Unbelievers, Inquirers, and Persecutors:
How Non-Christian Responses Affirm the Miracles
PART I
By Ian Huyett
Christians believe that a historical
person, Jesus of Nazareth, vindicated his claim to be “the Christ [meaning ‘Anointed
One’], the Son of the living God”[1]
with a series of miraculous demonstrations culminating in his public
resurrection from the dead. More than any other, it is this aspect of
Christianity – the world’s largest religion at the time of this writing – that
makes it comparatively unique.
To be sure, other faiths have involved
stories of persons rising from the dead – perhaps most famously that of the
ancient Egyptians, who believed that Osiris was restored to life after his wife
Isis reassembled his dismembered body.[2]
None of these other persons, however, are regarded by scholarly consensus as
historical individuals.
Perhaps the closest story offered by a
major world religion is Al-Mi’raj: a journey to and from heaven which Muslims
believe to have been undertaken by their prophet Muhammad: doubtless a
historical person. Notably, after returning from Al-Mi’raj, Muhammad is said to
have accurately described a distant caravan: something he could not have seen except
from the sky.[3]
While this report lends some credibility to Al-Mi’raj, however, Muslims do not
claim that persons other than Muhammad witnessed his ascent to or return from
heaven as such. In contrast, Christ was executed in public – his death was
attested to in the Annals of the
Roman historian Tacitus[4] and
elsewhere[5] –
and was then allegedly seen alive by more than 500 of his followers.[6]
1 Corinthians – the source for this
latter claim, widely dated by scholars to the 50s AD – was circulated among the
church which reportedly experienced this event.[7] Offering
the reader personal immortality, the document goes on to say “Behold! I tell
you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a
moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will
sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.”[8] It
is plain that, if we wish to know whether a personal God has revealed himself
in history, the alleged miracles of Christ cannot be safely ignored.
Texts
and History
It should be
noted at the outset that many
attacks on documents like the Annals
and 1 Corinthians, though intended as attacks on these documents in particular,
are in effect attacks on the whole of history. So-called “Jesus mythicists”
seek to obliterate these texts by noting that they depict events which occurred
a long time ago, that some time passed between their writing and the events
they describe, and/or that the texts are old. Yet human history includes many
events which occurred long ago, stands largely upon texts written after the
deaths of the persons they describe, and is often studied through texts
thousands of years old.
Applied consistently, the mythicist’s
skepticism would lead us to speculate that George Washington fabricated the
Battle of Trenton, to relegate Alexander the Great to the historical status of
Zeus, and to dismiss the idea that there ever was a Peloponnesian War.
Mythicists, needless to say, rarely apply their skepticism consistently. To
throw out mankind’s history to escape one man from Nazareth is an exercise so
desperate as to ironically glorify the object of the mythicist’s resentment.
The structure of mythicism is, in this way, similar to that of conspiracy
theories which involve secret cabals of lizard people. In fact, Joseph Atwill –
the most recent mythicist to gain widespread public attention – claims that
Christ was the elaborate contrivance of Roman officials. Mythicism is, for this
reason, held in contempt even by secular New Testament scholars like Bart
Ehrman – a fact which many secular people, and even many Christians, do not fully
appreciate.
A comparison with other texts may here
be illustrative. The earliest manuscripts of Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and
Demosthenes date from 1,300 years after their writing.[9]
The earliest manuscripts of Julius Caesar’s Gallic
Wars, Livy’s History of Rome, and
also Tacitus’ Annals date to 1,000
years after their writing.[10]
Of the New Testament, in contrast, there exist 114 manuscript fragments dated
to 50 years from their writing – as well as 200 manuscripts of books dated to
100 years from their writing.[11]
The general reliability of the New
Testament is further bolstered by archaeological evidence. As philosophers
Timothy and Lydia McGrew have noted, “Archaeology has not been kind to literary
criticism of the Gospels and Acts.” Defying the predictions of critics, these
texts have been corroborated by the discovery of an inscription concerning
Pontius Pilate, a boundary stone bearing the name of Sergius Paulus, the Pool
of Siloam depicted in John 9, and other evidence indicating that John was
familiar with Jerusalem prior to its destruction in AD 70.[12]
More recently, a structure at Nazareth was dated to the time of Christ.[13]
An obscure town mentioned in no Jewish sources prior to AD 300, Nazareth had long
been thought by critics to be a Christian invention.
