Killing in the Name Of

The tradition that we see in the Acts of Andrew is that he was crucified on an X-shaped cross.

A St. Andrew’s cross for those of you in the kink world.

I think the St.

Andrew’s cross exists outside the kink world. Oh, okay. You guys can have it too. That’s fine.

Hey everybody, I’m Dan McClellan.

And I’m Dan Beecher.

And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Things are good, things are good. How are you?

I’m getting used to a new speech pattern. I’ve got a bunch of plastic covering the inside of my mouth, mainly on my teeth, but some are embedded in my gums. I have invisible aligners on my teeth, so my tongue is trying to figure out how to make the sounds it is used to making while navigating around all this plastic. So if I sound a little odd or suddenly choke on my own spit or something like that, that’s gonna be the reason why.

We’ll all attempt to be forgiving, but frankly, it’s probably not gonna work. Anyway, we got a fun show coming up. This one, I think we’re gonna get some emails about. I think we might get in trouble. We’ll see. But the first part of our show, the first segment of our show, we’re going to call it a chapter and verse. And we’re going to be in 1 Samuel. And it’s, you know, if you don’t know what’s happening in current events or whatever, it may just sound like an everyday sort of thing that we’re going to talk about Amalek. But when I say that we will be invoking the name Netanyahu, I think people might know— I think the hairs on a few necks might have stood up just now. So we’ll get to that. And then the second half of our show is a what’s that? I don’t know. Is it a what’s that? Is it a— I don’t know what it is.

Yeah, we’ll call it a what’s that? We’re going to talk about the deaths of the apostles.

Yes, we hear about this all the time, that the nobody dies for a lie. All the apostles went to all kinds of excruciating and fantastical deaths. Yeah. And we’re actually going to talk about why people think that the apostles died in certain ways, and very little of it has to do with anything verifiable.

So, and also, can we just get rid of this nobody dies for a lie thing? Like, unless you’re—.

Yeah, people die for a lie all the time.

People die for lies. Constantly. It’s such a frequent thing. Like, if you don’t believe in Islam and you know that there are, you know, martyrs for Islam, then you know people die for things that they believe in.

And we’ll talk about— I don’t know the degree to which we’ll get to that. Maybe that needs to be its own segment, this argument that the resurrection is historically defensible because people don’t die for a lie, which is also a bit of a straw man. Because the options are not it either happened or everybody knowingly lied about believing it happened.

Right. Right.

Why can’t it just be that these people sincerely believe they experienced a resurrected person and might not have? Yeah, definitely didn’t.

Or there’s a bunch of options. Yeah, there’s— there are— there is middle ground. Anyway, that’s what we’re going to get to in the second half of the show. But for now, let’s dive into our chapter and verse. All right, so the chapter verse is about the character of Amalek.

The people— 1 Samuel 15 is going to be about the people of Amalek.

But yes, the people of Amalek take their name from a character.

A person, right.

A person, an individual, as it were, or as it really wasn’t, but as it was written.

As it is written to have been, yes. Yes. So who was Amalek and who are the people?

So we have two occurrences of the name Amalek in the book of Genesis , specifically in chapter 36 of the book of Genesis . We have Timnah, who was a concubine of Eliphaz, And this is Esau’s son, so of Esau fame. And she bore Amalek to Eliphaz. And then these were the sons of Adah, Esau’s wife. And then it goes on from there. And then we have Korah, Gatam, and Amalek are the clans of Eliphaz in the land of Edom, and they are the sons of Adah. So, okay, that should be sufficient groundwork to lay our scene.

Yeah, it’s hard for me to follow all of that because I don’t know who the good guys and the bad guys are in the Begats, but presumably that’s just— Amalek is just descended from people.

Yes. So, well, Amalek was a grandson of Esau. Right. And Esau is the brother of Jacob. Okay. So there’s bad blood for a little bit between Jacob and Esau. There’s the famous story of him coming, he’s got to cross the Jabbok River and he’s going to meet up with Esau again. He’s afraid Esau’s going to try and kill him. Esau really misses him. And, you know, it’s a whole story.

It’s a whole thing.

It’s a whole thing. And so, but Esau becomes the ancestor of the Edomites and other peoples. And so Amalek immediately is non-Israelite, obviously, and is an other. But the main kind of choke point of the friction with Amalek occurs in Exodus 17 . So this is where the Israelites, they have come out of Egypt, they’re making their way toward the land, and then we have this famous story in Rephidim where the children of Amalek, the Amalekites or Amalekites, come and fight against Israel. And this is a story where as long as Moses and Aaron and Hur were on the top of the hill.

