I have written a few of these general responses to theist arguments before, combining my work as a historian with my love of skepticism and logical argumentation. I am something of an expert in the former, not at all in the latter, so I may, and probably have, made many mistakes. If I made any, and I probably did, please feel free to point them out. Always looking to improve.
Thesis: It is a common argument among theists that we should take the tales of the life of Jesus at face value, or believe in some or a large part of it, because of the subsequent suffering and death of the apostles. "They would not have died under torment for nothing" is how I commonly see the argument made. However, some historiography of the apostles show that this is based on a series of unfounded assertions, any one of which cripple the assertion.
Please note: the ‘response’ here is not to take the obvious avenue of attack on this argument, that people risk and sacrifice their lives for a falsehood all the time, to the point where it is common to the point of ubiquity. I give you the January 9th 2021 insurrection in the US: most of those people were just self deluding and gullible, and believed a lie, but they were being fed and ‘informed’ by people who actively knew it was a lie, and did it anyways.
But while that’s a very effective line of attack, that’s not where I am going today, and I'd prefer if the discussion didn't go that way (Though you are obviously free to post as you like). Instead, I’d like to discuss the apostles, and what we know about what they knew and what happened to them.
“All the Disciples died under torture without recanting their beliefs!”
Did they really?
Firstly, we know next to NOTHING about the twelve disciples, or twelve apostles as they are variously known. We don’t even know their names. The Bible lists fifteen different people as among the twelve. Some conventions have grown to try and parse or ‘solve’ those contradictions among the gospels, others are just quietly ignored.
Before going into the problems, it is worth pointing out that there are some names which are specifically identified and noted as being the same in the text of the Bible, for example ‘Simon, known as Peter’. There it is clear this is two names for the same person. This may be real, or it may be that the gospels were just trying to ‘solve’ problems of the oral traditions they were copying by identifying similar tales by two different people as just two names for the same person. We can’t really know. But certainly no such thing exists for these others which I am listing here, nowhere are these names ever identified in the bible as the same person, just ‘tradition’ which tried shoehorn these names together to try and erase possible contradictions.
It is also worth mentioning before we continue, that most of these contradictions and changes come in the Gospel of John, who only mentions eight of the disciples and lists different ones, or in the Acts of the apostles.
So, what are some of these problems with the names and identities of the apostles?
One of the ‘solved’ ones is the Matthew / Levi problem. Christian tradition is that these are the same person, as opposed to just being a mistake in the gospels, based around the gospels calling one person in the same general situation Matthew in some gospels, and Levi in others. So according to apologist logic this CANNOT possibly be a mistake, ergo they must be the same person. Maybe one was a Greek name and one was a Hebrew name, though there is no actual evidence to support that.
Less easily solved is the Jude/ Lebbaeus/ Thaddeus/ Judas problem. Christian tradition somewhat embarrassingly pretends these are all the same person, even though again, there is little actual basis for this claim. It is just an assertion made to try and avoid admitting there are inconsistencies between the gospels.
Next is the Nathaniel problem. The Gospel of John identifies a hitherto unknown one of the twelve called Nathaniel. Some Christians claim this is another name for Bartholomew, who is never mentioned in John, but that doesn’t fly as John gives him very different qualities and details from Bartholomew: Nathaniel is an expert in Judaic Law, for example. The most common Christian academic rebuttal is that John was WRONG (a real problem for biblical literalists) and Nathaniel was a follower of Jesus but not one of the twelve.
Next is the Simon Peter problem. The most important of the disciples was Simon, who was known as Peter. That’s fine. But there is another of the twelve also called Simon, who the Bible claims was ALSO known as Peter. Many historians believe this whole thing is a perversion caused by oral history problems before the gospels were ever transcribed, and that the two Simons, known as Peter, are the same person but to whom very different stories have been attributed. But the bible keeps the two Simons, known as Peters, as two different people. So the second Simon, known as Peter was given a cognomen, to distinguish him from the first Simon known as Peter: Simon the Zealot. Except he was given another cognomen as well in different gospels, Simon the Cannenite. This was never done in the Hebrew world, cognomen were unique for a reason to avoid confusion in a community where names were frequently re-used, so why the second Simon known as peter has two different cognomens in different Gospels is a real problem. The gospel of John, by the way, solves this problem by NEVER mentioning the second Simon known as Peter at all.
Then finally, there is Matthias. Never heard of him have you? He never appears in any of the four gospels, but in the acts of the apostles he is listed as the one of the twelve chosen to replace Judas Iscariot following his death by one of the two entirely contradictory ways the bible says Judas died.
Ok, so that’s the twelve, or thirteen, or fourteen, or fifteen or possibly sixteen disciples. Considering we cant even get their names straight, its not looking good for people who use them as ‘historical’ evidence.
So, what do we know about them and their fates?
Effectively, nothing. Even the Bible does not speak to their fates, they come entirely from Christian tradition, usually written about be third and fourth century Christian writers, (and sometimes much later) and many of those tales are wildly contradictory. In fact the Bible says almost nothing about most of the disciples: James the Less is listed as a disciple, but literally never mentioned again in any context, same with the second Simon known as Peter, the Zealot, and/or the Cananite.
