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Sean McDowell: The Fate of the Apostles

Knight & Rose Show — Wintery Knight and Desert Rose
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Sean McDowell: The Fate of the Apostles

May 10, 2025
Knight & Rose Show
Knight & Rose ShowWintery Knight and Desert Rose

Wintery Knight and Desert Rose welcome Dr. Sean McDowell to discuss the fate of the twelve Apostles, as well as Paul and James the brother of Jesus. Many Christians incorporate the willingness of the earliest Christians to die for their beliefs in their case for the resurrection of Jesus. Sean takes a deep dive into history to find out what we know about these early Christians.

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Show notes and transcript: https://winteryknight.com/2025/05/10/knight-and-rose-show-63-sean-mcdowell-fate-of-the-apostles

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Transcript

Welcome to the Knight & Rose Show, where we discuss practical ways of living out an authentic Christian worldview. I'm Wintery Knight. And I'm Desert Rose.
Welcome, Rose.
So today, we're delighted to welcome a guest onto the show, Dr. Sean McDowell. Sean McDowell is a professor of apologetics at Talbot School of Theology at Biola University.
He has earned two master's degrees, one in philosophy and one in theology, both from the Talbot School of Theology. And he has a Ph.D. in apologetics and worldview studies from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Sean is the author, editor, or co-author of over 20 books, including my favorite introductory apologetics book, Is God Just a Human Invention, which he co-authored with Jonathan Merle.
That book covers every topic. It's my favorite book to give to people who are asking to get into apologetics. But his most recent academic book is the second edition of The Fate of the Apostles, published by Rutledge, a really good academic publisher.
He is the co-host of the Think Biblically podcast, where he talks about the intersection of faith and culture. And he also has a popular YouTube channel and blog. He's also an experienced public speaker, including something close to my heart, speaking on university campuses.
Sean has also participated in many debates, including with people you would recognize, Matthew Vines, Michael Shermer, and James Corbett. So, Sean, welcome to The Night in Rose Show. It's a treat to be here.
It's about time you guys invited me on.
Just kidding. Thank you so much for being here.
We're excited to talk to you about this topic, The Fate of the Apostles.
So, when I'm talking to people, I mean, probably on a monthly basis, people will say to me, well, yeah, I mean, we know that the death and resurrection of Jesus are authentic because all of the apostles, except maybe John, died for their beliefs, for their faith. And so we know that's true.
And yet that's not actually accurate.
So, Sean has looked into this topic and you actually did your PhD work on this topic. So, this resulted in the book, The Fate of the Apostles.
The second edition has come out pretty recently. I have loved this topic since I first heard about it. I've been mentioning it to Wintery Night and saying we need to do a show on this.
So, I'm really excited about the topic. So, let me just jump right in here and say, what is the most accurate way to use the fate of the apostles as part of an apologetic argument for the resurrection of Jesus? That's a great place to start. And I would say, first off, I appreciate what both of you do.
Wintery Night, I've been following you for a long time, reposting your stuff, sharing it. So, it is a treat to be here. And you're right.
It's almost every month that somebody is misrepresenting this argument.
In fact, just yesterday on Twitter, people now tag me all the time. Someone with 3 million followers, I won't say who it is, said something effective.
All the apostles, he might have said except for John, believed they'd seen the risen Jesus, died grisly deaths, refusing to recant, you know, in something like, therefore Christianity is true, something to that effect. And I just respond as graciously as I could. I said, hey, love your passion, your interest in apologetics, but I really don't think the way you frame this can be substantiated historically.
And it matters because we lose credibility in the eyes of the world when we misrepresent arguments. And frankly, we all say that truth matters, so we should care about getting the facts right. I would say, generally, this is one piece of a larger argument for the resurrection that establishes, I think, confidently that the apostles aren't liars.
They at least minimally believe that Jesus had risen from the grave and appeared to them. So the way I frame it is our earliest account was that Jesus died and appeared to his followers, 1 Corinthians 15, an early creed. The apostles report that they believe they'd seen the risen Jesus.
Gary Habermas says this is a minimal fact that's strongly established by the evidence and accepted by the vast majority of scholars. They put themselves in harm's way because of this belief. And we know at least some of them are martyred, and there's no evidence, which I think we would expect if it had happened, of any of the apostles recanting.
