This week I'm starting a series about this question: Does Acts support the idea that at least twelve specific, named individuals were willing to risk their lives for the claim that they had seen Jesus risen from the dead?

Some skeptics have claimed that *even if we take Acts at face value* in its account of the early days of Christianity, it still doesn't support this claim. They may downplay the seriousness of the risk. They may imply that only Peter and John among the original twelve disciples actually stood up and took a risk or that the others stopped taking a risk after the religious leaders first told them to stop preaching.

In the coming weeks I'll be addressing these claims from Acts itself. Here I am setting up the question.

Remember, this is addressing what we can learn from Acts itself if we take the narrative at face value about who was proclaiming the resurrection and what they were risking.