The Martyrdoms of Peter and Paul

The event

Neither the book of Acts nor any other New Testament document narrates the actual deaths of Peter or Paul, but the church's memory of how these two towering apostles died is very old and consistent. Clement of Rome, writing to the Corinthian church around AD 96 — within living memory of the events — already refers to Peter and Paul as having 'borne testimony' and gone to 'the glorious place' reserved for them, in a passage widely understood as an allusion to their martyrdoms in Rome. Later writers such as Tertullian, Origen, and the historian Eusebius fill in more detail, consistently locating both deaths in Rome under Nero.

Tradition holds that Paul, as a Roman citizen, was granted the comparatively swift death of beheading, an account that fits naturally with his own words near the end of his final letter, written from a Roman prison awaiting execution: 'I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come... I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith' (2 Timothy 4:6-7). Peter, by contrast, is remembered as having been crucified — and, according to the tradition preserved by Origen and later writers, upside down, at his own request, because he considered himself unworthy to die in the same manner as his Lord. This tradition is often connected to Jesus's own prophetic words to Peter recorded in John 21:18-19, foretelling that Peter would one day 'stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go' — words John tells us were spoken 'to show by what kind of death he was to glorify God.'

Some later legendary embellishments (such as the popular 'Quo Vadis' story of Peter meeting Christ on the road out of Rome and turning back to face martyrdom) are exactly that — legendary color added long after the fact, and should be held loosely. But the substance of the tradition — that both apostles were executed in Rome in the mid-to-late AD 60s, almost certainly during or shortly after Nero's persecution following the great fire — rests on early, multiple, and geographically independent testimony, and there is no competing ancient tradition claiming either apostle died anywhere else or any other way.

Dating

The New Testament does not directly narrate either apostle's death, so the specific year (commonly placed between AD 64 and 68, during or at the end of Nero's reign) and the manner of death (especially the detail of Peter's inverted crucifixion) rest on early post-apostolic tradition (Clement of Rome, Tertullian, Origen, Eusebius) rather than Scripture itself. Evangelical scholars generally regard this tradition as reliable in substance while recognizing that some picturesque details accumulated later.

Scripture references

• John 21:18-19
• 2 Timothy 4:6-8

Other witnesses

• 1 Clement 5
• Eusebius, Church History 2.25
• Tertullian, Scorpiace 15

Further reading

• Christian History Magazine 156: What Happened to the Apostles? — free full issue
• Bible Odyssey (SBL): Peter and Paul