So they're not liars. They really believe Jesus had risen from the grave and appeared to them. That's a great answer.
So our goal with this is kind of to equip our listeners to rise up above the level of kind of regular rank and file Christian and get into some conversation. So they may hear objections. So, for example, in Bart Ehrman's debate with William Lane Craig, Bart is a skeptic, and Bart said that he had read all the sources for the first 500 years of Christianity, and he implied in the debate that there was no evidence that any of the apostles were martyred for their belief in the resurrection.
So that's the kind of objection we might hear. Is Bart correct in that? It's interesting you cite this debate because I actually assign this to my students at Biola. I teach graduate Talbot School of Theology, but I have one undergrad class called Gospel Kingdom Culture.
We spend a full three hours on the resurrection. I assign this because I wanted to see one of the best skeptics debating the best apologist William Lane Craig. And that line that he said in that debate in response to William Lane Craig somewhat surprised me.
Now, I don't know exactly what Bart Ehrman would consider evidence for the resurrection. So he's going to have to qualify that specifically. But in at least three passages from the first and second century, which are early sources historically speaking, Bart Ehrman concedes or admits in somewhat of his more obscure writings that there's an early tradition of the death of the apostles.
So one is in John 21. I think Bart makes it very clear that at least they're reporting an early tradition written in the 90s probably, so three decades after the death of Peter. So he says here's an early first century source, Clement of Rome, who's also a first century source written from Rome, by the way, in probably the 90s.
Bart says there's an awareness of an early tradition that Christians believed that Peter had been martyred. Then you get into the second century, it's Polycarp saying letter to the Philippians. I think it's nine, too.
And Bart Ehrman says again that this is a early tradition, that there's an awareness and belief in the death of the apostles. So there's at least three early sources historically speaking that he says in his writings are at least indicative of a known early tradition. Now, maybe Bart starts with the assumption that we can't trust any Christian sources whatsoever and can't be considered evidence.
Maybe that's why he says there's no early evidence, I don't know. Now, with that said, there's some apostles for which there's no good early evidence within the 500 years. Yes, Simon the Zealot, Bartholomew, Thaddeus.
That's definitely true for a number of the apostles. But to make a blanket statement that there's no evidence that any of the apostles died as martyrs within that period, I think is overturned by the evidence. And Barth himself seems to admit that there's at least three relatively early sources of people aware of this tradition.
Yeah, looking over the quote, he actually says having read every Christian source. So I don't see why he would reject the three that you mentioned. He's not expecting it to be non-Christian sources.
All right, let me go on to another question. This is another objection that I think our listeners might like to, might hear and might like a response to. How would you respond to the claim that the willingness of Muslims to die for their beliefs is proof of Islam? This is such a good question, Winery, and perhaps the most common one that I get is that there are other people who have died at, you know, as martyrs.
Does that prove that their faith is true? And Candida Moss, for example, is probably one of the most well-known critics of this argument. She wrote a book called The Myth of Persecution and said that Christians kind of like to think of their martyrs as unique as if there's not martyrs in other faiths. Well, there might be some Christians who've made that argument, but thoughtful ones certainly don't.
The question is not, are there martyrs in other beliefs? Of course there are. The question is, what are people martyrs for? Now, by the way, I'm not going to call the 9-11 terrorist martyrs. They're murderers.
There's a difference between laying down your life at the hand of another and taking the life of thousands of innocent people. So they don't qualify as martyrs to me. They're murderers.
But nonetheless, they were willing to sacrifice their lives for what they believed. We have Buddhist monks who lit themselves on fire, and just the videos of this are harrowing to protest the Vietnam War. They actually show it.
There's Maccabean martyrs, you know, Jews before the time of Christ and Second Maccabees, willing to lay down their lives and be tortured just, you know, horrifically. So of course there's other people, kamikaze pilots, willing to lay down their lives for cause. The question is, what cause are people laying down their lives for? So Buddhists, of course, to protest the war.
Kamikaze pilots, just, you know, in the honor and cause of their empire, so to speak. Well, the Maccabean martyrs refused to compromise the law. That's what they laid their lives down for.