While such discoveries do not prove
that the Gospels are true in every particular, the McGrews concede, authors who
are “accurate in matters that we can check against existing independent evidence”
deserve the benefit of the doubt within reasonable bounds.[14]
The fact that all authors have biases – far from rendering all texts unreliable
– is merely one factor to be considered in their analysis. After all: bias
afflicts not only dead persons and their writing, but living ones and their
speech. If all biased communication is unreliable, then all human
relationships, and the whole enterprise of learning, become impossible.
In his Confessions, Augustine wrote of his realization that – while an anti-Christian
– he had been irrationally skeptical in his dismissal of the Bible’s
reliability. “I began to realize that I believed countless things which I had
never seen,” he wrote, including facts about history, about current events
elsewhere in the world, and about medicine and other matters. “Unless we took
these things on trust, we should accomplish absolutely nothing in this life.”
Appealing to ancient texts, then, I
will now consider reports of the resurrection and argue for their reliability,
endeavoring to focus primarily upon independent sources. I will then advance
the historicity of “the works,” or other miracles, by demonstrating that a
variety of early non-Christian sources attest to them.
Witnesses to the Resurrection
Christ was a polarizing figure; reports
of his resurrection are relayed through Christian and anti-Christian sources.
Temporarily excluding martyrdom from consideration, perhaps the most impressive
extant Christian report is that of Christ’s posthumous appearance to the 500.
As already noted, it is well-established
that 1 Corinthians – which tells us about this appearance – was circulated
among the early church.[15]
Paul, moreover, tells us that most of the 500 who saw Christ “are still alive,
though some have fallen asleep.”[16]
This report is congruent with modern scholarly dating of the letter to the 50s
AD. Together, these facts make it highly improbable that this appearance was an
invention of Paul’s own. The early church, though dispersed, was a small
community; Paul’s letters themselves are evidence that its branches routinely
wrote to one another. If hundreds of living Christians did not claim to have seen the risen Christ, Paul’s readers would
likely have recognized this statement as a lie.
Historical apologists often focus on
such reports: that is, reports written by Christians which the authors could
not plausibly have invented. Yet, while there are good reasons to regard many
such statements as reliable, early anti-Christian sources can be even more helpful
to the Christian position. When the anti-Christian sources make statements
which advance the Christian narrative,
we can trust them to be relatively free from bias. For the same reason, a word
of praise from one’s sworn enemy is often a source of greater pride than a compliment
from a friend.
Perhaps the most interesting of these
sources is the philosopher Celsus’ book On
the True Doctrine. The work survives because the church father Origen
quoted it extensively in a response entitled Contra Celsus. Celsus’ polemic was widely circulated enough for
Origen’s friend, Ambrose of Alexandria, to urge Origen to refute it.[17]
The credibility of Origen’s answer would therefore have been dependent upon his
relaying the text’s content accurately.
Origen dates On the True Doctrine to the 130s AD.[18] Based
almost singularly upon one use of the word “those,” however, many scholars have
advanced a later date. This has been convincingly shown to be an error.[19]
There seems to be no compelling reason not to take Origen at his word.[20]
Often identified simply as a “pagan”
philosopher, Celsus’ religious views are nuanced. He identifies his own view of
God with that of Plato’s,[21]
criticizing the doctrine of the incarnation as anathema to the purity of “the
underivable, the unamenable” God, who “does not even participate in being.”[22]
He is also, however, a fervent defender of polytheistic worship, concluding his
treatise by recommending that Christians be systematically killed “if they
persist in refusing to worship the various gods who preside over the day-to-day
activities of life.”[23]
He believes that the emperor, also, is “a god”;[24]
many years after Celsus’ writing, the emperor Diocletian embarked on the very
program of extermination that Celsus desired.[25]
Like Tacitus,[26]
Celsus affirms that Christ was crucified: “I emphasize that the Christians
worship a man who was arrested and died.”[27] While
he demonstrates some familiarity with Christian accounts of Christ’s life, moreover,
he purports to have access to historical information about Christ from non-Christian
sources. For example, he wrote: “I would call your attention to the well-known
fact that the men who tortured your god in person suffered nothing in return;
not then, nor as long as they lived.”[28]
This statement is likely reliable for much the same reasons as Paul’s report on
the appearance to the 500.
