Killing Jesus: A History

cross”) as a way of warding off demons. By the fourth century, the cross was more commonly viewed with pride, as a symbol that Jesus had suffered a lowly death for the benefit of all mankind. The crucifix, that iconic image showing the body of Jesus affixed to a cross, was not a part of the Christian culture until six centuries after his death. The lack of representation of the cross may have been due to the Church’s belief in his resurrection.
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    After the crucifixion, the disciples of Jesus underwent a radical shift in behavior. They were quite positive that they had seen a resurrected Jesus and soon went out into the world and fearlessly preached his message. Known as the apostles, the men paid a tremendous price for their faith.
    In A.D. 44, the grandson of Herod the Great, Herod Agrippa, who ruled Judea at that time, ordered that James , one of the sons of thunder, 2 be put to the sword. The beheading of James made him the first disciple to be martyred. Agrippa was violently opposed to Christianity and used his power to ruthlessly suppress the new theology of Jesus. For a time, he imprisoned Peter but did not kill him.
    Peter ’s missionary work eventually took him to Rome, where he formalized the nascent Christian Church. The Romans were not amused, sentencing Peter to death on the cross. When he protested that he was not worthy to die in the same manner as Jesus, the Romans agreed—and nailed him to the cross upside down. The year is thought to be sometime around A.D. 64–67. There is good evidence that Peter is buried beneath St. Peter’s Cathedral in Vatican City.
    The deaths of most disciples are consigned to legend. Andrew , the apostle known for being optimistic and enterprising, preached Jesus’s message in what is now the Ukraine, Russia, and Greece. He was finally believed to have been crucified in Patras, a Roman-controlled region of Greece. Legend says Andrew was bound to an X -shaped cross, thus giving rise to the Saint Andrew’s cross that adorns the national flag of Scotland to this day.
    The often-pessimistic Thomas is thought to have been speared to death near Madras, in India. Bartholomew preached in Egypt, Arabia, and what is now Iran before being flayed (skinned alive) and then beheaded in India. Simon the Zealot was thought to have been sawed in half for his preaching in Persia. Philip evangelized in what is now western Turkey. He is said to have been martyred by having hooks run through his ankles and then being hung upside down in the Greco-Roman city of Hierapolis. The gregarious former tax collector Matthew may have died in Ethiopia, murdered just like all the rest for his fervent preaching.
    Little is known about what happened to the others, except that each apostle spent his life preaching and was killed for doing so. It is a fact that the disciples of Jesus traveled as far as India, Britain, and even into Africa in their zeal to spread their faith, marking a vast sea change from their timid behavior during Jesus’s life and in the hours after his death.
    The last to die was John , the other son of thunder, who was taken prisoner by the Romans for preaching Christianity and exiled to the Greek island of Patmos. There he wrote his Gospel, and also what would become the final pages of the New Testament, the book of Revelation. John died in A.D. 100 in Ephesus, in what is now Turkey. He was ninety-four and the only apostle not to have been martyred.
    Matthew’s Gospel and the first book of Acts attributes Judas Iscariot ’s death to suicide. Matthew writes that upon learning that his plan to force Jesus’s hand had resulted in the execution order, Judas flung his thirty pieces of silver into the Temple and hung himself from a tree. Legend has it that he used a horse’s halter to break his own neck. Whether or not this is true, Judas Iscariot was never heard from again.
    The same is true for Mary Magdalene . After her appearance at the tomb of Jesus, she disappears from the story. She’s very likely included among “the women” mentioned in Acts 1:14, as those empowered by the Spirit at Pentecost.
    Mary, the mother of Jesus, is mentioned in the book of Acts and alluded to in the book of Revelation as “a woman clothed with the sun,” but her fate goes unrecorded. On November 1, 1950, the Roman Catholic Church decreed that her body had been “assumed into heaven.” Pope Pius XII noted that Mary, “having completed the course of her earthly life, was