The apostles said that they had seen the risen Jesus and had conquered the grave. I've been reading the Gospel of John every day in its entirety for a few weeks. And it never struck me before, but the last miracle report in John is in John 11, which is the raising of Lazarus.
And Jesus says, I am the resurrection and the life. And then in 12, it's the triumphal entry. So it's like the last thing Jesus does, at least reported in John, is show him I have power over life and death.
The grave is not the end. This gives them confidence. When they see Jesus come back, they now remember these things and are willing to lay down their life with the belief that Jesus had risen from the grave.
Now, one more distinction. Muslim terrorists died, what? I mean, you do the math 1,400 years or so after the time of Mohammed. At best, they're receiving this third, fourth, fifth, sixth, 20th hand, right? If somebody, you know, more of an example, but someone puts a gun to my head on stage and says, Sean, do you believe this? I say yes and die.
That doesn't prove anything about the truth of Christianity because I'm so far removed from the events. But the apostles lived and ate and traveled with Jesus and believed that they saw him after his death. So their testimonies are far more intimately tied to the truth of these events than mine or Muslim terrorists would be to the truth of Islam.
Yeah, that's great. I like how Gary Habermas says some people will die for something they believe to be true, but people don't die willingly for something they know to be a lie. And the disciples were in a position to know, as you pointed out.
Historically speaking, let's talk about the evidence that does exist and what we do know. We've talked about what people claim and that it's not really all that accurate. So which apostles' deaths are the most supported? So I wrote my dissertation on this, like you said, and then wrote an academic book in 2015, just completed a 10-year update.
I've been interacting with scholars. I've been reading, following the literature, and just in this 10-year update have refined where I really think the evidence points. And I would put the apostles into different buckets.
For example, one would be the highest probability. Second would be at least like 51%, more plausible than not, but much weaker. Some are indeterminate.
I just don't think we know historically speaking. And then there's some that I think we have better reason than not to believe they died naturally. So those in the highest category, I would place four apostles.
Now, by the way, I studied the 12 disciples, obviously Matthias, instead of Judas. And then James, the brother of Jesus, the leader in the early church, and Paul, who were not members of the 12, those 14. I could have gone further and studied Luke or studied Mark or Timothy.
You just got to draw the line somewhere. And so I studied those 14. And of those 14, I think there's four that we can place in the highest category.
Two of those are of the 12. And that's just a fact where history points. So I would place Peter, Paul, James, the son of Zebedee, and James, the brother of Jesus.
And that's because we have—so, for example, for Peter, depending on how you assess the sources, some are more clear than others. You have in the first and second century about eight to ten sources that unanimously and consistently point towards Peter dying as a martyr. I would say, Paul, you have one first century source, Clement of Rome, instead of two that we have with Peter, and probably six to eight more.
But I still think we're in very high likelihood Paul died as a martyr. James, the brother of Jesus, what's interesting is we have a secular source with Josephus. We have Christian sources in the second century, and we have Gnostic sources that might be second, third, or fourth century that tell a common narrative of his death that I think is best explained as a martyrdom.
And then James, the son of Zebedee, is the second apostle who is mentioned in the Scriptures alone in Acts 12.2 in a very straightforward, historically reliable account that's not flowered or exaggerated, that given the historicity of Acts gives me reason to believe it's reliable. So those four, I would say, we have very strong historical evidence, died as martyrs. Yeah.
And what are a couple of the criteria? You mentioned there are multiple sources. You mentioned non-Christian source.
Can you think of a couple of the other criteria that kind of affirm and solidify those are in the top tier, most likely, highly likely, they were martyred? New Testament scholar Marcus Bachmule, who's written one of the best books on Peter, talks about what he calls living memory, which would take us up to the end of the second century.
And we start thinking about what traditions I can tell that there's a personal connection with. My grandpa on my dad's side was born in 1898. Wow.
Now, I never met him, but my dad can tell stories of his grandpa, which is back in the middle of the 1800s. Like, you just start thinking about how far back can go. And so I try to favor sources that are in the first two centuries.
That doesn't mean a source in that period is reliable or one afterwards is not. It's just a criteria that I laid out, and we favor those. And so you look at the number of sources.
You have to look at the clarity of the text as well. I mean, you don't have the early church fathers asking the questions you and I are asking right now. They're not talking about that.
