for example. But that’s not the way post-traumatic stress works. You’re not in the moment necessarily upset about it. These are the things that come back to you later. But I will put totally own up to, of course, that is complete speculation. There’s no explicit-

Sure. Okay. Well, let’s go to the 11, because I think here, I feel like there’s really good evidence that Paul, James, the brother of Jesus, and the 11, all of them had what they thought was a supernatural encounter of Jesus and they preached this, and I think all of them did that.

Okay, so talk to me about Bartholomew.

Sure. I would say they all preached, but Luke doesn’t record what every single individual does. For example, in the gospel of Luke, in Luke 9, he talks about all of the apostles … well, disciples … all of them being sent out preaching. He talks about them all doing this, but-

Before death, before Jesus’ death, right?

Correct, but I would say that that Luke talks about them all doing this, but he doesn’t describe every individual. He doesn’t say Thaddeus, Bartholomew. We have, here is a case where he describes this whole group doing something, even though he doesn’t explicitly describe every single member doing it. That’s a pattern that we see in Luke’s writing.

Then when we get to Acts, we do see Peter being the spokesperson, but we see that same collective description of apostolic preaching, like in Acts 4:33, the apostles gave their testimony of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, “Great grace was on all of them.”

In Acts chapter five, they’re hauled before the Sanhedrin. They’re charged, “Don’t do this.” Peter and the apostles answered, “We must obey God rather than men.”

And then in Acts 5:40 through 42, it says, “Summoning the apostles, they beat them and commanded them not to speak in the name of Jesus and let them go. They therefore departed from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for Jesus’ name. Every day in the temple and at home, they never stopped teaching and preaching. Jesus the Christ.”

And I do want to get your thoughts, but one element would be what Acts says there in Acts 5 about this communal preaching.

The other would be Paul’s corroboration in first Corinthians 15. And so there, we see him passing on this creed. He talks about how Jesus appeared, “to Cephas, to the 12, to James, then to all the apostles and last of all to me.”

But where it gets interesting, it says in first Corinthians 15:11, “Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believe.” I think it all really points to, I would say, the claim that all of them preached what they believed as an ordinary claim, and I think this is ordinary evidence that shows that.

It’s not an extraordinary claim that people were preaching, but it is not an evidenced claim. I totally put this as an argument of science. When I do talk about this, I talk about that the disciples disappear from reliable history as of Acts 5. That is the point at which they disappear from reliable history, though I’m not a strong believer in anything that Acts records as necessarily historically reliable. You’ve discussed, “For the bible tells me so,” before, but we will set that aside for now and still go with Acts as-

We can both agree, Acts, after Acts 5, and especially after Acts 12, does not describe Peter and the 11.

Right, and also by Acts 8, apostle comes to mean a much broader term than just the 11.

Well, how so? Luke tends to use it. It is used broader in Paul, not terribly broad, but broader.

In Acts 8, Paul and Barnabas are already being called apostles, for example.

Well, yeah, and Acts 14:14 refers to Barnabas. But when you look at all of the references in Acts, it almost always is just to the 11.

Now, in Paul, you’re right, the question of who is an apostle, it is wider than just the 11, though some of the examples you gave, you’re right in the video that it’s fuzzy, though I don’t think it’s as fuzzy necessarily, like if Aphroditus in the letter to the Philippians is called your apostle, and apostle just means messenger, so it seems like there, I think Paul is saying that if Aphroditus was the messenger of the Philippians, your messenger.

Or was sent is how I was traditionally taught it, which is probably compatible with what you’re saying.

Well, yeah. Yes, it comes from the verb sent out, but DA Carson, who’s a Greek scholar, he actually talks about this being an exegetical fallacy. The meaning of a word can’t be determined exactly from the meaning of its parts. That’s the etymological fallacy. Actually, when you look at how the word is used, it tends to be used as messenger rather than one who is sent. Now, usually those are very overlapping. You send a messenger.

Yeah, that’s a bit of a distinction, though, or difference for I think my purposes at least in terms of identifying, did we have all these people out preaching?