It is unclear how many witnesses to the
resurrection Celsus believed there were; it is possible he was unfamiliar with
the appearance to the 500. Speaking through a Jewish character, he initially
suggests that the only witnesses to the resurrection were “deluded women” who
hallucinated the event[29]
or else were “deluded by his [Christ’s] sorcery.”[30]
Contradicting himself, however, the Jewish character later refers to the disciples’ account of the resurrection
in order to accuse Christ of being “a sorcerer.”[31]
What is clear, however, is that Celsus
himself is weary of hearing continuous reports of Christ’s resurrection.
Speaking in his own voice, he grumbles that “More and more the myths put about
by these Christians are better known than the doctrines of the philosophers.”
He further complains: “Who has not heard the fable of Jesus’ birth from a
virgin or the stories of his crucifixion and resurrection? And for these fables
the Christians are ready to die—indeed do die.”[32]
Celsus’ complaint suggests that reports of Christ’s resurrection were
persuasive enough to circulate widely and rapidly. This phenomenon is best
explained by Paul’s claim that these reports came, not from a few, but from
hundreds of Christians.
Moreover, Celsus bemoans that even
people for whom he has a modicum of respect have come to believe in the resurrection,
writing “The Christians base their faith on one who rose from a tomb. Even the
more intelligent Christians preach these absurdities.”[33]
If people whom a Platonist philosopher is willing to label as “more
intelligent” affirmed the resurrection a century after its alleged occurrence,
this too is best explained by proliferating firsthand reports of the event. The
early emergence of a class of “more intelligent Christians” will be discussed
in greater detail shortly.
Interestingly, if less significantly,
there is some recent evidence of a Jewish tradition attesting to the
resurrection and associating it with sorcery. Christ’s name has been discovered
in a late antique curse, inscribed in Jewish Babylonian Aramaic “by the name of
Jesus, who conquered the height and the depth by his cross, and by the name of
his exalted father, and by the name of the holy spirits forever and in
eternity. Amen, amen, selah.”[34]
Shaul Shaked, a scholar of religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has
concluded that the inscription was written by a Jew.[35]
According to Peter Schäfer, director of the Jewish Museum of Berlin, “This does
not imply, of course, that the Jewish writer believed in Jesus and the Trinity,
but it certainly means that he knew the name of Jesus and believed in its
magical power.”[36]
As an aside, this inscription is
congruent with the story of Acts 19:11-15, which states that the miracles
performed by Paul became so renowned that a group of Jewish exorcists – though
they did not believe in Christ themselves – attempted to exorcise “by the Jesus
whom Paul proclaims.” Acts continues: “But the evil spirit answered them,
‘Jesus I know, and Paul I recognize, but who are you?’”
Independent Inquirers
In 1627, the Dutch jurist Hugo Grotius
wrote De veritae religionis christianae,
a systematic defense of the Christian faith. One of Grotius’ most interesting
arguments is his appeal to the conversions of many of the early church fathers.
“There were always very many amongst the worshippers of Christ who were men of
good judgment, and of no small learning,” he notes.[37]
Grotius points out that many of these men were brought up in other religions.
Why, he asks, should they “be worshippers of a man that was put to an
ignominious death”?[38]
He concludes that the best explanation for their conversions is that, after a
diligent inquiry, each concluded that the reports about Christ were reliable.
Grotius begins his list with Sergius
Paulus, the proconsul of Cyprus. Paul of Tarsus, a Jewish lawyer familiar with
Greek philosophy, might also warrant inclusion in such a list. Both, however,
are said to have converted upon witnessing miraculous events themselves. As we
now wish to focus on diligent inquiry into reports
of miraculous events, let us exclude them from consideration. We might
nonetheless assemble a list of educated converts to the early church which
includes Luke,[39]
Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian.
Each of these men was a trained
physician, philosopher, or lawyer. Justin Martyr alone had studied under Stoic,
Aristotelian, Pythagorean, and Platonic philosophers prior to his conversion.
Critically, none saw the resurrection or other miracles of Christ firsthand –
and none claimed to have converted on the basis of a miraculous sight.