They're doing doctrine or they're writing instructions for the church, and they include references to this more incidental for teaching. So we have to kind of pull them out and try to assess them accordingly. So it's clarity of the statement.
It's reliability of the sources. It's the number of sources. So it's multiple attestation in different kinds of forms.
And so in James, again, you have Gnostic, Christian, and you have secular sources. And so it's really the bottom line. It's the quantity and quality of sources and history.
You just have to make assessments that are probabilistic. So I created a 10 point scale from least probable to most probable and indeterminate in the middle. And I just publicly assess.
Here's what my conclusions are. Here's how I came to this and invite people to look at it and see if I've overstated it, understated it, or got it right. That's just how you have to do history.
Absolutely. Yeah, I think some people listening who are kind of used to maybe a church background may be thinking this is kind of a step down from what they're used to. But actually, this is actually opening up a kind of a new way of interacting with non-Christians.
So I spent most of my career in IT working with other developers, primarily Hindus and Muslims, from places like India and countries like that. And whenever I laid out my reasons for liking a passage from the New Testament, using those criteria, I mean, I had secular Jewish guys, just the most diverse backgrounds were really interested. And they would say things to me like, I'd say to them, I'm really conservative.
I'm a fundamentalist.
And like LGBT software developers would say to me, you're not a fundamentalist. If you can state the views that disagree with you and explain why someone would hold them, and you can explain why this piece is more likely to be historical than this piece, you're not a fundamentalist.
And so you're going out for lunch with all these diversity of tough-minded, STEM background software engineers, and they're very curious about what you have to say because you take this approach. And opening the conversation, not just saying, the Bible says this, that's the end of it. All right, let me ask, do we really have to show that all the apostles were martyred for their beliefs, or is it enough for the sake of this argument for the resurrection, that they were willing to suffer and willing to be persecuted, and that their steadfastness inspired the people around them to carry the history of Jesus forward and even change the society that they were in because of it? That's a really important distinction between showing they're martyred and they're willing to face persecution and a harsh treatment and martyrdom.
For a few reasons. Number one, I think it matches up with the evidence. And again, we should care about where the evidence points.
But I also think there's a lot of skeptics who've engaged with this and have said, you know what, this willingness argument is stronger and it's more substantiated. So we don't want to understate the argument. We also don't want to understate it.
And again, it doesn't follow from whether they are martyrs or willing to be martyrs, that the resurrection happened or Christianity is true. That is a non sequitur. We're just going beyond what the evidence points.
We're simply pointing out that they really believe this. They're not inventing a story. They're not liars.
Well, how do we assess that somebody really believes something? Well, today, like people virtue signal all over the place on, you know, Twitter and X or they write a blog and it's just like it's a thing people do now, but it really doesn't typically cost them anything. But when somebody proclaims something and they take personal like shots, like losing a job and the reputation for it and refuse to back down, you at least think minimally, gosh, this person probably really believes it. They're not making up the story to get piled on and canceled and shunned and lose a job.
They have a depth of conviction that this is true. Well, that's the case with the apostles. We're just simply asking, can we trust them as reliable witnesses? Well, one way is to look at they record embarrassing material.
Another way is to look at they make statements like going up to Jerusalem and you find out, oh, it actually was from where they were up to Jerusalem. They get incidental details, correct. But they also are willing to proclaim that Jesus has risen from the grave amidst being, you know, canceled on their culture, being thrown in prison, being beaten.
Stephen martyred early in Acts 7 and they're putting themselves in harm's way. What does this tell us? They really believe Jesus had risen and appeared to them. So willingness is the key argument, but I think we can just make it slightly stronger and say, yeah, they're willing to.
And guess what? And we also know that at least some of them did die as martyrs and there's no good evidence that any of them recanted. Excellent point. How do non-Christians account for these close associates of Jesus being willing to suffer and multiple occasions die for their beliefs about Jesus? There's probably a lot of different explanations for this.
I haven't heard like a holistic account that brings all of these together, but some would say things like, look, even though Jesus said to like, pick up your cross and follow me and give up power, there was still power within the Christian community that they would be revered. They would have some authority. So you'd be amazed at what people are willing to do for some power within the Christian community.
