Bryan Litfin is a professor in the School of Divinity at Liberty University. Previously, he was Head of Strategy and Advancement at Clapham School, after serving for 16 years as Professor of Theology at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and 3 years as an editor and writer at Moody Publishers. He is the author of Constantine’s Empire Series (Revell, 2020-2022), the Chiveis Trilogy, Wisdom from the Ancients (Harvest House Publishers, 2022), Early Christian Martyr Stories (Baker, 2014), After Acts (Moody, 2015), and Getting To Know the Church Fathers (Brazos, 2007), as well as several scholarly articles and essays.

Peter may well have been crucified upside down, for the Romans were known to do this. Since the martyrdom story in the Acts of Peter was already developing in the early second century, it might have been recording an actual eyewitness remembrance. However, the victims of Roman crucifixion were not given the chance to make requests about the method of their impalement. The intent was to shame them in a grotesque way, not accomodate their wishes. Therefore, the upside-down crucifixion of Peter is historically plausible, though not for any spiritual reasons. 

The tradition of Thomas’s martyrdom has come to be associated with a little hillock called St. Thomas Mount in modern Chennai on India’s east coast. Though the ancient accounts do tell us that Thomas died in India by spearing, the suggestion that it happened at Chennai is the stuff of pious fabrication. Only in the medieval sources do we begin to see a connection between Thomas and the eastern side of India. The sixteenth-century Portuguese explorers who sought to convert the indigenous Indian Christians to Roman Catholicism are responsible for the hilltop shrine at Chennai and its supposed bone fragment from the apostle.

When Paul’s severed head hit the ground, it bounced three times as it uttered the words “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus,” which caused three springs of water to well up. Today the church of St. Paul at the Three Fountains marks that very spot -- but it is clearly the result of later legends that carry no historical validity.

In the early second century, a collection of oral folklore began to solidify into a narrative trajectory now called the Acts of Peter. In addition to such thrilling episodes as a duel between Peter and the heretic Simon Magus, in which Peter causes the flying Simon to crash and burn (chapters 31–32), we also find a detailed account of Peter’s martyrdom (chapters 33–41). Emperor Nero is the villain in the background of the story, which proves the second-century Christians believed Peter died during that ruler’s reign.

... in the apocryphal Passion of Simon and Jude, Judas Thaddeus travels with Simon the Zealot to Babylon, where they debate with the Persian magi. The characters proceed through a series of adventures until at last they are martyred by the priests of the sun god.

... an early medieval text incorrectly attributed to a certain Babylonian bishop named Abdias recounts Matthew’s daring exploits and miraculous adventures in the land of Ethiopia.

Thou exceeding wicked and shameless one, enemy of all that live and believe on Christ Jesus, here is a dumb animal sent unto thee which hath received a human voice to confound thee and show thee to be a deceiver and a liar.