David Marshall on Christian Martyrs

Some time ago I began conversing with people on the Amazon.com forums toward the bottom of the web page for Richard Dawkins' book The God Delusion. At some point I became acquainted with a generally kind, reasonable Christian apologist who also frequented those forums for discussion: David Marshall. Marshall has written a few books, only one of which I have read. (I'll get to that in a minute. First, some background.) After reading a book of his that he recommended, The Truth Behind the New Atheism, I recommended to Reggie Finley (aka Infidel Guy) that he invite Marshall onto his weekly radio show, since Finley was at the time looking for somebody who would be willing to debate Dr. Robert M. Price. I didn't hear anything else about this possibility until, a few weeks later, Marshall began spreading the word that he'd be debating Dr. Price on the show. (For those interested, the show can be found here. Unfortunately though, you'll have to pay $2 to listen to it.)

I also began recommending to Marshall that he pay more attention to Richard Carrier's work (especially his criticism of Christian apologetics). He eventually did take me up on that challenge and purchased Sense and Goodness Without God, though his initial response to one section of that book left much to be desired. I continued encouraging him to read further and he finally did offer some meatier critiques. I may post about some of these later, but for now I'll simply link to what he thinks is one of his best critiques.

Today, however, I want to resurrect some of my old comments on his book The Truth Behind the New Atheism. I informally reviewed the book in Amazon forums, giving it 3.5 stars. But there were still plenty of significant problems with it, in my opinion. His writing was often vague (especially when discussing the issue of the Bible being inspired by God), full of irrelevant comments and needlessly abstract metaphors, and peppered with unwarranted claims. One in particular that jumped out at me was on page 17, where Marshall writes that the disciples of Jesus were given "enough firsthand evidence of his resurrection that they were willing to die for him."

This wasn't the first time I've heard such a claim, as it's been repeated endlessly by Christians who defend their faith. For example, in his book More Than a Carpenter, Josh McDowell asks "who would die for a lie?" The implication of that question is that, since the disciples were in a position to know whether or not Jesus was resurrected, and since they were willing to die for the belief that he was, then he really must have been raised from the dead.

New Testament scholar Robert M. Price gives an immediate counter-example by referring to Joseph Smith, writing that "non-Mormons believe he had concocted the whole Mormon religion, yet he was willing to die for it. Does that make it true?"

Nevertheless, some sort of deeper analysis of the issue is required. Putting the argument into a logically valid form, it looks like this:

(1) If the disciples of Jesus were willing to die for their belief that he was resurrected, then they must have had good evidence that he was.

(2) The disciples of Jesus were willing to die for their belief that he was resurrected.

(3) Therefore, the disciples must have had good evidence that Jesus was resurrected.

If David Marshall, Josh McDowell, or anybody else could show that (1) and (2) are true, then it would follow that the disciples had good evidence for the resurrection of Jesus--which entails that there is good reason to believe that Jesus was really raised from the dead (since having good evidence for something is a good reason to believe it). Can David Marshall show that the premises of the argument are true?

Regarding (1), he would have to show that it would have taken good evidence to convince the earliest disciples that Jesus really was raised from the dead. Of course, it would take good evidence to convince the scientific community that somebody was resurrected, and I would be impressed if someone like James Randi was given enough evidence that he was willing to die for such a belief. (See this blog post.) But what reason do we have to think that ordinary first century Palestinians would have required good evidence to believe such a thing? Were they generally skeptical people who would have demanded solid evidence before believing extraordinary stories?


The New Testament itself seems to refute this notion. Acts 2:1-42 says that Peter gave a speech to a large group of Jews, and on the basis of what he said, three thousand people converted that day. If it were the case that people, in general, were skeptical of claims about extraordinary events, then why would such a large number of people believe the resurrection merely on the basis of Peter's speech? Historian Richard Carrier writes of this passage:

"Thousands of people, we are told, decided to convert immediately. Not a single one of them checked a single fact. These converts do no other research, make no other inquiry, make no effort at all to interrogate Peter or any other witnesses or check any of the material facts. The authorities are not consulted. No one asks to hear Joseph of Arimathea on the matter, or indeed any other Christian besides Peter. They simply trust what Peter says--which is woefully ambiguous and short on details..." (See here)

Of course, Marshall could claim that Carrier is reading too much into the text here, because it doesn't explicitly say these things about the converts. But as the story is written, it certainly appears as if these people simply heard Peter's testimony and converted. Perhaps later they conducted investigations, looking into the actual evidence for the resurrection to see if it stands up to rational scrutiny--but as Carrier points out, we have no record that they did carry out such investigations, and even if they did, we have no way of knowing that they didn't look at the facts and find them wanting.