And as long as Moses had his hands up, the Israelites were defeating Amalek. Oh, right. But if he dropped them, then the Amalekites were defeating Israel. And so Hur and Aaron had to prop up an arm on each side for Moses, and that way they defeat Amalek. Now, this event becomes like sticks in the craw of Israel.

Yeah, it’s a real sore spot. Yeah, it’s one of those sore spots where they tell their children and their children’s children about it sort of thing.

Yeah, they are uniquely upset about Amalek having attacked them, even though they’re getting ready to go attack everybody. And Exodus 17:14 , then the Lord said to Moses, “Write this as a remembrance in a book and recite it in the hearing of Joshua, for I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.” So God is promising to blot out the memory of Amalek. And this is a big deal.

And we’re going to get to 1 Samuel 15 , but there’s another story in Deuteronomy 25 , you have a handful of commands, and then you have a handful of verses where out of nowhere, Moses, the author of Deuteronomy, presumably—I haven’t looked into it. Anyway, out of nowhere—

I feel that you have looked into it. I think there’s something you’re not telling us, Dan.

Where in verse 17, it says, “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey out of Egypt, how he attacked you on the way when you were faint and weary, and struck down all who lagged behind you. He did not fear God. Therefore, when the Lord your God has given you rest from all your enemies on every hand in the land that the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, you shall blot out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. Do not forget.”

So I love the idea of you shall blot out the remembrance and don’t forget. Remember what Amalek did and then blot out the remembrance of Amalek.

Well, this is one of the things where a lot of folks will say we’re supposed to forget Amalek, but remember what Amalek did. And so it’s kind of a, you know, maybe maybe you need some kind of code name then so you don’t remember. I mean, and this is not unheard of, the divine name, we don’t know how it was pronounced. We know it’s a name. We have the letters. We forgot how to pronounce it. So it’s not like this is an impossible thing, but yeah, it is. Every time they say to forget Amalek, they mention Amalek. “It’s not like the one guy, you know who I’m talking about, the guy with the thing who did the thing.” Yeah. We don’t remember his name anymore, but we remember this dude did some gnarly stuff to us. So the campaign of blotting out remembrance is off to a rocky start.

Or at very least a confusing start.

Yeah. And that brings us, I think, to 1 Samuel 15 , where we have Samuel going to Saul. He’s anointing him king. And the Lord sent me to anoint you king over his people Israel. Now therefore, listen to the words of the Lord. Thus says the Lord of hosts, I will punish the Amalekites for what they did in opposing the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt. Now go and attack Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have. Do not spare them. But kill both man and woman, child and infant, ox and sheep, camel and donkey. That’s a lot.

That is very extreme. I feel like it’s a bit much, to be perfectly honest with you.

be perfectly honest with you. Yeah, this is commanding not just genocide, but even all of their property, even all their livestock. And this is— there’s a name for this. This is herem.

And this is a kind of ritual slaughter, but not just ritual slaughter for the sake of ritual slaughter. Ritual slaughter as a means of purifying the land. It’s like human sacrifice. And there’s a reason it has to be everybody, because there’s a sense in which you are deleting the bloodline because you understand the bloodline to be contaminated.

Right.

And so it’s a means of removing the people from the land so that the land can be purged of that evil and be wholly sanctified.

And to be clear, sorry, I just suddenly just realized that it keeps using the word Amalek, but it means like the nation of Amalek. We’re not talking about the guy. The guy is long since dead. And we’re well after that. Even the Exodus stuff is not talking about the guy Amalek, it’s talking about the nation of Amalek.

Yeah. And in the Hebrew, it kind of toggles around between referring to Amalek and the people of Ammon, or the sons of— Amalek, not Ammon, excuse me. Woo! The people of Amalek or the sons of Amalek. So you’ll see Amalekites sometimes in translation, other times you’ll see Amalek. So Saul gets the people, 200,000 foot soldiers and 10,000 soldiers of Judah, comes to the city of the Amalekites to lay in wait in the valley. And then you have this little aside where Saul somehow says to the Kenites, ‘Withdraw from among the Amalekites, or I will destroy you with them. For you showed kindness to all the Israelites when they came up out of Egypt.’ So the Kenites withdrew from the Amalekites. And there’s a theory—.

Yeah, that’s an interesting thing. Like, did he have walkie-talkies that would— like, all the Kenites are on one frequency?

And yeah, um, the— and the thing is, there’s a theory that, uh, the Kenite-Midianite hypothesis is one iteration of this theory that the people of Israel, at least in the Exodus story, seem to have some kind of close relationship with Midianites and Kenites. And the Kenites are supposed to be the ancestors of Cain.