And if you say you saw the risen Jesus and are willing to suffer for it, you could get that kind of respect within the Christian community. That's one kind of argument that I've heard. Others will just challenge the reports within themselves and say the letters of Paul are not reliable.
The New Testament is reliable. We cannot trust that they even saw Jesus in the first place. These stories are added later on because it makes us more likely to believe them if they're willing to suffer for these claims.
So that's a couple that comes to mind. I'm sure there's more than that. Yeah, you mentioned 1 Corinthians 15, I think three to seven.
How early is that in terms of reporting the basic facts about the appearances to different people? So 1 Corinthians 15, three through five or through seven, there's debate about exactly how far that creed goes. Paul says, I'm passing on to you, Christians at Corinth, what had been passed on to me? And then he gives this short statement about Jesus dying, being buried, dying for our sins, being buried, rising on the third day and appearing to Peter the 12, James the 500, and then Paul says, and an untimely fashion also appeared to me. Even critical scholars will recognize that 1 Corinthians was written by Paul.
It's one of the seven letters that critical scholars accept. So Paul writes this in the mid 50s. And Paul says, I'm passing on something to you that had been passed on to me.
Now we're at least earlier to the event. So the question is, when did he receive it? Well, Paul comes to Jerusalem somewhere within about three to five years after the crucifixion of Jesus. And then again, 14 years later.
So some scholars will date it to his first visit, which I think makes the most sense because 14 years later, he's speaking with authority on doctrine. And, you know, who's the scholar who said clearly when Paul goes to visit, you know, they weren't just talking about like the weather. They're talking about what they saw in this Christian movement.
So I think a good case can be made that it is within that three to five year window, but certainly earlier than when Corinthians itself was written. I read an article a while back by Auntie Wright, where he was talking about different, he called the mutations, which are changes in the beliefs of the Jewish followers of Jesus that occurred just a few, you know, just right after his death. For example, like their views on the meaning and the importance of the doctrine of the resurrection changed.
It took on a whole new level of relevance and importance compared to previously. So how do non-Christian scholars account for these kinds of changes in the early Christian church? This is a good question, and I got to be totally honest with you a little bit outside of my expertise. I mean, this is Auntie Wright's lane that he talks about a lot.
I think, you know, non-Christian scholars should explain this differently. Some are just going to say, look, they were different dying and rising messiahs. And because of factors like transportation and where we were at in the Roman Empire, eventually one of these messiahs was going to take.
And the story of Jesus, because of how charismatic he was, had a follower like Paul, was just able to take off in a way that other stories were not. That's one general approach. Others will say, once the Christians were kind of convinced to proclaim the messiah, they go through the Old Testament scriptures and begin to find passages and just use them freely to advance the story of Jesus that they believed and entertained and kind of used the Old Testament loosely in a fashion to put forward some of those ideas.
I mean, in some fashion, you're just going to have to have some explanation apart from the apostles really seeing Jesus and this transforming them. And it's honestly, like I said earlier, I've been reading John and it's amazing how it says frequently, the scriptures proclaim me, the Father testifies about me, my works testify about me, Moses testified about me, Isaiah testifies about me. And yet the apostles don't really get it until he resurrects and they see him and then they look back and go, oh my goodness, now it makes sense.
Now I see everything through the lens of who Jesus is. The reason I don't think they're making this up is because you have to account for why in the first place did they think that Jesus was the risen prophet, Holy One of God and Messiah, if he hadn't risen from the grave, what sufficiently explains that transformation that fit with the Jewish scriptures, but also had some surprising elements to it. I just haven't heard an adequate explanation for that apart from the one that we consistently have from the earliest followers, namely that Jesus had died and appeared to us.
Okay, so I guess I would find that objection more convincing if we had some evidence for it. To me, it just sounds like a speculation. In the years following Jesus' death, the Christian community had a huge impact on Western civilization.
We've read a lot about that in books like Rodney Stark's work, talking about how human rights and compassion for the poor, sexual ethics, view of women and children, education, violence, all were transformed for the better because of Christianity. We read from more recent works like Tom Holland's book Dominion about a lot of these huge impacts that Christianity had on Western civilization. I know J. Warner Wallace talks about the art as well in different areas where Christianity has had this huge world-altering impact.
