The apostles should be twelve of the most famous people in history. We're told they were hand picked by Jesus to witness his wondrous deeds, learn his sublime teachings, and take the good news of his kingdom to the ends of the earth.

Which makes it all the more surprising that we know next to nothing about them. We can't even be sure of their names: the gospels list a collection of more than twenty names for the so-called twelve disciples – with Bartholomew sometimes showing up as Nathanael, Matthew as Levi and Jude as Thaddeus, Lebbaeus, or Daddaeus!

It should be apparent that if the twelve were actual historical figures, with such an important role in the foundation and growth of the Church, it would be impossible to have such wild confusion over the basic question of who they really were.

But what do we know about any of them?

"Twelve Good Men and True"?

The fact is that for seven of the twelve, our only early source, the Gospels, say nothing about them at all. They are just names on a list.

Isn't it a tad odd that such worthies, infused with the Holy Spirit and given powers to heal the sick and cast out demons, wrote nothing, or had nothing written for them or about them? Isn't it odd that men chosen to be eye-witnesses to the mighty deeds of Jesus, wrote no eye-witness statements, left no sermons, no memoirs, no letters, no teachings, no pithy words of encouragement?

All that we have about "the twelve" are conflicting legends and fantastic stories from a much later date, tall stories about where they went, what they did and most especially how they died. Their deaths, it seems, have been recorded in loving and lurid detail. And it is the graphic deaths of the disciples that solves the riddle. We've all heard the apologetic claim: "Would they have died for a lie? Therefore the story of Jesus must be true."

"Would the disciples have suffered and died for a fabricated saviour?"

One of the reeds of straw holding up the shabby edifice of Christendom is the alleged suffering and cruel fate of his original apostles, the twelve disciples chosen by the Lord himself. By their heroic, cheek-turning sacrifice, these worthies earned their martyr's crown and joined their Lord in Heaven. In so-doing, they inspired generations of noble Christians, who ultimately taught the blood-thirsty Romans the Christian values of compassion and brotherly love. Well, that's the myth.

But we all know how useful to a cause is a dead martyr, even if he's a fiction. In the case of Jesus, the twelve are a fiction, a necessary entourage for a sun god, passing through the twelve constellations of the zodiac. Just like other saviour gods, Jesus had to have his retinue.

The truth is, the twelve disciples are a grubby and sordid invention.

Where DID they get their ideas from?

Joshua also chose Twelve

"The LORD spoke to Joshua, saying: 'Take for yourselves twelve men from the people, one man from every tribe' ... Then Joshua called the twelve men whom he had appointed from the children of Israel, one man from every tribe." – Joshua 4.1-4.

The names 'Jesus' and 'Joshua' both derive from the Hebrew Yehoshua – an heroic name ('Yahweh saves') given to the supposed leader of the Israelites in their conquest of Canaan.

The parallels don't end there. Matthew's Jesus promises his groupies that they will "sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel." – Mathew 19:28.

They died. Only John died a natural one.

chatinent:
They died. Only John died a natural one.

Is that all?

Read the op and address the points raised..

In the NT, Jesus names 12 apostles to spread his gospel, and the early Christian church owes its rapid rise to their missionary zeal. Yet, for most of the Twelve, there's scant evidence of their existence outside of the New Testament.

The apostles should be twelve of the most famous people in history. We're told they were hand picked by Jesus to witness his wondrous deeds, learn his sublime teachings, and take the good news of his kingdom to the ends of the earth.

Which makes it all the more surprising that we know next to nothing about them. We can't even be sure of their names: the gospels list a collection of more than twenty names for the so-called twelve disciples – with Bartholomew sometimes showing up as Nathanael, Matthew as Levi and Jude as Thaddeus, Lebbaeus, or Daddaeus!

It should be apparent that if the twelve were actual historical figures, with such an important role in the foundation and growth of the Church, it would be impossible to have such wild confusion over the basic question of who they really were.

In Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve, author Tom Bissell sets off to discover whether the Twelve Apostles were actual historical figures or merely characters in a fictional story. On the way, he walked for 500 miles along the Camino de Santiago pilgrim route in northern Spain, visited the place where Judas Iscariot reportedly hanged himself, and hunted in vain for a mysterious monastery in Kyrgyzstan where the bones of the Apostle Matthew are believed to be buried. It’s a journey full of false starts, dead ends, and unsolved riddles that leaves him as perplexed as when he began.
There’s nothing historical that verifies their existence other than the gospels themselves .

According to a medieval map from Spain, Matthew’s relics were buried in a place called the Monastery of Armenian Brotherhood, which was believed to be on the shore of Lake Issyk-Kul, this beautiful body of water in the middle of the Kyrgyzstan Mountains. A Russian archaeologist claimed to have found it in 2006, but there had never been an Armenian monastery there, only a 19th-century Russian monastery.

The fact is that for seven of the twelve, our only early source, the Gospels, say nothing about them at all. They are just names on a list.

Isn't it a tad odd that such worthies, infused with the Holy Spirit and given powers to heal the sick and cast out demons, wrote nothing, or had nothing written for them or about them? Isn't it odd that men chosen to be eye-witnesses to the mighty deeds of Jesus, wrote no eye-witness statements, left no sermons, no memoirs, no letters, no teachings, no pithy words of encouragement?

All that we have about "the twelve" are conflicting legends and fantastic stories from a much later date, tall stories about where they went, what they did and most especially how they died but no facts to corroborate.