Well, I think it does make a difference for the case that I’m making, because I would say that if the 11 were known as apostles, and let’s say there are other apostles, like Paul talks about, in the letter to the Corinthians, he talks about the false apostles or the superlative apostles. He has a real ax to grind against these guys and they really don’t like Paul. And let’s say Timothy and Silas were apostles. That’s maybe 50/50 there. What an apostle seems to have in common is they are publicly sharing a particular message. Not all of the apostles were belong to the 11 or the 12, but if you were an apostle … Would you agree the New Testament never applies the title apostle to someone who was not known for preaching? Like, “Oh, they prayed in the temple or the synagogue and they were an apostle, but they never went out.” It seems like it’s always connected that you’re some kind of public messenger.

It’s been a while since I’ve studied the epistles that I don’t consider Pauline. Those might, but I’m willing to, I guess, grant for the sake of purposes, because for me, it only matters to the extent that apostle is synonymous with eyewitness. And I think you would agree with me that at some point, apostle stopped being hard and fast equal to eyewitness.

No, I agree with you that there was a time where apostle and the word … Here’s how I would look at how the word is used in the New Testament. I would see in both cases it refers to a messenger, one who shares the message of Jesus Christ. But it was understood in a special sense when it was applied to the 11 because they had been personal witnesses of the resurrection and had known Jesus prior to his resurrection.

But, because I guess when I was watching your reply, it just seemed like a lot of an overly skeptical claim to say, “Well,” like we end in Acts chapter five and it says, “Oh, every day in the temple and at home they never stop teaching and preaching Jesus,” to suddenly, “Well, they disappear, and we have no reason to think that they did do that.” I have no reason to think that they didn’t do that.

Fair enough, but you’re offering them up again to say their preaching guarantees that they were willing to put themselves in harm’s way. And I’m saying, where’s the evidence they were preaching? And you’re saying inference.

Right.

And I am not willing to follow down inference to become to guarantee some third proposition, right?

Well, would you agree at least … Now, what I would say here is that inference is something we all have to do with a set of facts that might not explicitly say something.

I think it was Andrew Logue who gives the example of if Mary says, “Peter and I, we exchanged our wedding vows,” you just say that, “Oh, but it doesn’t say that Peter said it to Mary and Mary said it to Peter.” I would look at two different lines of evidence. Here we have Luke grinding an ax, talking about them preaching, and we have Paul in first Corinthians 15 saying, “Whether it is I or they, we preach and you have believed,” that he is talking about the 12, James, the brother of Jesus. Both lines say these people preached and believe this.

I have no reason to doubt that unless I have some kind of overwhelming skepticism that presumes they didn’t unless they did. Why should I doubt Luke and Paul’s claims about them about preaching? And Paul of course is even saying this right into the Corinthians 20 years after the events that take place in Acts 5.

Let me just … The first Corinthians 15, when Paul says, “Either I nor they,” I was actually going to quickly check the they, but I don’t think that they carries over all the way back to … For example, the they doesn’t apply to the 500, for example, right? You can’t just say everyone in that creed can go into my who is preaching. Would you agree with that?

Well, yeah, I think it might be harder to say that they were out preaching formally, but I think that if someone has the title of apostle within the church, there’s no example of that title being used for someone who’s not publicly sharing a message.

But I guess I just want to deal with one Corinthians 15:11 first, because he doesn’t even use apostle there, right? He’s just talking about how he’s better than them, right?

He does talk about the apostles. He says, “For I am the least of the apostles unfit to be called an apostle.”

Oh, you’re right, yeah, in verse nine. Okay. But again, we’ve agreed that Paul doesn’t strictly always mean eyewitness when he talks about apostles, right?

Right, because every apostle preached, but not every apostle was an eyewitness is my [inaudible 01:05:14].

I guess I don’t don’t go with you on that first half of that sentence.

Right, but you agree there’s no example of someone called an apostle that we know was not preaching?

No, because everyone is very vague about who the apostles are. The very few times that they are named, yes, I would agree that those are people who are preached, but it seems like at least the church fathers, for example, seem to very generously use apostles as time goes on in particular. It becomes looser and looser as to who … I’m not saying the New Testament does this, but if you want to point to the church fathers, and you haven’t, to your credit, as saying that this proves that they were out preaching, that makes it problematic. And that’s part of why I sometimes bristle at the apostle definition.