The calendar was changed because of Jesus and all of that. Do you have any thoughts on how non-Christian scholars account for those types of changes? I think the points that you raise are pretty incontestable. Just the radical human rights revolution that traces back to Christian-starting hospitals and orphanages and caring for the poor and widows like James says, this is good religion.
I don't think, as far as I've seen, it's contestable that these revolutions were brought in over decades and centuries of the Christian faith. What's going to be contested is just simply the explanation for it. Is there going to clearly say it's not supernatural? It doesn't point towards the divine? It's just teachings that Christians had.
And the Roman Empire was ready because of maybe how barbaric or sexually immoral it was for a revolutionary teaching to the contrary. And I've also heard some scholars say things like, you know what, yeah, Christians had some novel ideas, but it's not as novel as you think. If you go to other traditions, you'll find similar ideas embedded in these other religions.
It just kind of happens to be Christianity ended up having a bigger impact. So probably one of those two would be the typical routes they would take as far as what I've heard. Okay, yeah.
So those are pretty weak objections. But if people have questions about those, they can read that in the book. I'm wondering if you might be willing to talk a little bit more about the tiers that you put the Apostles in as far as you talked about who was highly probable to have been martyred.
I think the next category is actually pretty interesting too. Do you want to share maybe who you put in that category and a little bit about why? Yeah, so there's two disciples of the twelve. I would put in the at least more plausible than not.
Now we're dealing with less sources, later sources, and really less reliable sources. So Thomas, I would put in that. We have two sources probably from the turn of the second century to the third pointing towards his martyrdom.
I have less confidence in them even though there's a historical core. I think to the acts of Thomas, there's a king that's mentioned and coins have been found that line up with the king in India during that time. So it's not a purely pure fabrication, but we're dealing with 200 to 220.
So now we're outside of the window that I mentioned earlier, historically speaking, the living memory. And then we're also dealing with the oral traditions passed on by the St. Thomas Christians that are not written down but passed on through songs and poems and word of mouth and other traditions. So I still conclude like the question I asked myself is like, okay, if I was forced to bet my house on their fate, what would I do? And both Thomas and Andrew, I'd say, okay, if I was forced to, I'd bet on it, but a lot less confidence.
Like Peter, I would eagerly bet my house on that one and Paul and the other two. And I put Andrew in the same category. We have two traditions, acts of Andrew, second century, a Hippolytus on the 12th, probably into the third century, that both reported being crucified, but in very different ways.
So that's enough to tell me we have two sources. It's at least more plausible than not, but just admittedly, historically somewhat weak. So I would put only those two categories in the second tier.
The third category, natural deaths. When I first started this investigation and wrote my dissertation, I thought only John fell in that category. Although in the past decade, there had been more scholars arguing for the martyrdom of John in ways that surprised me.
And they make some interesting arguments, but I just am not historically convinced by it, as convenient as that would be for my argument. I just don't think the evidence is there. But two apostles I shifted on are Matthew and Philip.
Matthew, an early source from the second century, Clement of Alexandria, has a writer named Heraklion. And he refers to four apostles that, as I read it, seem to be saying they died by martyrdom. But then I had a scholar from France reach out to me.
He goes, Sean, I don't know what early manuscripts you're reading. I was like the English translation, the Antingucine Fathers. He said, in the earliest Greek manuscripts, there's a negation there that changes the meaning of it.
I mean, the word no quite literally gives you the opposite meaning. So I checked with a few other scholars, and I was like, I think he's right about this. Now, I have no idea why it's not in the Antingucine Fathers.
I don't really care at this point, but they made a big error in missing this in some fashion. And then I reread the context and was like, you know what? I actually think when you read it more closely, it's saying there's people that proclaim Jesus but die naturally, and people who proclaim Jesus and lose their lives because of it. And Matthew is mentioned as one who proclaims Jesus but dies naturally.
And there's one or two other early sources of his natural death, and I couldn't find a martyrdom account until the fifth century. So I think Matthew probably died naturally. Philip, we have the same accountant in Heraklian mentions Philip, and there's not an account of his martyrdom until the fourth century.
And it's in the Acts of Philip when I think those acts get completely untethered from any real, reliable history. So, I mean, Philip, you could really go either way. On Philip, it's hard to say with much confidence.