Oh, you mean the descendants of Cain?

Excuse me. Yes, I get the direction mixed up occasionally. But yeah, the descendants of Cain, but they have some kind of close relationship with Moses. Like Moses’s father-in-law was a Midianite priest. And so the Kenites and the Midianites are somehow connected. So here we have kind of this nod to the notion that we have, we’re friends with the Kenites, so we’re going to let the Kenites go. So anyway, the Kenites bounce. Saul defeats the Amalekites from Havilah as far as Shur, which is east of Egypt. And then he takes King Agag of the Amalekites alive, but utterly destroyed all the people with the edge of the sword. And in the Hebrew, this is the causative form of the verb haram, which is related to the noun herem. And so Saul does this and spared Agag and took the best of the sheep and the cattle and the fatted calves and the lambs and all that was valuable and would not utterly destroy them.

All that was despised and worthless, they utterly destroyed. And so that is not what he was told to do.

You were specifically told to destroy all of the everythings. So I don’t know what’s— so now we’re in trouble.

Yes. And then the word of the Lord comes to Samuel. I don’t know if Saul made it back to the camp yet or if Samuel is just getting this revelation, he’s like, “Oh no, I got a call coming in.” Samuel’s working out at the gym and suddenly hears a beep. And then God says, “I regret that I made Saul king.” And he’s like, “Oh man.” “For he has turned back from following me and has not carried out my commands. Samuel was angry and he cried out to the Lord all night.” So he rises early in the morning to meet Saul.

I invested in this guy. Come on, man.

Yeah, yeah. And Samuel was told Saul went to Carmel where he set up a monument for himself, and on returning, he passed on down to Gilgal. Samuel came to Saul. Saul said to him, may you be blessed by the Lord. I have carried out the command of the Lord. But Samuel said, ‘What then is this bleating of sheep in my ears and the lowing of cattle that I hear?’ And Saul says, ‘They brought them from the Amalekites, for the people spared the best of the sheep and the cattle to sacrifice to the Lord your God, but the rest we have utterly destroyed.’ Then Samuel said to Saul, ‘Stop. I will tell you what the Lord said to me last night.’ He replied, ‘Speak.’ Samuel said, though you are little in your own eyes, are you not the head of the tribes of Israel?

Why did you swoop down on the spoil and do what was evil in the sight of the Lord? Now Saul defends himself. He’s like, no, I have obeyed the voice of the Lord. I even got their king, and I have utterly destroyed the Amalekites. And then Samuel says, yeah, but you took the sheep and the cattle. You took the best things. And Samuel then gives a little poem. Has the Lord as great— because, you know, whenever the boss breaks out the poetry, you know something bad is happening. Yeah. “To obey is better than sacrifice.” It’s a famous verse that we get here. And this evidently, the poem evidently convinces Saul that he was wrong. And he says, “I have sinned. I have transgressed the commandment of the Lord and your words because I feared the people and obeyed their voice. I pray pardon my sin, return with me so that I may worship the Lord.” And Samuel says, “Nuh-uh, not gonna do it.

Wouldn’t be prudent. I will not return with you for you have rejected the word of the Lord." And the Lord has rejected you from being king over Israel. So Samuel turns to go, gives him the cold shoulder.

And Saul grabs his robe and it tears, the hem of his robe tears. And Samuel, you can see Samuel like pausing and kind of glancing down over his shoulder because he realizes he’s torn the hem of his robe. And he goes, “The Lord has torn the kingdom of Israel from you this very day.” As a, you know, like, oh, this is an apropos symbol. “And has given it to a neighbor of yours who is better than you.” Oh no!

Oh, dun dun dun.

Yes, yes. And Saul again says, “I have sinned, yet honor me now before the elders of my people and before Israel.” And yeah, Saul and Samuel turned back. Saul worshiped the Lord, and Samuel says, ‘Bring me Agag,’ and they bring him Agag.

And, uh, ‘Bring me Agag’ could be a line from a very different story, but that’s— we’ll just go with Agag the king of the Amalekites.

Saul was like, ‘Whoa, hey now, hey now.’ But they bring the king of the Amalekites, and, uh, and he’s got this very metal line where he says, ‘Surely death is bitter.’ And then Samuel says, as your sword has made women childless, so your mother shall be childless among women. Hack, hack, hack, stab, stab, stab, saw, saw, saw. Uh, it says that Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord in Gilgal. So this was back when the prophets were real men, when they took matters into their own hands. Yeah, they took the dismemberment of their enemies into their own hands before the Lord, because this evidently is what the Lord enjoys seeing according to this narrative. Yeah. So anyway, and Samuel never sees Saul again until the day of his death.