Okay, so I think that looking at our different … Let’s make sure I understand each other’s position as we draw all of this together. My position would be there’s good evidence that the original witnesses of the resurrection whose belief was rooted in what they thought was a supernatural experience, the 11, James, the brother of Jesus, and Paul, there is good evidence that they were sincere in that belief because they were willing to endure suffering for publicly preaching this.

Your objection, your video and that you’re carrying through here, is that we can only be confident that some of them were doing this, maybe Peter, Paul, James, the brother of Jesus, because he maintained a leadership position as the bishop of Jerusalem, maybe John the apostle, James, the son of Zebedee. You’re questioning whether some of these other guys were out there doing this.

That’s where we’re disagreeing if we can know that they were preaching or not. I see no reason to doubt that. Would you agree that whoever was preaching this message of the resurrection during this time period was at risk of violent reprisal by the Jewish authorities?

I think to less extent than is sometimes narrated. Again, that goes back to my evangelical background that often this is overstated, but certainly, it would’ve been a reality for church leadership. The church leadership would’ve potentially been in harm’s way for sure.

Okay. And so why would they have been in harm’s way?

I think we have reasonable record that there were pockets of persecution, sometimes official persecution, sometimes unofficial persecution.

Well, do you think that the Jewish leadership or zealous Jews were engaged in violent attacks against Christians during this time period?

I think so. I think the only evidence I need for that is I’m accepting Paul’s own testimony that Paul was such a persecutor.

Which would corroborate what we have in Acts.

Right. Sure. But again, we talked earlier James, son of Zebedee. I think that was the right James. For me and for Sean McDowell, when you get to Acts being the only source for that, that even someone like Sean McDowell reduces confidence and I certainly reduce confidence a great deal, you seem to be relying very heavily on the first five chapters of Acts as your evidence that the apostles were out doing anything. Let me be more specific, the 11.

But Paul, but Paul in his letters also talks about meeting with the other apostles in Jerusalem talking about the message being spread, Peter going to the Gentiles.

But in Jerusalem, he names individuals, right? He says in Galatians 1, he meets with Peter and James, the brother of Jesus, and in Galatians 2, John is also there when he comes back. Again, I would say that me as a skeptic, I need to actually account for those three individuals.

Part of the argument in general that you make in is group appearances and the group of them acts as this guarantee. And when you want me to build a house of defeating methodological naturalism on the sincerity of some people, it is reasonable for me to say, do you have more than one ideologically motivated source that says they even were doing this thing? And that doesn’t seem to be the thing that is shining through. There isn’t some other source that I can go to and say, “Aha, that’s what Bartholomew is up to. That’s what Mathias was up to.” [inaudible 01:10:46] I can’t build a house on that foundation. That foundation is too shaky.

Well, okay, so are there any scholars who would agree with you to say who would say this? Beyond Peter, Paul, the Jameses and John, we have absolutely no idea what the other 11 of the 11 were doing. For all we know, they could have just left and abandoned the mission. Is there any scholar that would promote that theory?

Dale Allison, I interviewed on this topic, does agree with me that Acts is the only source for this. And actually in his resurrection book, he does acknowledge that in his view, and he’s a Christian man, that this whole idea that they were out preaching isn’t a very strong one. That’s the first one off the top of my head would be Dale Allison.

Would he say that they were, I guess, and that would get me back to my example … Why did he say … because there’s a difference, I said, between out preaching versus being publicly associated with a ministry. You might have had other roles. If you look, for example, like in the gospels, Jesus would go and preach. You had the 11 and 12 with them. They’re doing things like crowd control, feeding people, but they’re intimately connected with this and are part of the inner circle and have to deal with reprisals from others who would want to stone them, things like that. Would Allison say that we have no idea that the other seven, that they even remained in the movement at all?

I think he would. I actually went through my hypothesis with him, my minimal witness hypothesis, and he seemed to be completely on board with the evidence isn’t strong. I didn’t ask him that question specifically because for me, that is equally in the realm of speculation, right? It doesn’t matter to me.