But again, if I had to bet my house, I'd say, well, our earliest source, and I won't go into too much depth. There's so many questions, like if Heraklian is reporting natural deaths, why doesn't he mention John? Like, that doesn't make sense. But he also mentions Thomas in his list, but I don't think Thomas died naturally.
So, when you ask me about sources, it's like, okay, how do I assess this when it gets this right, gets that wrong? I don't know where it's from. It's second century. I mean, these are not easy assessments to make.
And I just read the evidence. I talk to scholars. I look at what others write, and just have to come to my best conclusions.
So I think there's three that died naturally. And then everybody else, I think there's five remaining. Simon the Zealot, Judas, son of James, son of Alphaeus, James son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Matthias.
Who am I missing? The five remaining, I think it's just indeterminate, where it's so late and so legend-filled. I'm not saying all those traditions are false. I mean, I've had a few people reach out to me, and they're like, why are you criticizing our traditions in Armenia? And I said, my goal is not to ruin anybody's tradition, but I think it's fair to ask the historical question, which of these can we trust from that perspective? And so I think those five are just indeterminate.
We really don't know. Well, you're coming from a background of having to do debates about the kinds of things that you defend, and you're communicating to an audience of people who want to get into conversations, in their workplace and in other places. So we want to be accurate so that we're not scared to speak about these things, and we kind of know the answers to the most common objections.
So are there any other changes from the first to the second edition of your book that people might want to know about? I think as a whole, I reassessed five of the apostles. Some of them are somewhat incidental. Like I had James, the son of Zebedee, I think at the highest possible probability, but when I reassessed that and got some feedback, I thought, you know what? I only have really one very reliable source.
I think I'm overstating the evidence, so I pulled back on that one to very probably true. I also move Paul from highest possibility to very probably true. That's like from a nine to an eight, so there's no reason to question Paul's fate, historically speaking.
But, you know, when I think of a 10 historically, it's like the crucifixion of Jesus. There's not a shred of good reason to doubt that whatsoever. That's as confident as we can get.
Can I put the apostle Paul at that level? No, I'm really confident in it, but not quite that level. So I just tweaked a handful of them on that level just to try to be more accurate. The last chapter of the book, I think I had two objections in the first one.
I expanded it to about seven or eight objections based on feedback and reviews that people wrote, things like, you know, some claim that Joseph Smith died as a martyr, therefore Islam is true. And number one, I would say... Yeah, for Mormonism, exactly. I'd make two quick distinctions there.
Did you have the eight witnesses, you know, the 11 witnesses, they're, I mean, they spiritually saw the plates. They didn't even see the plates with their hands and with their own eyes. I think when you look at the sources, plus plates are not even supernatural.
You could have invented the plates. They don't in themselves prove anything. So I don't think they're the kind of witnesses that the apostles were.
But I also think Joseph Smith was arguably guilty of what he and his followers did to the press in Nauvoo and were rightly thrown in prison, and they brought weapons to defend themselves. So I think the comparisons, and I'm not saying you can't defend yourself, but calling yourself a martyr and comparing that to the apostles, especially when we look at the character of Joseph Smith, I think just falls apart. So in the end, there's a bunch of other objections that I respond to as well.
Yeah, I love that you mentioned that, because that's also one that comes up occasionally in conversations when I talk about the willingness of the apostles, the Christian apostles, to die. And it's usually Christians who will say, so, you know, what do you do with Joseph Smith? How should we respond to people who bring him up? So I like that you addressed that, as well as Islam, like you said before. So what about when people say that the apostles were not really willing martyrs, that they were just caught off guard, surprised and executed against their will, and that, you know, they were maybe ready to recant or something like that.
How would you respond to that type of Egyptian? Yeah, this is an important one that I didn't address in my first edition, and I got a few people pushing back over the last decade. So I actually reached out to a number of church historians who've been studying this and specifically martyred them for a long time and tried to just ask them, like, is there record of people recanting their faith and then not being executed? And a church historian actually at Talbot, interesting enough, drew my attention to Pliny the Younger in the early second century in the letter that's written to Trajan. It's like, what do we do with these Christians when they refuse to sacrifice to the gods and they worship him as if he is a god? And it's kind of like, well, keep asking him, and if they recant, we'll let him go.