So Saul was like, “Yeah, we’ll take some sheep. We’ll take some cattle, we’ll go, but you know, to make it good and legit, we’ll offer them as sacrifices to God. And we’ll bring the king and we’ll do what we please with the king.” And thought that was a good idea, and nope. That was—.

It went badly.

Yes. And that is what results in David being anointed king.

Yeah, right.

So if you ever wondered why was Saul rejected as king, why did David take his place? It’s because he was given the command to commit genocide and didn’t do it well enough.

Didn’t go all the way. He kept one guy and a bunch of livestock, and that was his undoing.

And oddly enough though, by the end of the story, all of the Amalekites are dead because they killed everybody but the king. And it’s really the cattle and the livestock that are at issue, that are the problem. Yeah, and the king doesn’t survive. Samuel hacks him up. So technically, the genocide worked. Yeah, until you get to the end of 1 Samuel . Okay, because, uh, in 1 Samuel chapter 30, we have David now who’s in charge. David and his men come to Ziklag on the third day.

Good name.

The Amalekites had made a raid on the Negev and on Ziklag. They had attacked Ziklag and burned it down and taken captive the women and all who were in it.

Okay, so I see a problem.

Yes, the Amalekites are around.

They’re fine.

And in numbers great enough to do some attacking. It’s not just like three.

Yeah, yeah. It’s not this plucky band of survivors that hid in a, you know, that put on some Kenite clothes and snuck away. Yeah, this is a war-capable people. And this is something that apologists have to deal with, but they get a two-for-one when it comes to this. The apologetic argument is twofold because you get this criticism: This is a God who commands genocide and gets upset when you don’t adequately genocide other people.

But then the Amalekites are back and the same thing happens in the book of Joshua . Chapters 10 and 11 are like God commands to go slaughter all of these towns of the Canaanites and leave nothing alive that breathes. And it rattles off the names of some places like Lachish and some other names and says, “Yeah, they killed, they left no survivors. Killed everybody.” Right. Over and over again, killed everybody, no survivors. And then like a half a chapter later, it’s like, “So anyway, all these towns hadn’t been conquered yet.” It’s like, wait a minute, we just went and killed everybody and left no survivors in those towns. So there are a couple different places where we have commands for genocide that are not necessarily right next to, but are near references to those people who were supposed to have been genocided still being around. And don’t even bring up the fact that they just barely survived.

It’s like, yeah, they were around. And so for the apologists, the idea is, okay, well, we gotta negotiate between the two. They both have to be true. Because we are presupposing univocality, we can’t say, well, one was just propaganda, they didn’t get it right, the other one is the true one. You can’t do that. That’s not allowed. So how do you do that? You make up a scholarly development, a scholarly conclusion.

Uh-huh.

You say that scholars have discovered that the references to killing every man, woman, child, and cattle, and sheep, and ox, and donkey is actually this common ancient Near Eastern wartime rhetoric that is really just a way to refer to complete victory. To say, “We left no survivors, we killed everything that breathed,” is just a way to say, “We won the battle.” And that way—.

Yeah, that’s a hell of an exaggeration, but okay.

Yes, yes. It is hyperbolic wartime rhetoric. And that way, you can have your cake after you have already eaten it. You can say, well, the text is technically true because it’s just rhetorical. Everybody who heard it or read it would’ve known, oh, this just means they won the battle. And the texts that say these people were still around are also true. And so you get to preserve univocality and also you dodge the accusation of a genocidal God. And the only problem is that that claim is entirely fabricated.

Right.

It doesn’t have any support. This is not some ancient West Asian literary convention where you say, “Oh yeah, we totally genocided them and killed every man, woman, and child among them and left no survivors, and we killed everything that breathed.” Yeah, that’s just not how that worked. And you can see elsewhere, ‘cause Israel goes to battle a number of times in the Pentateuch and in Joshua and Judges and Samuel and Kings. And they frequently, you know, sometimes they lose the battles, but frequently they win the battles. And the narrator, for whatever reason, doesn’t feel it necessary to say, “And we killed every man, woman, and child and left nothing alive that breathed.” And we, like, most of the time that Israel wins a battle, they don’t feel the need to say that. It’s only in the context of this herem, in this ritual slaughter, really, in the commands for genocide, that we see that as the description of what they were supposed to do and what they did.