Luke, a physician,[40]
corroborates Grotius’ theory at the beginning of his eponymous text: he has
undertaken, he says, “to compile a narrative of the things that have been
accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses
and ministers of the word have delivered them to us.”[41]
In other words, though Luke did not personally witness the events he is
relaying, the eyewitnesses were there for him to interview. As Paul says in 1
Corinthians, “most of [the witnesses] are still alive.”[42] Luke
writes that he has compiled this evidence so that Theophilius, to whom he
dedicated his text, may have “certainty concerning the things you have been
taught.”[43]
It is precisely this certainty that many early converts to Christianity
enjoyed.
Christian apologists rarely make
Grotius’ argument – perhaps because of its air of intellectual elitism.
Christianity has long been hostile to elitism of any kind, instead appealing –
in Celsus’ words – to “whoever is a wretch.”[44]
God’s wisdom, writes Paul, “is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of
this age, who are doomed to pass away.”[45]
Likewise, Paul advises “let him become a fool that he may become wise.”[46]
Even independently, Paul’s admonitions
are commendable: the massacres of the Jacobins and Marxists were the result,
not of simplemindedness, but of the mental gymnastics of intellectuals. Where exceptional
testimony is concerned, however, education seems to be associated with
skepticism – not with credulity. That “men of good judgment, and of no small learning”
quickly found reports concerning Christ credible, therefore, is evidence both
of their frequency and of their having the ring of veracity.
Martyrdom
It should be noted that, as so far
presented, Grotius’ argument is as much evidence for the other miracles as for
the resurrection. It can be particularly helpful to the resurrection, however,
for one reason: while belief in miracles is a good explanation for conversion,
belief in the resurrection is the best explanation for martyrdom.
Importantly, Grotius’ argument does not
mention Paul – not because of the miraculous nature of Paul’s conversion, but
because Paul was a Jew.[47]
Jewish monotheists, Grotius seems to have assumed, would naturally have been
more receptive to Christianity than non-Jews. This assumption, however, is
dubious. Jewish law states that whoever is hung on a tree is cursed.[48]
As the great Christian apologist William Lane Craig often states, “Jews had no
expectation of a Messiah who, instead of triumphing over Israel’s enemies,
would be shamefully executed as a criminal.” The disciples therefore came to
believe in the resurrection “despite their having every predisposition to the
contrary.”[49]
It is especially striking, then, that both Jewish and non-Jewish Christians
gave their lives rather than deny it.
The martyrdom of Christians likely began
with the judicial murder of Stephen in about AD 34: an atrocity in which Paul –
then still a militant anti-Christian – was a participant.[50]
Paul then led a “ravaging [of] the church, and entering house after house, he
dragged off men and women and committed them to prison.”[51]
James bar Zebedee, the first apostle to be martyred, was put to death on the
order of Herod,[52]
likely in AD 44. According to the McGrews, his murder “is not in any real
historical doubt.”[53]
Likewise, the subsequent slayings of Peter and Paul in Rome are attested to by
multiple early Christian sources.[54]
In terms of the historical value of early martyrdoms, however, Christ’s brother
James outdoes all of his predecessors.
During Christ’s ministry, it must be
noted, James did not believe that his brother was the son of God or –
apparently – that he could even work miracles.[55]
Yet, after James reportedly saw the resurrected Christ,[56]
we learn – not from the New Testament, but from the Jewish historian Josephus –
that James was martyred for his Christian faith.[57]
James, it must be emphasized, would have been even more predisposed to disbelieve Christianity than other Jewish
Christians. In Jewish eyes, Christ’s crucifixion proved that he was not the Messiah;
in James’ case, this defeat should also have confirmed a preexisting assessment
of his brother. If James, against all odds, instead came to believe that Christ
had been right after all, it stands
to reason that some overwhelming personal experience changed his mind.
The McGrews note the objection that “kamikaze
pilots, suicide bombers, and Nazis were willing to give their lives for what
they believed was true.”[58]
In response, they point out that this argument fails to distinguish “between
the willingness to die for an ideology and the willingness to die in
attestation of an empirical fact.”[59]
While this answer is a powerful one, there is at least one additional
distinction: in each of the three aforementioned groups, martyrdom was
proportionally more common among lower- than higher-ranking members.[60]
Among early Christians leaders, however, it seems to have been a rite of
passage to saunter boldly into the arms of death, asking – as Paul did – “O
death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?”[61]
Other early matyr-fathers include Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, and the aforementioned
Justin Martyr.