I thought, well, that's interesting. And you get into the third century, there is precedent for people who refuse to believe in Jesus and who are let go. So I don't think that's an insuperable objection.
We have reasonably, if they did recant, they would have been allowed to go on with their way. Now, we don't have a record of them refusing to recant. In fact, just on Twitter X this week, somebody's like, your entire argument fails, McDowell, because we don't have a record of them being given the opportunity to recant.
I said, you're right, we don't have that record. But part of the question is why? If they did recant, would we expect to have such a record? And I think from both friends and foes we would. Why foes? In the second century, you have Celsus, you have Porphyry after that, who are just even, I think, arguably inventing stuff to just critique and undermine the Christian faith.
I mean, Celsus invented certain things about the origin of Jesus that are just like, this is clearly not true. So if there was even a story of any of the apostles, like he would have clearly jumped all over that. There's no record of it.
So I think foes would have, but then friends would have as well, because you get in the second, third century, there's debates about what happens, Christians, who at the moment where they are persecuted and told to recant, deny Jesus. Can they get back in the fold? Can they serve as leadership again? Well, again, the Donatist controversy, you'd have reason to think if there was even a story of, well, actually it happened to Andrew, let's talk about Andrew. There was none.
So I think we would expect such a thing if it were there. But even if we don't, and we don't have a record of them refusing to recant that's early and reliable, what do we know? From the beginning, they intentionally put themselves in harm's way. They're following a crucified Messiah, and the forerunner to the Messiah, John the Baptist, was put to death.
Stephen is early put to death. James, the son of Zebedee, is put to death in Acts 12 too, and they keep proclaiming. Back to 1 Corinthians 15 in the 50s, Paul talks about proclaiming this message that he and the apostles proclaim.
That means 25 years later, they're still proclaiming this. So I don't think that objection is as strong as it's often stated. Yeah, those are great points.
If you're interested in this topic, and I think there are great reasons to be interested in this topic, I would strongly encourage our listeners to get the book, The Fate of the Apostles by Sean McDowell, second edition, and read it. It's very readable, very accessible. It's not written like a PhD dissertation or anything like that.
And share this with your friends, because we do care about truth. We do want to be honest, and we don't want our fellow Christians to find themselves in situations where they're stating something boldly, and then a non-Christian says, what's your evidence for that? And they're like, oh, I don't know. And so we do want to speak with honesty and integrity, and so check out that book, The Fate of the Apostles.
And Sean, tell us, where can we find your work online? Do you have any upcoming events we should know about? Where can people follow you? Yeah, probably the best place like the Hub would just be Sean McDowell.org. I've got links to my Twitter account, which I use and update with articles and videos and resources and hopefully helpful quotes and ideas, links to Instagram, or probably daily. I just answer questions people send in and try to post content to encourage and equip people. I even have a TikTok account that I post on.
My team posts on there, just quick apologetic videos. My speaking schedule is on my website at Sean McDowell.org, so people could see if I'm coming to their area, and if they come, please say hi. I love to meet people in person.
That's always a treat when someone goes, hey, I heard you with Winry Knight and Desert Rose. Like, that's fun. That's a really cool connection.
One of my favorite platforms is YouTube. I do typically two videos a week, and I do some short videos. Like, I just interviewed a hundred apologists and asked them what they think is the best argument for the existence of God if they can only have one.
So I'm going to do a little five to six-minute video on that, but I actually do a lot of long-form conversations with some of the skeptics you mentioned earlier, people like Michael Shermer, all bringing agnostics, progressive Christians on, like Brandon Robertson, but also just get a chance to interview some really, really interesting Christians. So I've got one coming up on evidence for the soul, have one coming up on when atheists have near-death experiences, have a video coming up where I interviewed the creator of Deadpool, who's a Christian, interestingly enough, like super interesting conversation. And so if you like the kind of content that you guys produce long-form here, our podcasts think biblically, and then the YouTube channel would probably be helpful as well.
Excellent. We love your work. We greatly appreciate you, and we really appreciate you taking the time to come on the Night in Rose Show.
Thanks for having me. All right. Well, listeners, I think that's a good place for us to stop for today.
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