Could the apostles die as martyrs without recanting because they would rather die instead of being known as liars?

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Could the apostles die as martyrs without recanting because they would rather die instead of being known as liars? When it comes to psychology of ancient mind (the importance of honor), this question sounds kind of hard to get through. Can anyone comment on that?
 
If they held honor in high regard they wouldn’t lie in the first place. Second if a person knows with absolute certainty that something is a lie they would not allow themselves to be tortured and executed in a horrific manner. The Apostles were 1000% sincere when they died proclaiming that Jesus had risen.

“It may be taken as HISTORICALLY CERTAIN that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.” Gerd Ludemann
New Testament Scholar University of Gottlingen

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So the argument is that because honor is held in such high regard that one would die rather than admit one is wrong? Where exactly is the honor in that? How is dying a liar more honorable than admitting a mistake?
 
Hello, it is possible that one person in the ancient world chose to die rather than to be correctly labeled a “liar,” but it wouldn’t make sense to assume that this was the case for any specific person unless there was evidence.

It would be considerably unlikely that 10 people would die together (I.e at the same time) from the exact same motivation.

When you consider this case; where they faced separate martyrdoms, away from each other, separated by time and distance at the hands of different parties, this “explanation” becomes absurd and nonsensical.
 
If you make the ultimate sacrifice for something you hold to be true, it has no bearing on the validity of that belief.
 
It’s one thing to die for something you believe in but entirely another when you are in a position to know whether something is true or not. The Apostles were in a position to know whether Jesus had risen or not. If anyone in history was in a position to know the truth about the Empty Tomb it was them.
 
Freddy said:
If you make the ultimate sacrifice for something you hold to be true, it has no bearing on the validity of that belief.
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I think this is the key point. Lots of Christians have died for their beliefs over the last 2,000 years. Few would have had any claim to having, for example, witnessed the resurrected Jesus.

I believe most scholars of the period believe that the Apostles had some transformative experience. That is not the same thing as saying that everything in the Gospels is true. So while I do think that martyrdom in the first generation is some evidence, it is not conclusive evidence.
 
Who specifically killed the 10 men and how?
Were they outright given the choice to recant or die, and chose to die?
 
Duke12VonFalkenburg said:
It’s one thing to die for something you believe in but entirely another when you are in a position to know whether something is true or not. The Apostles were in a position to know whether Jesus had risen or not. If anyone in history was in a position to know the truth about the Empty Tomb it was them.
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That depends on whether you believe Paul’s writing to be factual.
 
Freddy said:
That depends on whether you believe Paul’s writing to be factual.
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What is there to doubt about Paul’s writings? Do you realize that there were thousands of Christians before a line of the New Testament was even written? We have a creed that has been dated by scholars to be within MONTHS of the death of Jesus.

Even without Paul’s writings the evidence for the resurrection is overwhelming.

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Nobody is that committed to a lie. If Christianity were a long con then the apostles would have cut their losses and it would have died out around the earliest persecutions.
 
Duke12VonFalkenburg said:
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Freddy:
That depends on whether you believe Paul’s writing to be factual.
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What is there to doubt about Paul’s writings?
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Play the Devil’s Advocate. What could there be about his writings that could be wrong?
 
Titas said:
Could the apostles die as martyrs without recanting because they would rather die instead of being known as liars?
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Ah, but did they die as martyrs? The chain of evidence may not be as clear as supposed.
 
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