The practice of martyrdom was,
nonetheless, far from confined to church leaders. The killing of obstinate
Christians soon blossomed into a Roman routine, and the church’s explosion onto
the world stage occurred amidst unearthly cycles of bloodletting. This fact is
extraordinarily well-established by the extant writings of Roman persecutors
and their supporters – who, after all, had little incentive to exaggerate
Christian bravery.
Writing between AD 111 and 113, Roman
governor Pliny the Younger reported to the emperor Trajan that a number of
persons had been denounced to him as Christians. While some denied being
Christians or repented of their faith – “They all worshipped your image and the
statues of the gods, and cursed Christ” – “those who persisted I ordered
executed… There were others possessed of the same folly; but because they were
Roman citizens, I signed an order for them to be transferred to Rome.”[62]
In his short response, also extant, Trajan agrees that “if they are denounced
and proved guilty, they are to be punished.”[63]
Decades after Pliny’s letter, Celsus
mocked Christians by arguing that, though Christians purported to be able to
blaspheme the pagan gods without consequence, “those who do stand next to your
little god are hardly secure! You are banished from land and sea, bound and
punished for your devotion to [your Christian demon] and taken away to be
crucified. Where then is your God’s vengeance on his persecutors?”[64]
Christians, he adds, “offer their bodies to be tortured and killed to no
purpose when they think that in so doing they are defying the demons and going
to their eternal reward.”[65]
Finally, Lucian – an anti-Christian
satirist who died in AD 180 – says of Christians that “The poor devils have
convinced themselves that they are all going to be immortal and live forever,
which makes most of them take death lightly and voluntarily give themselves up
to it.”[66]
[1]
Matthew 16:16
[2]
See also “Dionysus.” Encyclopædia
Britannica. 2015. (“At the direction of Hera, the infant Zagreus/Dionysus
was torn to pieces, cooked, and eaten by the evil Titans. But his heart was
saved by Athena, and he, now Dionysus, was resurrected by Zeus through Semele.”).
[3]
Ibn Isḥāq, Muḥammad. The Life of Muhammad: A
Translation of Isḥāq's Sirat Rasul Allah. Ed. Ibn Hishām ʻAbd Al-Malik.
London: Oxford UP, 1955. 184. See also Rippin,
Andrew. Muslims: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices. London:
Routledge, 2001. 52 (“Such miraculous stories are not abundant in the popular
life accounts of Muhammad, as compared to Jesus’s for example, but they do tend
to play an important role both in providing a guarantee of Muhammad’s status
and in supplying a focal point for popular belief.”).
[4] Annals 15.44.
[5] e.g. Celsus,
and R. Joseph Hoffman. On the True Doctrine: A Discourse against the
Christians. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1987. 72 [hereinafter Hoffman]. (“I
emphasize that the Christians worship a man who was arrested and died.”).
[6] 1
Cor. 15:6
[7] Kümmel, Werner Georg, Paul Feine, and Johannes Behm. Introduction
to the New Testament. Nashville: Abingdon, 1966. 202 [hereinafter Kümmel].
(“The authenticity of 1 Corinthians is not disputed. The Epistle was
already clearly known in I Clem. 37:5; 47:1-3; 49:5; Ign., Eph 16:1; 18:1; Rom
5:1; Phila 3:3.”).
[8] 1
Cor. 15:51-52.
[9] McDowell, Josh. Evidence for Christianity. Nashville,
TN: Thomas Nelson, 2006. 65. Thanks to Andrew Rogers for pointing me towards
this source.
[10] Id.
[11] Id.
[12] McGrew, Timothy, and Lydia McGrew. "The Argument from
Miracles." Eds. William Lane Craig, and James Porter Moreland. The
Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology. Chichester, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell,
2009. 600 [hereinafter McGrew].
[13] "Nazareth Dwelling Discovery May Shed Light on Boyhood
of Jesus." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 21 Dec. 2009.
[14]
McGrew at 600.
[15] Kümmel at 202.
[16] 1
Cor. 15:6
[17] Contra Celsus I (“…my pious Ambrosius,
why you wished me to write a reply to the false charges brought by Celsus
against the Christians…”).
[18] Hoffman at 30.