For me, they disappear from reliable history, if I’m willing to call Acts reliable history, which I’m not specifically. But if I’m counting it, they disappear in chapter five, either from preaching or from being behind the scenes washing communion cups. I’m not sure what you think they might’ve been doing, and nor were they necessarily in charge of whether or not they were still being associated with the ministry. Let’s say some of them went back to fishing. They had enough. They threw up their hands. They got called into the Sanhedrin. The Sanhedrin said, “Stop it,” so they said, “Oh, let’s go fish.”

That doesn’t mean the church didn’t continue to use their names because they were still part of the 11. This isn’t a area where … I know you like to say that the Christian community is tight-knit, but that doesn’t mean it’s immune from people saying, “Oh yeah, Bartholomew was totally on board with us, but you can’t reach him.”

But there are examples in the New Testament. I gave two examples in first Timothy 1:19 where prominent individuals who leave the faith are named as examples and warnings to others.

Fair enough. You would know that I don’t think that second Timothy is-

First Timothy.

Sorry, either of the Timothys are necessarily even written in-

By Paul.

Well, by Paul or while he was alive. These are-

Right, and that’s why I said [inaudible 01:14:18]. That’s why said the author at first. That’s why I said the author at first.

Perfect. But I guess I’m saying that’s in an era of the church that is different then. They’re already creating in first and second Timothy structures. They’re having elders and they’re having different roles and they’re starting to formalize and they’re no longer in this Jesus is coming back anytime soon apocalyptic mode.

Yeah, I would still disagree with that those structures weren’t present early. I think the letter of James was actually written pretty early, before the temple was destroyed. And it talks about [inaudible 01:14:50] and elders.

But you would agree that there was a church era of disorganization and then an era of organization.

I would disagree. Now I agree there was a time before churches were founded. Obviously in the first two decades, you have these churches that are founded and planted in Ephesus, Thessalonica, Corinth, Rome. But the ones who are doing this, they all seem to have connections back to the apostles, to have apostolic connection, and then looking at these letters that they receive and having that connection and then needing the council of Jerusalem to settle a dispute amongst the churches about the inclusion of the Gentiles.

I would agree that it becomes more organized. By the second century, there’s a clear distinction between the bishops, the priests, and the deacons. But those terms are already used in a hierarchical form, even in the earliest epistles and Acts.

All right, so let me tie it together and then I’ll let you have a thought. But I think we’ve been able to narrow a lot here that when it comes to this argument about whether they were sincere, the martyrdom argument, it’s strongest when you say, “Look, these people were willing to spread the Christian message even knowing that they would suffer violence and possibly death unexpectedly from a mob or something like that.”

I think we both agree that that was a legitimate threat that they faced. We both agree that this certainly was the case at least for some of these original witnesses of what they thought was supernatural, like Peter, Paul, James, the brother of Jesus, James, the son of Zebedee, and John.

Ultimately, I think where we disagree is whether we can hold that the other of the 11 continued to be apostles and be messengers or whether we’re in a historically agnostic position on that. I would say when I look at other scholars on this, they are pretty convinced of the sincerity of all the apostles. And it’s not just, by the way, because I know you’ve said this before on your podcast and other atheists might say this, “Well, New Testament scholars, they got to sign a little statement, ‘I’m not going to go against the Bible,’ so it’s like, well, what else they going to say, right they got to sign their little creeds”-

Statement of faith. Yep.

Yeah. But I mean, most respected New Testament scholars, these are people that teach at Oxford, Harvard, Yale, Duke, and many of them deny Paul wrote many of his letters. They deny inerrancy. EP Sanders … I would call him a post-liberal Protestant, he taught at Duke … In his book, The Historical Figure of Jesus, he says, “I do not regard deliberate fraud as a worthwhile explanation of Easter faith. For some of those in first Corinthians 15:3 through 8 and the canonical resurrection narratives were to spend the rest of their lives proclaiming they had seen the risen Lord and several of them would die for their cause.”