So it’s a rather silly apologetic argument, but what we do have here is a lot of bad blood for Amalek, which unfortunately, survives down to today.

Yeah, I was going to say we need it. We teased something. We got to swing it back around to that.

And that is the line that Benjamin Netanyahu has used many times, several times since October 7th, a few years back when the first bombs started dropping in Israel and Palestine.

Yeah, there was the terrorist attack on October 7th, 2023, I believe it was. And then in response, you have Hamas described as, or equated with Amalek. And then more recently, we have seen Netanyahu say that we read in this week’s Torah portion, remember what Amalek did to you, we remember and we act in response to Iran, right, um, attacking Israel.

Well, there shouldn’t be any more people named Amalek.

Yeah, there shouldn’t. And so the identification is definitely a rhetorical thing. There’s not actually any literal relationship there. And so it’s a very disturbing identification because it’s basically saying we need to wipe out every last man, woman, and child of these people.

Yeah, or at very least that is a valid interpretation of what, you know, that is a way that you can interpret that phrasing and that invocation. I know that the prime minister’s office came out and said, well, what a preposterous thing. Why would you ever possibly associate the prime minister bringing up Amalek in this way with total annihilation of an enemy? And it’s just like, okay, I think we’ve all read the same Bible here. We know what happened to the Amalekites. What are you talking about?

But I think there is sort of some plausible deniability in that they basically just say, no, it’s a reference to when the Amalekites attacked Israel, rather than when the Israelites attacked them back later on, or something.

And I don’t know the significance of just doing the remember thing. Because that’s what he said. We read in this week’s Torah portion, remember what Amalek did to you. We remember and we act. Well, it just happened. The attack, this came immediately after the attack. And then he told IDF soldiers, “You must remember what Amalek has done to you, says our Holy Bible. And we do remember.” But the other part of it, and this comes in a pair. It’s not only remember, it’s also blot out the memory of that people. And to appeal to one without the other seems kind of silly in my opinion. To say, “Well, we must remember.” It’s like, well, this just happened. We don’t really need—remembering is not the issue here. And Israel has, in the Hebrew Bible, has a number of enemies that attack them.

Why is this one the one that gets called to the front of the classroom? Why is this the one that you must remember? It is pretty significant that this is also the one where God says, “I will blot them out,” and where we get the command to kill every man and woman, every child and infant. And, you know, there are an awful lot of people who specialize in genocide and in geopolitics who say this is, there is a good case to make that this is an attempted genocide.

Yeah, I mean, well, the Gaza thing, yes.

The Gaza, yeah. Specifically Gaza. Iran.

The Iran thing remains to be seen what Netanyahu has in store for Iran. But I do have to say that like, regardless, even if we were to take him at his office’s word that he didn’t mean to invoke a genocidal idea with this, with bringing up Amalek, just framing it in a holy war and scriptural context is basically asking for his people, asking his people to give him carte blanche, because he is blessed by God to do whatever it is that he’s doing. Like, that’s what he’s asking for. And that’s pretty creepy, too.

And it is appealing to the notion that the people on the other side of this are enemies to God, right? Uh, and, and, and I think that’s, that’s phenomenally dangerous. Anytime we try to equate these, uh, these wars, these battles with, uh, you know, the, uh, the side of God versus the side of God’s enemies, uh, I think we are raising the stakes to a dangerous level, to the level where we can dehumanize the other side, and we can excuse all manner of atrocity. And we see that kind of thing all the time.

100%. It’s gross. It’s not good. But it’s an interesting Bible story. So there you have it. That’s that heavy-duty story. I’m not a fan of genocides, modern or ancient, personally. That’s just a hard line that I draw. I don’t know about you, Dan. I assume you’re on the same page.

Same page.

All right, well then let’s move on to our What’s That? Okay, so here we are. We got it. We got a collection of apostles. 12. It could be a baker’s dozen depending on who you go with, because, because some people like to call an audible and substitute out once Judas gets got.

Good old Judas. So we’ll start with some of the low-hanging fruit, some of the easier ones, the ones that are actually—.

I love that we just talked about Judas and then you mentioned low-hanging fruit, considering he hanged himself.

Or did he?

Or did he just fall over and blow up?

Oh gosh, making me think of The Simpsons where he tries to steal all the candy from the candy convention and takes the Pop Rocks and the soda and like puts them together and chucks them, and like a grenade. Yeah, creates a huge explosion as they run out the door. Um, so, uh, the James, the son of Zebedee—.

Not the other James, because there’s multiple Jameses.