[19] Hargis, Jeffrey W. Against the Christians: The Rise of
Early Anti-Christian Polemic. New York: Peter Lang, 1999. 22 [hereinafter Hargis]
(explaining that, when Celsus imagines what would happen if “those who now
reign over us” became Christians, his argument “involves a hypothetical
sequence of rulers”; his use of “those” therefore does not mean that
co-emperors reigned when he wrote).
[20] Pliny’s
systematic killing of Christians in 111-113 shows that the persecution to which
Celsus refers was well underway before the 130s. The sophistication of Celsus’
arguments, used to promote a late date, is not dispositive. Nor is the fact
that Celsus felt the need to write the work at all.
[21] Hoffman at 103.
[22] Id.
[23]
Hoffman at 122. Christians, moreover,
should not even be “permitted to live until marriageable age.”
[24] Id. at 124. (“You are swearing by the
man to whom all earthly power has been given: what you receive in life, you
receive from him. And this is what it means to be a god.”).
[25] Fears, J. Rufus. "Christianity." 2007. Lecture.
(“The very suspicion of being a Christian was enough to bring you before a
tribunal – and with the prospect of death. But instead of breaking
Christianity, it only seemed to strengthen it. And non-Christians who watched
these men and women – these girls, even,
and boys who were Christians – stand up to the Roman bureaucracy and say
‘No, I will not worship your gods: put me to death.’ There must be something in
this idea that gave it power.”).
[26] Annals 15.44.
[27]
Hoffman at 72.
[28] Id. at 119.
[29] Id. at 68.
[30] Id. at 67.
[31] Id. at 60. (“One wonders why a god
should need to resort to your kind of persuasion—even eating a fish after your
resurrection. I should rather think that your actions are those of one hated by
God, the actions of a sorcerer.’ So says our Jew to Jesus.”). Cf. Luke 24:36-42
[32] Hoffman at 54.
[33] Id. at 72.
[34] Schäfer, Peter. Jesus in the Talmud. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton UP, 2007. 38 [hereinafter Schäfer].
[35] Id.
[36] Id. at 39.
[37] Grotius, Hugo, and Jean Le Clerc. The Truth of the
Christian Religion in Six Books. London: William Baynes, 1829. 101
[hereinafter Grotius].
[38] Id.
[39]
Paul, Luke’s teacher, is said in Acts 19:11-12 to have performed several
miracles: indeed, he performed the miracle that converted Sergius Paulus in
Acts 13:6-12. It is possible that Luke converted because he experienced one of
these miracles. That we are never told as much, however, distinguishes Luke
from Paul and Sergius Paulus and warrants his inclusion in this list.
[40]
Colossians 4:14
[41]
Luke 1:1-2
[42] 1
Cor. 15:6
[43]
Luke 1:4
[44]
Hoffman at 74. (“But the call to membership in the cult of Christ is this:
Whoever is a sinner, whoever is unwise, whoever is childish—yea, whoever is a
wretch—his is the kingdom of God. And so they invite into membership those who
by their own account are sinners: the dishonest, thieves, burglars, poisoners,
blasphemers of all descriptions, grave robbers. I mean—what other cult actually
invites robbers to become members! Their excuse for all of it is that their god
was sent to call sinners: well, fair enough. But what about the righteous? How
do they account for the fact that their appeal is to the lowest sort of person?
Why was their Christ not sent to those who has not sinned—is it any disgrace
not to have sinned?”).
[45] 1
Cor. 2:6
[46] 1
Cor. 3:18
[47]
Grotius at 101.
[48]
Deuteronomy 21:23
[49] Craig, William Lane, and Shabir Ally. "Who Is the Real
Jesus?" University of Western Ontario. Mar. 2002. Debate.
[50]
Acts 7-8
[51]
Acts 8:3
[52]
Acts 12:2
[53]
McGrew at 614.
[54] Id. at 615.
[55]
John 7:1-5
[56] 1
Cor. 15:7, Acts 1:14
[57] Antiquities 20.200
[58]
McGrew at 624.
[59] Id.
[60] Matome
Ugaki, a Japanese admiral and kamikaze pilot, is one counterexample. My point
is not that leaders of these three groups have never willingly faced death for
their respective causes, but that such cases are atypical.
[61] 1
Cor. 15:55
[62] Pliny,
Letters 10.96-97
[63] Id.
[64]
Hoffman at 119.
[65] Id. at 122.
[66] Id. at 27.