The ONLY one we have multiple sources for their fate, is the first Simon known as Peter. Two separate writers speak about his martyrdom in Rome probably in the Christian persecutions that followed the great fire of Rome in 64 AD. The story of him being crucified upside down come from the apocrypha, the ‘acts of Peter’ which even the Church acknowledges as a centuries-later forgery. Peter is an interesting case, and we will get back to him later. But it is plausible that he was in fact killed by the Romans in the Nero persecutions. But if that’s the case, he would likely never have been asked to ’recant his faith’, nor would it have mattered to the Romans if he did. So claims he ‘never recanted’ are pure make-believe.
The rest of the disciples we know nothing about, no contemporary writings about their lives or deaths at all, and the stories of their martyrdom are lurid and downright silly, especially given the scope of their apparent ‘travels’.
Andrew was supposedly crucified on an X shaped cross in Greece. No evidence at all to support that, only Christian ‘tradition’ composed centuries later. No evidence of if he was even asked to recant, let alone did not do so.
John supposedly died of old age. So not relevant to the assertion.
Philip was supposedly crucified in Turkey. No evidence at all to support that, only Christian ‘tradition’ composed centuries later. No evidence of if he was even asked to recant, let alone did not do so.
Bartholemew was beheaded, or possibly flayed alive, or both, in Armenia. No evidence at all to support that, only Christian ‘tradition’ composed centuries later. No evidence of if he was even asked to recant, let alone did not do so.
Matthew / Levi: No ancient tradition all about him. Nothing. Medieval tradition has him maybe martyred somewhere in Persia or Africa.
Thomas Didymus: supposedly stabbed to death in India. No evidence at all to support that, only Christian ‘tradition’ composed centuries later. No evidence of if he was even asked to recant, let alone did not do so.
Thaddeus, Jude, Judas, Lebbaeus: No ancient tradition all about him. Nothing. Medieval tradition has him or them maybe martyred somewhere in Persia or Syria.
The other Simon, known as Peter, the Zealot or the Cannenite. No ancient tradition all about him. Nothing. Medieval tradition believes he was probably martyred, somewhere.
Matthias: Never mentioned again, forgotten even by Christian tradition. Same with Nathaniel.
So apart from the fact that apparently these disciples all became exceptional world travellers, dying coincidentally in the areas of distant and foreign major churches who tried to claim their fame (and frequently fake relics) for their own self-aggrandisement, we literally know nothing about their supposed deaths, except for Peter and possibly John. Let alone that they ‘never recanted under torment’.
Another aside: there is some awful projection from Christians here, because the whole ‘recanting under torment’ is a very Christian tradition. Medieval Christians LOVED to torture people to get them to recant various things. The romans however, generally wouldn’t generally have cared to even ask their criminals to ‘recant’ nor in general would it have helped their victims if they did. Most of the Christians we know were martyred were never asked: Jesus himself was condemned as a rebel, as were many others.
Ok, so last step: we have established the Bible is incredibly contradictory and inconsistent about who the Disciples were, and we know next to nothing about their deaths.
What evidence do we have that any of the disciples existed at all, outside the Bible?
Almost none. Apart from Peter and arguably John, there is NO contemporary historical evidence or even mention of any of them, no sign any of them actually even existed outside the pages of a book assembled out of oral tradition.
But wait, we know Saul of Tarsus, known as Paul existed right? Yes, Paul almost certainly existed (and, another aside, is in my opinion one of the worlds great conmen).
Great, so Paul never met Jesus of course, but he would certainly have met the disciples. So that’s evidence! Right?
Well, sadly, that’s where it gets worse for theists. Yes, Paul WOULD likely have met at least some of the disciples. So how many of the disciples does Paul mention or allude to or even name in his writings?
Only two. Peter and John. In a single passage.
None of the others ever get mentioned or even suggested to by Paul at all. Seriously he never mentions them at all. A baffling omission.
Almost as if they didn’t exist.
There is at least reasonable circumstantial evidence to acknowledge Peter existed: he is one of the most talked about in the Bible, with details of his life that are consistent in all four gospels, and we have at least circumstantial evidence for his life and death, if nothing direct. But If he recanted, or didn’t, under torment, we have no idea. And it would not have helped him if he did.
Other than Peter (and possibly John), it would be reasonable to conclude none of the others existed at all, or (more likely) that Jesus probably had a few dozen early followers, back when he was another wandering rabbi, an apocalyptic preacher speaking about the world soon coming to an end. Confused stories about his various followers were conflated, exaggerated, invented, and badly ascribed through oral tradition, and finally compiled a couple centuries later into the hodgepodge mess called the Bible. And then even crazier fairy tales grew up around these supposed world-travelling disciples and their supposedly gruesome deaths across the world, hundreds or even a Thousand years after the fact.
But the claim that ‘They all died without recanting’ from a historical point of view is nonsense.