Yeah, there’s, there’s multiple Jameses, but, uh, according to, uh, Acts 12:2 , this was— he was put to death by Herod Agrippa. Okay. He had James, the brother of John, killed with the sword.

And so, yes.

So that one’s actually— that’s recorded in the Bible.

In the Bible. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s historically accurate, but it is at least recorded in the Bible. So to the degree that we’re going to take an account of someone’s death in the Bible seriously, we need to take that one seriously. And we’ve got— and that’s really, I think that’s it when it comes to the folks mentioned in the Bible. Because Peter, a lot of people understand Peter to— he was supposed to have been crucified upside down, and people will appeal to Gospel of John chapter 21. Where it talks about how other people will lead you where you’re going to go and like your arms will be stretched out or something like that. So people think of that as a prophetic allusion to Peter’s martyrdom, but we don’t really have a reference to Peter’s martyrdom for a while. You have implied martyrdom, like 1 Clement, Clement of Alexandria, or no, that Clement of Rome would be, uh, 1 Clement, excuse me, uh, says that he was, uh, he endured many things and then went on to his eternal reward or something like that.

And the implication is that he went on to eternity as a result of the things he endured. So a lot of people understand that as a reference to some kind of martyrdom, some sort of, some sort of unpleasantness that led to his death. Yes. Now whether or not this was a martyrdom, that could have been stopped by Peter denying his testimony of the risen Savior is really not clear. So that’s another thing to bring up. Maybe they did say, “You know what? I made it all up. I’m not sure that that actually happened.” And they were like, “Too late, you gotta die.” So it’s not clear that that is actually evidence that he was convinced. But I think Peter, of all the people from the New Testament who claim to have seen the risen Savior, I think Peter has probably the most solid testimony because Paul even talks about having visited Peter, and Paul refers to Peter’s vision of the risen Jesus.

So Peter probably did make the claim that he had seen the risen Jesus.

Okay, and he was— the story is that he was crucified in Rome, right?

Yeah, upside down. And here’s the thing, that tradition, yeah, that comes from an apocryphal text, okay, called the Acts of Peter. And we’re going to see that most of these traditions actually come from a genre of literature called the Acts of the Apostles, which are New Testament apocryphal texts usually written between the 2nd and 6th centuries CE. And they’re filled with all kinds of fantastical tales of magic and derring-do and all those kinds of stuff.

We’ve met Thecla, so we know some of the derring-do that can happen in an Acts of book.

Right. So the account of his being crucified upside down in Rome under Nero comes from a text that was probably written in the second half of the second century. So probably 100 or more years after he was actually dead is when someone writes that account. Okay. So the actual nature of his martyrdom—I would say we’ve got decent evidence for his martyrdom, but the actual nature of it is apocryphal.

So not great. And then let’s move on to Andrew. Says nothing in the New Testament about Andrew. We have an Acts of Andrew, which was written probably 2nd or 3rd century CE, that talks about a martyrdom. And then Eusebius of Caesarea also talks about mission traditions, that he went gallivanting all around the world. And we’re going to see this as well, sometimes conflicting traditions about where these people went and preached. But the tradition that we see in the Acts of Andrew is that he was crucified on an X-shaped cross.

St. Andrew’s cross, for those of you in the kink world.

Um, I think the St.—

Andrew’s cross exists outside of the kink world. Oh, okay, you guys can have it too, that’s fine, whatever.

But, um, yeah, you have— and notice there’s, there are variations on a theme. Uh, Peter upside down cross, Andrew X cross, right? Like everybody, everybody gets their own.

Everybody gets their— well, because, because like the iconography of that T is already taken. So we gotta go with something different.

And that’s why Peter was, according to the Acts of Peter, I believe that that’s where it explains it. It was because he didn’t feel worthy to be crucified in the same manner as the Savior. Oh, wow. And then we get to John, son of Zebedee.

And Irenaeus says John lived to an old age. Eusebius of Caesarea says he dies in Ephesus. This is one of the disputed ones. Papias of Hierapolis kind of— maybe there was a martyrdom, who knows? Could have happened.

But did I see something about John being boiled in oil? Is that one of the legends, or am I mixing that up?

I don’t know anything about— oh, wait a minute, we got, uh, according to Tertullian, John was banished, presumably to Patmos, where he presumably wrote the Book of Revelation .

Oh, oh, we’re— oh, right, because we’re claiming that this is the same John.

Yeah, after being plunged into boiling oil in Rome and suffering nothing from it.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, he survived the oil and then just died of old age, and then the audience in the Colosseum all converted to Christianity when they saw the— of course they did. Okay, so here’s one thing people will say. Yeah, John, banished to Patmos, wrote the Book of Revelation , lived a long life. There’s nothing that connects the author of the Gospel of John to— or the Apostle John— to the Book of Revelation apart from the name John, right, which was a common name.

