Were the Apostles of Jesus All Martyred?
Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman
Chris Huntley
4.8 • 745 Ratings
🗓️ 2 May 2023
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One of the claims consistently made by Christian apologists is that the apostles who declared that they themselves had seen Jesus after he had been raised from the dead MUST have been telling the truth -- since they all died for their belief. Someone may die for the truth, but who would die for a lie? And ALL of them? That seems completely implausible. Therefore the disciples really were witnesses to the resurrection. In this episode we consider this claim by examining its unquestioned assumption: is it actually *true* that the apostles were all martyred for their faith? How do we know? How *could* we know? In fact, what do we know about martyrdom within Christianity at all in the first two centuries? How often did it occur? And were Christians martyred for saying that Jesus was raised from the dead?
In this episode Bart discusses what we can know about early Christian martyrdom -- what sources of information we have and whether they are reliable, issues never even broached by the apologists who raise the issue in the first place.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehrman. |
| 0:07.1 | The only show, where a six-time New York Times bestselling author and world-renowned Bible scholar |
| 0:12.7 | uncovers the many fascinating, little-known facts about the New Testament, the historical Jesus, and the rise of Christianity. |
| 0:23.4 | I'm your host, Megan Lewis. Let's begin. |
| 0:29.8 | Welcome back everyone to misquoting Jesus. Today we're going to be talking about martyrdom. |
| 0:34.5 | If the apostles all died for their beliefs, then surely they must have seen the resurrected Jesus. |
| 0:37.8 | But what happens to that assumption if they didn't die for their beliefs? What evidence do we have for early Christian martyrdom? And what do we know of the |
| 0:42.1 | face of the apostles after Jesus' death? But before that, Bart, hello, how are you doing today? |
| 0:48.1 | Yeah, I'm doing well. Thanks. Our classes have now ended. Students are taking exams and professors are grading them. The university |
| 0:58.9 | calendar just seems, it seems a little bit strange, you end classes this early in the year, |
| 1:05.0 | but you do. But for research professors, it doesn't end. It sounds like there's no difference. You just kind of switch |
| 1:12.1 | focus a little bit. You switch. You go from teaching to doing more research, basically. So yeah, |
| 1:17.1 | yeah, but it's all good. How about you? How are you doing? Yeah, good. Busy ramping up for, |
| 1:22.5 | well, not quite finishing teaching the Sumerian grammar class that I'm doing, but moving swiftly along. |
| 1:29.5 | It's fun. I've not actually taught Sumerian grammar to people before. I've done videos on it, |
| 1:34.9 | but nothing with a classroom. So I'm enjoying myself. So, yeah, I may have to admit, I've never |
| 1:41.0 | studied a Sumerian. Is the grammar difficult? |
| 1:45.0 | It's a bit of interesting. |
| 1:47.0 | The reason I ask is some languages, grammar is very difficult, like Greek. |
| 1:51.0 | You know, Greek is very difficult grammar, but others like Coptic, for example, is not particularly difficult in terms of the grammar. |
| 1:57.0 | I'd say once you get your head around it, it's actually very regular and it makes a lot of sense. |
| 2:02.2 | I think the difficulty a lot of people have is that it's very different to how English works. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Chris Huntley, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Chris Huntley and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.