Or look at all of the other examples from Acts that Carrier provides in the above link. The author of Acts records numerous conversions where people hear a speech, see some sort of healing miracle, and are convinced that Christianity is true (i.e. that Jesus rose from the dead). Carrier writes:

"Never once does Acts report anyone checking any facts pertinent to the Resurrection before converting. To claim they did such checking, but that Acts simply doesn't say so (not even once), is circular reasoning... Indeed, Acts rules out any such tactic, since Acts says again and again that conversions are won on the very same day the gospel is preached--there are rarely any delays of days, weeks, or months, as would be required for evidence to be gathered, witnesses sought out and questioned, and letters exchanged. And even when any such duration is mentioned, there is still no indication that any such efforts were engaged in that time. None at all." (See here)

It is hard to believe that Marshall would want to claim that the disciples were paradigm examples of skeptical thinkers--and I don't imagine he would actually claim this (though he does seem to think that there is good historical evidence that they were pretty skeptical). I am assuming for the sake of this discussion that there was no substantial difference between the uneducated disciples of Jesus and the other uneducated people of the day (in terms of how skeptical or gullible they would be). Regarding the sorts of things the ancients believed, Carrier writes:

"An analogy can be drawn from ancient astronomy: the real cause of eclipses was well-known and thoroughly understood among the scholarly elite of the Roman period. The Emperor Claudius even had this cause described in a public inscription in order to fend off superstition among the masses. And there are many examples where those in-the-know were able to educate an ignorant public on appropriate occasions. So to discover the true cause of eclipses (lunar and solar) was relatively easy for anyone who cared to ask. Any library, any elite scholar, and at least one known public inscription would have provided the answer. It was as easily ascertained as any specialized historical fact (such as who held a particular office at a particular place and time). Yet a large portion of the populace never bothered to check, but simply continued believing the myth that eclipses were the work of magic or gods." (See here)

Surely Marshall knows that there have always been people who will believe things without good evidence. Some of the most confident Christians I have encountered cite nothing other than the scriptures (and, sometimes, the inner feeling of the Holy Spirit) for their belief that Jesus conquered death. And people in the ancient world were no different. If anything, they were even more gullible, and less skeptical. So even if it is true that the disciples were willing to die for their faith, that does not entail that they had good evidence for it.

Biblical scholar Hector Avalos confirmed this to me, writing:

"There is a lot of evidence that people did believe in resurrections with very little evidence, and one is in Mark 6:14-16 where it states that Herod was convinced that John the Baptist had resurrected. Note how little evidence he needed to believe that. Apparently, Herod just "heard" about miracles, and witnessed nothing himself."

Robert M. Price, in a private communication, revealed another important point:

"One must keep in mind the great power of "cognitive dissonance." History has shown that there is pretty much no extreme people will not go to in defending that which they have a great stake in. If you had spent decades defending the proposition that Jesus rose from the dead, even if you had originally merely surmised or guessed it, even had you made it up, you might well give your life than back down from the claim, to save face, because otherwise your life would be revealed as one big joke, and some people simply cannot live that down."

Elswhere, Carrier concludes:

The actual evidence from the first century does not support the conclusion that martyrs needed, much less had, what we would consider reliable evidence that Jesus rose from the dead.

But this undercuts premise (1) of the above argument, because it shows that even if the disciples were willing to die for their belief that Jesus was resurrected, they didn't necessarily need good evidence for his resurrection to thoroughly convince them. This is also true for most Christians today who are certain that Jesus rose from the dead.

What about (2)? Does Marshall have good evidence that the disciples really were willing to die for their belief in the resurrection? In 2006, Christian apologist William Lane Craig and New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman debated the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus. In the debate, Craig made a claim similar to Marshall: "the original disciples suddenly came to believe so strongly that God had raised Jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for the truth of that belief." Ehrman pounced on this:

"And an earlier point that Bill made was that the disciples were all willing to die for their faith. I didn't hear one piece of evidence for that. I hear that claim a lot, but having read every Christian source from the first five hundred years of Christianity, I'd like him to tell us what the piece of evidence is that the disciples died for their belief in the resurrection." (Transcript here)

Hector Avalos sided with Ehrman, writing:

"Bart Ehrman is correct. There is not a single piece of evidence from the first century that any Christian was martyred for believing in the resurrection. The NT does mention persecution of Christians but not for the specific belief in the resurrection."

In his essay "Why I Don't Buy the Resurrection Story," Richard Carrier writes:

"The only martyrdoms recorded in the New Testament are, first, the stoning of Stephen in the Book of Acts. But Stephen was not a witness. He was a later convert. So if he died for anything, he died for hearsay alone. But even in Acts the story has it that he was not killed for what he believed, but for some trumped up false charge, and by a mob, whom he could not have escaped even if he had recanted. So his death does not prove anything in that respect.... The second and only other "martyr" recorded in Acts is the execution of the Apostle James, but we are not told anything about why he was killed or whether recanting would have saved him, or what he thought he died for. In fact, we have one independent account in the Jewish history of Josephus, of the stoning of a certain "James the brother of Jesus" in 62 A.D., possibly but not necessarily the very same James, and in that account he is stoned for breaking the Jewish law, which recanting would not escape..." (See essay here)

Marshall might respond to Carrier's claims in a number of ways, and I invite him to do so. But what is relevant here is a particular issue: whether or not the disciples died for their belief in the resurrection. What evidence do Christian apologists have in mind when they say that the disciples were willing to die for that belief?