I think ultimately, even with someone like Sanders, he might be lie between us. He might not go with me that it’s all the apostles, but I think he would say there’s a substantial number of them to be sincere witnesses, but [inaudible 01:18:14].

Well, my ongoing frustration-

Why don’t you go ahead and wrap it up?

Well, my ongoing frustration with, and I talked to Bart Ehrman about this literally today, was the general frustration that when people say apostles, scholars, they are using it in this very vague sense and that when it comes down to this specific argument, if you want to say they were sincere because they were putting their own personal lives at risk, then this vague notion that there were sincere believers, because I don’t deny that there were sincere believers. What I don’t see solid evidence for that positive claim, and you’re making a positive claim, that 11 were out there doing it.

Yeah.

There isn’t strong evidence for that positive claim. And this flows into then … because of course the reason I care about this is because of course I think that hallucination is remarkably possible for this because I feel like there need be only two people hallucinating, Paul, well after the church is established, and one person prior to Paul becoming a convert. And then if you are in that realm, then a lot of the objections that you and others raise about hallucinations and about whether there are group appearances and all these kind of things, that all falls apart and it’s easy to explain those things.

When I was seeking, this was a linchpin for me. This falling apart of this martyr argument was huge for my deconversion, for precisely that reason. We just do not have positive evidence that all these people went out and did things. I thank you for having me on and allowing me to rail against imprecise language. I do feel like you are going to continue to use imprecise language for this. You will continue to use apostles generally when you’re saying, “Ah, it’s four or five guys.”

No, because yeah, and I think for me, I think you’ll continue to use an overly skeptical criteria that refuses to believe someone did something unless they’re individually called out in a text versus multiple sources saying a particular group, like this 11, who are commonly referred to as apostles in a special sense, were doing something we see in the beginning chapters of Acts [inaudible 01:20:54].

And by multiple sources, you mean something beyond Acts?

Acts and Paul. I would say Paul references the others and a communal description. But even if it’s just Acts, I think there’s also the circumstantial evidence of multiple networks of churches being founded. I don’t think just Peter and Paul were doing this. I think others intimately connected with Jesus were founding this. But anyway, we were about to end on such a nice note-

Sorry.

… and I felt like I had to [inaudible 01:21:21].

I’m sorry. Let’s rewind. Let’s rewind.

You got saucy and I got saucy and we made a good old gumbo of a dialogue, which is fine. Yeah. I agree with you that we have to be precise in language, but I wouldn’t agree with the overly skeptical conclusion of what we think happened, though I do think ultimately for Christians and non-Christians, I think what we ought to do is, and I appreciate you at least doing this, instead of just being like, “We have no idea what happened.” You would say, “I think what’s most probable is Peter and Paul are the sources of this belief, and here’s how they arrived at their belief in a naturalistic fashion,” and then for people to assess your hypothesis, if that’s plausible, versus an alternative one that says, “Well, here’s other data this doesn’t account for and I think this is better.” I think all of us should be able to craft … It’s good to craft some kind of narrative to allow people to weigh the evidences for and against each possible narrative.

Awesome. All right. Well, that was fun. I really enjoyed chatting with you about that. And then yeah, maybe we could do another dialogue or debate we could get into. I know some people might not be happy like, “Oh, you just talked about one nerdy thing.” It’s like, no, this is important and it’s nice to get deeper into that. But I would like to talk about the hallucinations, the source of Christian belief. Maybe that could be a follow-up we can do.

Sure. I’d be happy to.

All righty, thank you very much. And do let our listeners know and viewers know where they can check out more of your channel.

Sure. I’m Paulogia on most social media, P-A-U-L-O-G-I-A, in particular on YouTube. I have two channels, Paulogia, where I do scripted videos, and Paulogia Live, where I have live discussions like this one, so check out both.

All righty. Thank you guys. Go and check that out. I’ll link to his channel below. And yeah, hopefully we’ll have other formal dialogues and debates, have more content on the resurrection, definitely.

And if you guys like what we do, if you want to see more dialogues like this, if you want more content from our channel, be sure to like this video, hit subscribe and definitely support us at trenthornpodcast.com.

Thank you guys so much and hope you all have a very blessed day.

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