(In Pics) Life After Jesus: What Happened to the Twelve Apostles?

Popular focus on the New Testament of the Bible always revolves around the four canonical gospels. The life and ministry of Jesus Christ and his death at the hands of Judea’s Roman governors receives the lion’s share of the attention.

Pushed to look further, some will reference Paul’s letters to just about everyone preaching the word of this new, Christian god. If you are more edgy you might also mention the Book of Revelations, the crazy drugs vision which bookends the Biblical narrative and which has caused spirited debate ever since.

However there are other aspects of the New Testament which receive less attention. The twelve Apostles and their fates are among the chief of these. Tradition has it that eleven of them died horribly, but the fate of only two are recorded in the Bible itself.

So, what happened to the closest confidants of Jesus?

1. Peter

*St Peter, the “rock” upon which* *Jesus* *intended to build his church, was one of Jesus’s most important followers and, if the Catholics are to be believed, the first* *Pope*. Preaching Christianity in Rome was a risky business at that time, and Peter was crucified by Emperor Nero around 64 AD, hung upsidedown on a cross because it was said he didn’t feel worthy to die the same death as Christ himself (Städel Museum / *Public Domain*)

2. Andrew

*Peter’s brother Andrew had also been crucified a few years earlier somewhere in* *Greece*, most likely the city of Patras. His cross was also not the same as that of Jesus, but instead was “X” shaped, with the St Andrew’s Cross becoming a heraldic and symbolic figure and being perhaps most famously used in the *Scottish* *flag. The problem with his death is that the only record of his crucifixion comes from the* Acts of Andrew, an apocryphal text filled with fantastic miracles and mysticism (Stefan Lochner / *Public Domain*)

3. James

St James was the first of the apostles to die, and the only one whose death is recorded in the Bible apart from Judas. This puts us on firmer ground: Acts 12 from the New Testament states that Herod, concerned about the *Jewish* *distrust of the new religion, had James killed with a sword in Jerusalem. This is believed to have occurred around 44 AD (Stefan Lochner /* *Public Domain*)

4. John

St John is commonly thought to be the only apostle who died of old age, escaping the martyr-heavy fate that early Christians faced. This might have something to do with his job: Jesus charged him not to spread the word of Christianity, but to look after Jesus’s mother, Mary. However it does seem that the *Romans* did try to martyr John anyway, dunking him in a vat of boiling oil from which he emerged unscathed. It is possible that this addendum offers an insight into the true fate of John, and that he was boiled alive (Francesco Morandini / *CC BY 3.0*)

5. Philip

We are now entering more problematic territory. We know that there were at least two central “Philips” in the early church: the Apostle and the Evangelist, and we know that the early Christians confused these two as well. Which Philip is which, and what happened to the disciple Philip, has become confused. It seems most likely that the apostle died on a cross like Jesus (most likely in Hierapolis in Greece), but some record that he was *beheaded. Or maybe he was stoned to death, or crucified upside-down, or maybe he wasn’t martyred at all (Simon de Vos /* *Public Domain*)

6. Bartholomew

We have another murky story with St Bartholomew. Mostly in art he is portrayed as having been flayed alive and then beheaded, perhaps because it offers the most arresting image, but according to other sources he was also crucified, crucified upside-down, or *drowned*. There is also a tradition that he travelled to India to preach Christianity and was therefore beaten and murdered. Either way, almost the only thing that the accounts can agree on was that his death was particularly gruesome (Stefan Lochner / *Public Domain*)

7. Thomas

*“Doubting” Thomas has a relatively straightforward story. By almost all accounts he was run through with a spear in the city of Mylapore, in southern* *India, some time around 72 AD. He had travelled to India with Bartholomew, as Jesus had sent out his apostles in pairs to preach his word (Städel Museum /* *Public Domain*)

8. Matthew

The earliest traditions of the life of Matthew the Apostle that we know of seems to suggest that he died a natural death. However it was not long before a series of conflicting stories of his martyrdom emerged, and Matthew now has the dubious account of having the largest number of different stories about his death of all the disciples of Jesus. Some hold that he was *burned to death, or ambushed and murdered. Others say he was executed, or stoned, or as pictured above that a crowd set upon him and he was slain (Jan de Beer /* *Public Domain*)

9. The Other James

James the Younger, or James the Lesser, is a very interesting figure in the early church. Some believe this to be the same man as James the Just, which would make him the brother of Jesus and a key leader of the early Christian Church after Jesus’s death. James the Just was pushed from the top of a *temple* *and then beaten to death by clubs. However other traditions specifically and explicitly relating to the apostle James state that he was crucified in* *Egypt, and modern scholars believe that these were two separate people (Stefan Lochner /* *Public Domain*)

10. Jude and Simon the Zealot

*Jude and Simon were the two apostles sent by Jesus to what is now* *Syria*, and is was there that they both met their end. Jude’s story is more straightforward: killed with an axe or a sword by Syrian religious leaders after performing a miracle. Simon has many other stories however: maybe he was killed alongside Jude, or maybe he survived to be martyred later. Accounts contest that he was crucified, sawn in half, or even survived to old age, everywhere from *Persia* *to pre-historic Britain (Stefan Lochner /* *Public Domain*)

11. Judas

*Judas Iscariot, the man who betrayed Jesus, is the only other disciple whose death is recorded in the Bible. He is recorded to have committed* *suicide* *shortly after the betrayal, but strangely the Bible gives us two conflicting accounts as to how this occurred. The* Gospel of Matthew states that he hanged himself after throwing away the money he had received as bounty for betraying Jesus, whereas the Acts of the Apostles has a longer and stranger story whereby Judas buys a field with the money and then fell over in the field, bursting open and dying in the process (© José Luiz Bernardes Ribeiro / *CC BY-SA 4.0*)

Top Image: The Twelve Apostles with Jesus. Source: Андрей Николаевич Миронов (A.N. Mironov) / CC BY-SA 4.0.

By Joseph Green

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Joseph Green

Joseph Green is editor for Historic Mysteries, which combines his background in English Literature with a lifelong fascination for the strange and the unexplained. Read More