On "The Fate of the Apostles" by Sean McDowell ****

In this book McDowell looks to see what the various viewpoints with regard to the deaths of the apostles are and how likely accurate it is that they actually died as martyrs for the faith. The point that he makes is that their deaths show the sincerity of their views and help us discern to what extent the resurrection of Jesus Christ was real, at least in the minds of those who claimed to have witnessed his resurrected self. For as McDowell denotes, people do not go to their deaths for a con.

Thus, he creates a table of possibilities with regard to their deaths and the historicity of those accounts, ranging from most likely true to most likely false, and he finds that with the most famous "most likely true" is what we can accept and with those less famous we can see the accounts as "as likely true as not."

Most interesting of all, though, is his account of just how important the resurrection is to Christian theology. It was on this basis that the twelve apostles preached the divinity of Jesus and that they faced death as they did. Christianity was a resurrection sect, McDowell notes.

The individual accounts are workmanlike but very informative. For each apostle, plus Paul and James the brother of Jesus, McDowell recounts the legends and historical records regarding where they went or are said to have gone; then he recounts the various martyrdom narratives that surround the individual; finally he evaluates the reliability of said narratives and what this says about the possibility that the apostles actually died as part of their witness. (If I were going to criticize McDowell's argument at all, it would be in his assumption that because no legend shows any apostle as having recanted on threat of death, none left off believing. He doesn't take into account the possibility that an apostle might simply wander off after a time--no recantation necessary. This is not to say that I think this is what happened to those whose trail seems to disappear; it is simply to say that arguments from silence aren't necessarily the most compelling.)

As for where the apostles went, the theories for many run far and wide. Some would seem to be in contradiction with another, and a number arise from rather late traditions. Still, that the apostles scattered and that some traveled into Africa and India and Britain (and back) seems quite possible, given the actual conditions of the time, as McDowell shows.

This is an excellent reference. Would that there were a reasonably priced paperback available for individuals, rather than just the high-priced hardcover intended for scholarly libraries. Another short review can be found here.