DEATHS OF THE APOSTLES AND OTHER CHURCH LEADERS

I have attended Sunday school classes where the teachers confidently explained how various NT characters met their fates. However, with few exceptions, the little information we have on this subject comes from very late church legends and traditions. And even those stories often disagree with one another:

Matthew: Tradition A – slain with the sword in a distant city of Ethiopia

Tradition B – Martyred or died of natural causes in Egypt

Mark: died in Alexandria, Egypt as a result of being dragged through the streets

Luke: hanged on an olive tree in Greece

John: Tradition A – miraculously escaped death after being put into a pot of boiling oil in Rome.

Tradition B – escaped an attempt to poison him in Rome when the poison changed into a serpent.

He was subsequently banished to Patmos, released later, and died of old age in Ephesus.

Tradition C – killed by the Jews in Ephesus

Peter: preached in Babylon (Rome, Great Britain and France) and then crucified upside down at Rome

by Nero (as predicted in John 21:18)

James the Greater: beheaded at Jerusalem by Herod Agrippa I (Acts 12:1-2) after ministering in India 

(or Spain)

James the Lesser: ministered in Syria, thrown from a pinnacle of the temple and then beaten to death

with a fuller's club

Bartholomew: Tradition A – flayed alive

Tradition B – preached in India, Africa and Hierapolis. Fastened to a cross but released to minister in 

Lycaonia and Armenia, where he was crucified again

Philip: stoned by pagan priests while he was fastened to a cross in Hierapolis after preaching in Scythia

(or France)

Andrew: after ministering in Scythia (or Ephesus or Greece), he was bound to an x-shaped cross where 

he preached to his persecutors until he died.

Thomas: run through the body with a lance in the East Indies

Jude: shot to death with arrows

Matthias: Tradition A – first stoned and then beheaded

Tradition B – probably martyred in Jerusalem (or Syria)

 

Barnabas: stoned to death at Salonica

 

Paul: tortured and then beheaded in Rome

 

Judas: NT Witness – Even in this case, well documented in the NT, there is some ambiguity as to 

exactly how he died. Matthew 27:5 says he hanged himself while Acts 1:18 says he fell down and burst 

in the middle.

Tradition B -- Judas was cut down before being suffocated, but his whole body swelled up and he 

walked around the streets for some time in that state before bursting open.