But every one of the original disciples, every one except Judas, ended up suffering an excruciating death for their belief and testimony that Jesus was the Messiah. Would they have really done that if they knew they weren’t telling the truth?
And in the Gospels, all of the men abandoned Jesus in his hour of need, and they were depicted as not believing the women who told them that Jesus had been resurrected, even though Jesus had told them it was going to happen. Doesn’t that seem like the kind of detail you’d want to leave out of the Gospels if you’re trying to portray the Disciples as these larger-than-life figures?
I’m not sure I follow the reasoning, here; is, say, every suicide bomber who declares for Islam evidence that they’re correct? Is dying for a cause — in general — proof that said cause is true?
Certainly not. It may or may not be proof that the person who died/was persecuted BELIEVED what they died for was true. What people believe is true and what is in fact true aren’t necessarily related.
If Joseph Smith didn’t really receive golden tablets from an angel inscribed in a secret language with lost biblical history, why did he and his followers suffer persecution and martyrdom?
Exactly this. Being willing to suffer persecution, and even death, due to your faith is a sign of the strength of your belief (and, perhaps, an indicator of whether your religion holds that enduring such suffering leads to a reward in the afterlife). It only demonstrates the “truth” of that belief to those who already believe.
The problem is nobody really knows how the apostles died. It’s not like we have any public records.
What we have are stories told about the apostles by early Christians. Which we can’t dismiss out of hand. But we shouldn’t accept them as … well … gospel.
Early Christians were big believers in martyrdom. A willingness to die for your beliefs was seen as a sign that those beliefs were true. So stories about the apostles dying for their beliefs would have been exactly what early Christians wanted to hear.
Only two of the apostles had their deaths mentioned in the New Testament. Judas committed suicide by hanging himself (Matthew 27:5). And King Herod had James, the son of Zebedee, killed with a sword. (Acts 12:2).
That was my reading of the OP as well, except point 2 was more like:
But when the Gospels report the disciples denying that Jesus was divine, it was proof he was divine because if the Gospels were making things up, why would they print that detail?
Some may prefer ‘The Holy Grail’, but I think both ‘Life of Brian’ and ‘History of the World Part I’ were Monty Python at the absolute top of their game.