And yeah, so a lot of people talk about the tradition. They’re already presupposing the traditional identification of the John who is supposed to have written Revelation with the John who is the apostle, and therefore with the author of the Gospel of John . And that identification is, uh, dubious at best and downright silly, um, if you listen to, uh, experts and even early Christians. There were early Christians who were like, “Yeah, these are not the same.”

So if, if John son of Zebedee and John of Patmos are two different people. Which one took the hot tub in oil and impressed everybody into becoming Christians?

I vote neither of them.

Okay, fine, fine.

After that, we get to Philip.

And we have again Papias of Hierapolis. A lot of people like Papias because he’s the one who says, yeah, Matthew wrote down all the sayings of Jesus in Hebrew and— and, you know, Mark, Peter’s interpreter, he wrote down the sayings of Jesus and all this. So he’s a witness to an early assignment of authorship to the Gospels. But literally everything else he said, Christians are like, “Haha, nope, that didn’t happen.” But he’s one of the— and he’s the one who came up with that, tells that other story about Judas dying because he just got so bloated and huge that he couldn’t even walk down the street and then got run over by a wagon or something like that.

So yeah, but Papias says something about Philip’s death. Eusebius of Caesarea has something. It’s a little vague though. We don’t really have any clear, like, “Yeah, he was crucified upside down,” as far as I know. I think there is a tradition that he was beheaded. Either crucified or beheaded. There is an Acts of Philip. That is another apocryphal text that’s like 4th century, so even further away. Yeah. And I apologize if it sounds like I’ve got a little lisp. I’m finding out what syllables are more difficult for me to pronounce right now with—

You’ll get there, man.

With all this gear in my mouth. And so from Philip, we go to Bartholomew.

What’s your name, Barth? Your full name. Bartholomew. So from Eusebius of Caesarea— and Eusebius, by the way, was the historian for Constantine, the Emperor Constantine in the 4th century CE.

Yeah, that’s fancy. Yeah. And then there’s a later legend, and I think there’s an Acts of—is it Andrew and Bartholomew? I think there’s a combined Acts of—I think it’s Andrew and Bartholomew. I don’t remember, but says that they went to Armenia.

And in Armenia, he converted somebody that ticked off the king, and the king had him had him tortured and executed or something like that. But there’s another one that says he died in some other country. So, and then these are very late. These are again 3rd, 4th, 5th century where these traditions are coming from.

So most of the people who say, “Here’s how the apostles all died,” they probably just Googled this or some source was like, “Here’s how he died and here’s how he died and here’s how he died.” And they just rattle it off as if it is all sober history.

Or biblical.

Yeah, or biblical. And really it’s just these traditions that are being collated from these late Acts of the Apostles, which are apocryphal texts that talk about these magical duels that they had with other magicians and things like that.

And which were probably written not in conjunction with each other. Far from it. Like, these were—oh yeah, yeah, just, uh, this is just fanfic that was written by various and sundry people.

And, and it may be, um, there’s a, there’s a text called the Golden Legend, which is, uh, compiled around 1260. A dude named, uh, I think Jacobus, uh, I, and I don’t know how to pronounce his last name, but, um, he seems to have—I think it was like a Lives of the Saints, basically. And I think he may have been one of the main collators of a lot of these legends.

Sure, sure, sure.

So they do go from being kind of spread out, just stray legends perhaps, to being collected in a single volume. And maybe that’s what starts people down this, this route of collecting them all. Matthew of Matthew fame.

Yes, I’ve heard of it.

Of Book of Matthew fame. Um, Papias says, uh, mentions writings, doesn’t say anything about his death. There is an Acts of Matthew, and I—and that one’s got to be, uh, 3rd or 4th century. I’m not—I don’t know exactly when that one dates to, but the traditions have him dying, uh, being martyred either in like Ethiopia or Persia.

So you’ve got different traditions on that. Thomas—.

And I’ve got Matthew as either stabbed, burned, or beheaded, depending on which source you’re looking at.

So, or yeah, or that sounds exciting. Why not all three? I mean, certainly that’s happened.

Porque no los tres?

Sure. Porque no? And that brings us to Thomas, Doubting Thomas. We have a 3rd century Acts of Thomas. And there’s a tradition of him being martyred in India.

Okay, another India guy, okay.

