“People don’t die for a lie” is weak. Leaders of many movements have died rather than admit fraud, and the evidence that the apostles died for their testimony is mostly late legend.

The second point is conceded: only the deaths of Peter, Paul, and James are well attested, and later apostolic martyrdom stories are unreliable. The argument does not need twelve martyrs. It needs a few people who were in a position to know whether the body was stolen and who accepted death rather than recant. Paul and James are the hardest cases for a fraud theory, since neither was part of any hypothetical conspiracy; they joined from outside, on the strength of their own experiences. A hoax by the disciples does not explain why the movement’s enemy and the founder’s skeptical brother came to believe it.