Christian Pure

How Did the 12 Apostles Die? Each Apostle, the Sources and the Order of Their Deaths

Christian Pure Team

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Summary

  • The New Testament tells us how only two of the Twelve died: Judas Iscariot hanged himself (Matthew 27:5), and James son of Zebedee was killed with the sword in AD 44 (Acts 12:2).
  • Peter was crucified in Rome under Nero, and we first read of him dying head downward in the Acts of Peter, written in the late second century.
  • Paul was beheaded in Rome, as Tertullian and Eusebius both report.
  • John is the one apostle tradition says died of old age, at Ephesus in the reign of Trajan (from AD 98), and so he was the last of the Twelve to die.
  • For the other apostles we have later traditions of uneven reliability, and in the second century Heracleon said Matthew, Philip and Thomas were not martyred.
  • The fall from the temple and the fuller’s club belong to James the Just, the brother of the Lord, who was killed in AD 62, and not to James son of Alphaeus.

Of the Twelve, the New Testament tells us how only two died. Judas Iscariot hanged himself, and Herod Agrippa I had James son of Zebedee killed with the sword in AD 44. For the rest we depend on early tradition, which says that Peter was crucified in Rome under Nero, that most of the others died as martyrs, and that John lived to old age at Ephesus. Every one of these men had run away once. On the night Jesus…

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Bibliography (Click to show)
  • Scripture quotations are from the King James Version (1611), text of Project Gutenberg eBook no. 10 (Matthew 8:14; 10:3–4; 27:3–5; Mark 2:14; 14:50; Luke 6:15–16; John 1:41, 44; 19:26–27; 21:18–19, 23; Acts 1:18–19, 26; 12:2; 1 Corinthians 7:8; 9:5; Galatians 1:19). https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10
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