Yeah, I don’t know if that comes directly from, I think that comes from the Acts of Thomas, but it has been a long time since I’ve read the Acts of Thomas. We have another James who may or may not be James the Just.

I think if they conflate this James with James the Just, then he might be mentioned in Josephus as the brother of Jesus who was put to death. So it all depends on whether or not you conflate the two. Thaddeus, also known as Jude. We don’t see many Thaddeuses these days. I actually, come to think of it, I had a guy named Thad who took a Hebrew class with me many years ago.

There you go.

But he is supposed to have had a mission to Adiabene or Edessa. And there are later apocryphal traditions that have him being martyred in Persia.

And I think those are again, like 4th, 5th, maybe even 6th century.

I’ve got him killed with a club or an axe. So that’s—All right, that’s exciting.

You know what? Probably the same. ‘Cause you could have an axe tip on the end of a club.

Club ’em and axe ’em.

Yeah. Simon the Zealot talks about martyrdom in Persia. There are some traditions that have him partnered up with Thaddeus/Jude, but these are again late. Are you aware of a tradition that gives specifics about the implements of his martyrdom?

I— mine says sawed in half.

Oh, nice.

I like that one. I mean, I don’t like it. I would prefer not to be sawed in half. Yeah, but unless, you know, it’s, it’s in Vegas and I am thereafter restored to wholeness.

Yes. And then the 12th apostle, Judas Iscariot, I guess if we include him, then we do have two different biblical accounts of his, right? His death. I don’t think you would call it a martyrdom, at least not if you stay on the good side of the Christians.

Yeah, I think, I think he lost his, uh, he lost his chance to be a martyr. He doesn’t, he doesn’t get to be that.

Yeah. And, uh, if you go by the Gospel of Matthew , uh, it was a simple hanging after throwing his 30 pieces of silver into the temple and repenting of his wicked deed.

Specifically hanging himself. He was not hanged, but hanged himself.

Yes, yes. And the Acts of the Apostles chapter 1, verses 18 and 19 offer the account where he buys a field with the money, right? And then is out in his field, just like, this is a nice field, and falls and explodes.

And that’s, that’s maybe my favorite biblical death. I think of all of the biblical deaths, that’s the one you gotta, you gotta love.

Yeah, stubs his toe and blows up.

Just—.

What’s the name of the guy in the Monty Python sketch? The guy that couldn’t possibly— oh, sir, it’s just wafer thin. You remember in—.

In—.

Ah, forget about it. The guy that eats so much he explodes.

I vaguely, very vaguely remember the sketch.

I remember how you— literally remember everything that you’ve ever seen except that?

Well, I was thinking of Strange Brew where the guy has to drink the entire vat of beer and then there’s like a fire and he’s the giant big old guy.

Puts the whole thing out.

Yeah, he’s gotta pee on the fire to put it out.

I gotta take a leak so bad I can taste it, eh? There, I did one. I got the quote on that.

Oh gosh.

All right, well, so we have a bunch of dead apostles now?

Well, they’re definitely dead now.

Whether these accounts accurately represent—.

Scholars agree on that part. Scholars agree that they all did.

Almost universal. Almost universal. Almost universal, because there’s still an open question about John, particularly if you’re Mormon. Yeah.

Oh gosh, yes.

Okay. And then that’s not even bringing into question the three Nephites. All right.

Well, there you go. They— some of them may have died for a lie, or there’s no lie, or it’s like— anyway, that apologetic is silly.

It is a weak apologetic.

Yes, we’ll just say that. But yeah, it’s nice to know how these traditions sort of came to be. I think it’s very interesting.

Yeah, and just how much apocryphal literature is out there that is not a part of our Bible, but that continues to influence the way that people think and talk about these figures and construct arguments for the historicity of what’s going on. I think a lot of people would be interested to know that a lot of what they think they know about these figures is actually coming to them from texts they would otherwise dismiss as nonsensical and apocryphal ravings of somebody who wasn’t breastfed properly or something like that.

Right. What’s nice about it is just to acknowledge that it’s part of the sort of rich, colorful tapestry that is the Christian tradition.

Yeah. Yeah. It does not descend ex nihilo from one revealed truth that comes to us from centuries and centuries of transmission and interaction. And yeah, it’s messy. But what’s not messy is the fact that the argument that nobody dies for a lie, therefore Jesus resurrected, is pretty bad.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. I declare it defeated. So there we go. If you, dear friends, would care to join the, the, the many people who help to keep this show going and, uh, and keep our, our families fed, you can go and become a patron over on Patreon.

Bye, everybody.

Killing in the Name Of

Segments

The Transcript

Scripture Index

Terminology