In his essay, Carrier goes on to write:

"As far as we can tell, apart from perhaps James, no one knew what the fate was of any of the original eye-witnesses. People were even unclear about who the original eye-witnesses were. There were a variety of legends circulating centuries later about their travels and deaths, but it is clear from our earliest sources that no one knew for certain."

Are Christian apologists (Marshall, Craig, etc.) basing this assertion on later legends, or good history? Robert Price seems to agree with Carrier:

"In fact we do not know that the earliest preachers of Christianity were martyred for their faith. The New Testament does not tell us for sure.... Our earliest "information" comes from unreliable second- and third century documents, starting with the anonymous but so-called First Epistle of Clement, which says, vaguely, that Peter and Paul "witnessed" to their faith in Rome (apparently implying their martyrdom) because of "jealousy." This in turn seems to be a reference to the Apocryphal Acts of Paul, Peter, Andrew and others, which have the apostles martyred at the instigation of jealous pagan husbands whose wives, having been converted to Christianity, would no longer sleep with them. These Acts abound in legends, such as Paul baptizing a talking lion. Tertullian (late second century) says the Apostle John survived being boiled in oil. Thus we have no real reason to believe the earliest preachers, whoever they may have been, were martyred for their faith."

Other New Testament scholars offered their opinion on this issue. Dennis MacDonald wrote:

"The claim that the "original disciples suddenly came to believe so strongly that God had raised Jesus from the dead that they were willing to die for the truth of that belief" not only is misleading, it is risible. People are willing to die for all sorts of causes, and martyrdoms or executions of people often have nothing to do with particular beliefs. Of the twelve disciples, we know of martrydoms of only three of them (Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, though to this one might add the death of James, Jesus' brother), but in no case do we know why they died. What I find even more baffling is the notion that the only reason we know that they believed Jesus had risen from the dead is because they were executed. Such apologetics disguised as solid historical judgment deserves no serious consideration."

Craig Blomberg, a Christian historian and apologist, had this to say:

"There are some traditions such as that of Peter's martyrdom that are fairly probably historically but others that come from quite late sources, the reliability of which are very hard to determine. So it is good not to overstate this claim about all of the apostles (save perhaps John) having been martyred. Of course, even if only some were the argument holds that they knew they were dying for a lie if Jesus were not bodily raised from the dead. But to insist that we know for sure that it was true of eleven of them outstrips the actual evidence."

The only comment in his response that seemed to support Marshall's (and Craig's) assertion was that the argument does not depend on having evidence that all of the apostles were martyred, because "even if only some were," "they knew they were dying for a lie if Jesus were not bodily raised from the dead." And as it happens, the one statement that supported Marshall is actually false (as already demonstrated). The earliest Christians could have believed that Jesus rose from the dead even if he hadn't, so there's no need to assume that they knew their message was a lie.

* * * * *

Perhaps Marshall will want to say that he never claimed (1) or (2). After all, what he really says is simply that the disciples were given "enough firsthand evidence of his resurrection that they were willing to die for him." He does not explicitly say that it was good evidence, only that it was enough for them to be willing to die for Jesus. If he tries this tact, then his point becomes irrelevant, because for all we know they didn't require very much evidence (or very good evidence).

He also does not explicitly say that the disciples were willing to die for their belief in the resurrection, but that they were willing to die for Jesus on the basis of the evidence for the resurrection that they had. But what sense can we make of this? Perhaps if Marshall says this, he can elaborate on his point and explain why it is at all relevant to the question of whether or not Jesus was resurrected. Or he could emphasize that he merely said that the disciples were willing to die, not that they actually did die. But again, what evidence is there that they were willing to die?

Until Marshall answers these questions and provides good evidence, this passage in his book is merely an unsubstantiated claim.

* * * * *

Addendum on Craig's Evidence

In his email to me, Hector Avalos considered one line of evidence that Craig has adduced in favor of his claim that the disciples were willing to die for their belief in Jesus' resurrection. I'll reproduce Avalos' criticism below:

"Craig states: "We learn from Josephus that James was eventually martyred for his faith in Jesus Christ during a lapse in the civil government in the mid 60s." (Paul Copan and Ronald K. Tacelli, eds. Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment? [Downer's Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2000] p. 190).

What Josephus actually says is:

"Ananus thought he had a favorable opportunity... And so he convened the judges of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned." (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities XX.200-201. Edition and Translation of L. H. Feldman [Loeb Classical Library: Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965] p. 106-109).

In other words, Josephus does NOT say that James was "martyred for his faith in Christ" but for transgressing the law, which can mean a lot of things (e.g., not observing the Sabbath---see Exodus 31:15).

Moreover, as I have pointed out in The End of Biblical Studies, Josephus is not always a good source for the first century because ALL manuscripts of Josephus are from the Middle Ages, and so we have no way to know whether Christians have not added material to the original text of Josephus."