#1) The quote "be willing to die for it" is much larger than your narrow requirement for recanting, so your disingenuous restriction is denied.
But what if they did recant, yet still were executed? Would you still say they died for their beliefs? What if they were never given the option? What about the disciples who were not publicly executed but rather were assassinated with little or no warning? If you accuse me of being disingenuous and then suddenly say nothing else, you are offering nothing to back up that accusation. Please support your claim and explain how I am being disingenuous.
#2) The topic of denying Jesus for ones own benefit is covered in the Gospel of John 18:13-27 as it describes the account of the three denials.
Denying God and the alternate direction men take is a solid theme in scripture.
Reminding me about the time Peter recanted to save his own life is your evidence that the inquirers were torturing disciples in the hopes of making them recant? Since we have essentially no details about Peter's martyr, couldn't we conclude that it's possible that the Romans did in fact coax Peter into recanting, only to laugh at him and execute him anyway? Would that contradict any themes present in the Bible? Would that destroy the Christian faith, or would the people of that savage era already know that you could get someone to say whatever you want if you torture them enough?
I will list some facts that I presumed to be common ground. Please let me know if you dispute anything:
1. No one is known to have visited the tomb after Easter Sunday, or in other words it was not verified by another party
2. Claiming that someone rose physically from the dead necessitates that their tomb is empty, and in fact an empty tomb is a necessary element to even the most basic resurrection claim
3. The "empty tomb" is therefore not additional evidence on top of the eyewitness testimony
4. There is no documented claim anywhere - not in the Bible, or in noncanonized texts, or in Christian tradition, or even in secular history - which makes the actual claim that the disciples were given the chance to go free if only they recanted
5. The 500 witnesses mentioned by Paul are not given by name, nor is their existence proposed by anyone else
6. The eyewitness testimonies of the disciples are given to us second-hand, since neither Matthew nor John actually wrote their gospels, and furthermore these second-hand testimonies are first documented at least a decade later
7. Of the disciples that were arrested and tried publicly, nothing at all is actually known about the circumstances of their arrest or trial; combined with point 4., there is no actual reason to claim that they willfully died for their faith
8. In conclusion, the "Why die for a lie?" argument and the "Transformation of the disciples" argument do not withstand scrutiny; due to the lack of known facts, we are unable to either verify or falsify the claims
9. The only fact, therefore, that supports the resurrection claim is given in 6.
I have read
More than a Carpenter. It was generally convincing to me because I was Christian at the time. I don't care to read it again, but if you provide me with some of the stronger arguments from it then I'll indulge you.
I skimmed those PDFs and saw no actual attempt at proving anything. It was first a bunch of scholars who were former skeptics, then some claims about Jesus' post-mortem appearances (these were particularly worthless because I would have to be an idiot if I rejected the resurrection despite having these appearances as evidence; the matter of fact is that these appearances are the very point in question, and yet they are listed almost in the beginning as if they are evidence - is this an attempt at deception?), followed by some of the weakest skeptical responses available. If I missed something of substance, let me know.
#4) This "deduction" has no connection to the rest of your post. And I can't relate to this new sermon point anyway.
My parents do not attend nor have been members nor are believers. I became a believer in my 30's
mostly because I was already familiar with every science fiction book in our school library.
Science fiction is science fiction no matter what class it's taught in.
It sounds as if you are saying that you accept Christianity because you reject evolution and the Big Bang. I'd be happy to explain to you on another thread or in private why these things are overwhelmingly true. Regardless, your skepticism on these matters is not appropriate grounds for accepting Christianity.
Everyone during Trajan's reign. Many in the third century.
You are missing the point. I'm asking for eyewitnesses who were given the chance to recant. No eyewitness of Jesus lived until the beginning of Trajan's reign, let alone the third century.
The very first thing I said was:
As I was being raised Christian, I was led to believe that the eyewitness apostles willfully died for their testimony and refused the opportunity to recant and go free. This is very powerful testimony, much more powerful than that of the 9/11 hijackers because those hijackers never professed first-hand knowledge of Islam.
Moving on...
Possibly, but the burden of proof is on you to show that Nero's policy didn't allow for the possibility of recanting. Roman-led persecutions against Christians followed what he did, what evidence do you have that they became more merciful as a matter of course, even though history is clear that they hated Christians enough to torture them?
To say that the burden of proof is on me is to say that if I fail to meet this burden, then your claim stands as true. But your claim has no evidence to back it up (and neither does mine, by the way), so essentially you're saying that you can make up a claim with no evidence whatsoever and it's true unless proven otherwise.
Break him, and you break the churches he writes to. Besides, if you let him write, you have a better idea of who and where they are.
Or you let him write and simply read the letters without delivering them.
As an example of the Sanhedrin's policy. Even in their corrupt state, they likely would have let him go if he hadn't confessed Christianity.
Again, I don't care about what happened to Stephen. He is not an eyewitness because what he saw was not visible to other people at the same event. Read my first paragraph in the OP.
Not preaching was tantamount to recanting, everyone in that chamber knew it. Yet they kept preaching, after Peter's imprisonment, and John's brother James died. John knew what was going to catch up to him if he kept preaching, if Jesus didn't return first.
Fact: we don't know the circumstances of their deaths. We don't have details on why they were arrested or executed.
Do you have evidence for this beyond your conjecture?
It's your own conjecture. Your response here is to my quote:
So when they went out and preached again, they'd be punished for preaching and the Romans wouldn't care if they recanted just like they didn't care the first time.
But the above is simply my response to your original quote:
They let Peter and John go on the condition that they no longer teach the Gospel.
There is no mention of the disciples being asked to recant in the first encounter, so why do you think they would be tortured into recanting during the second encounter?
Only if you can document that he recanted his faith.
That would be the only reason to remove a person
from consideration of death-due-to-religious-beliefs.
So essentially you're saying you will believe in something until it is proven wrong. The flat earthers had a good run with that form of logic.
The fact is that there are so few details that I'm unable to verify my case and you're unable to verify yours. I even led with the fact that there are virtually no details of Peter's execution. Christians love to say, "From nothing, nothing comes." Well, you have nothing in regards to details, so you cannot extrapolate an actual case for anything.