Michael Licona’s magnum opus on the resurrection, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, is a must read for those who are interested in the historical evidence for the resurrection. It has some overlap with other great works on the resurrection such as N. T. Wright’s The Resurrection of the Son of God, but it is distinct in that it begins with an examination of history and method (philosophy of history) before examining the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus and drawing any conclusions. Licona explores the nature of historical knowledge (what can be known) and historical methodology. He even assesses the source material (canonical as well as non-canonical material) to determine each source’s value for the investigation. Finally, he gets to the heart of the matter by determining the historical facts, and then assessing competing hypotheses to determine the best explanation. All 600+ pages are worth your attention!
May 5, 2017
What I’ve Been Reading: The Resurrection of Jesus
Posted by Jason Dulle under Apologetics, Book Reviews, Resurrection, Theology[11] Comments
Thinking to Believe 
May 5, 2017 at 6:35 pm
http://y-jesus.com/simon-greenleaf-resurrection/
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May 5, 2017 at 6:39 pm
ll http://www.creationstudies.org/Education/simon_greenleaf.html
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May 5, 2017 at 6:46 pm
lll http://www.creationstudies.org/Education/simon_greenleaf.html
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May 5, 2017 at 7:25 pm
ll http://www.creationstudies.org/Education/simon_greenleaf.html
l Corthinians15:17, “And if Christ be NOT raised,your faith is in VAIN;you are yet in your sins.”
“And if Christ is not risen,your faith is futile and pointless;you are continuing at present ,even now continue in your sins.” Gk.
Jesus said, “If you do believe that I am He you will die in your sins.” Fearful and sobering. Jn.8:24 Jesus repeated Himself some 500 times in the Gospels this is one of them … very serious.
“Vain” in Greek is mataia: useless, worthless,of no value,to no purpose;fruitless,empty,futile;folly;pointless;without ground or any real purpose…well, you get the idea!
See this chapter.
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May 5, 2017 at 8:14 pm
dr howard
What is your position? There is no historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. The only references come from the bible(and word of mouth by supernatural brain induced religious dogma) but of course we know that nobody resurrects from the dead(but some people “believe”) although people have resurrected from places of the dead, the tomb like Lazarus for example…and Jesus….Jesus himself did not say that he was dead when he appeared to the disciples; indeed, he said Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have.” Being still alive but scarred from the scourging and nails.
And from the scripture narrative of Jonah….”He said, I cried by reason of mine affliction (life and death distress) unto the LORD, and he heard me; out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice.” that means Jonah felt he would drown in the ocean..in the belly of Sheol but he was not dead nor was he in the belly of the fish (that’s a simile), because he was washed up on shore by a pushing wave….10 “And the Lord spake unto the fish, and it vomited out Jonah upon the dry land.’ a metaphorical embellishment to the story as Jonah retold it after promising the Lord that he, Jonah, promised he would pray “look to the temple” because he had wavered and like most people make promises to the supernatural in life and death experience to be saved… etc
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May 5, 2017 at 9:40 pm
dr howard:
24 “I said therefore unto you, that ye shall die in your sins: for if ye believe (not) that I am he, ye shall die in your sins.”
Jesus always spoke of his “Humanity” as the “Father” who was with him because he could differentiate between the “spirituality ‘within humanity’ spirit he called Father” while the regular religious establishment could only understand the “fleshly ‘humanity without’ spirit”. So it is important to understand this different . So in recognizing the spiritual aspect of humanity within, Jesus acted as a man without guile. This spirit he also recognized in one of his first disciples Nathaniel. Nathaniel was a spirit filled person who acted from the spirit within as Jesus did although Nathaniel could not describe that spirit as Jesus could but Nathaniel acted the part because it came natural to him.
45 Philip findeth Nathanael, and saith unto him, We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
46 And Nathanael said unto him, Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth? Philip saith unto him, Come and see.
47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming to him, and saith of him, Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile!
and further declared “50 Jesus answered and said unto him, Because I said unto thee, I saw thee under the fig tree, believest thou? thou shalt see greater things than these.
51 And he saith unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Hereafter ye shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of man.
Jesus’s characterized the Father to use a modern term the “stem cell” in the depths of a human. We know today the stem cell grows according to where it is needed, placed and stimulated. A “stem cell” placed in the area of an ear for example will grow all the components that make up the complete ear and the same “stem cell” so stimulated and placed in the position of the bladder will grow all the components required to grow a bladder and so one. Jesus understood this phenomenon early on and the first human to articulate it using language that the supernaturally indoctrinated religious masses were accustomed to and so he spoke in those terms but that is where most Christians fail to understand and can hardly follow the reality of Jesus because they are trapped in a literal hole. For that reason alone most of the bible remains hidden from their eyes, from their understanding….
This was exactly the same as the disciples who could not figure out how Jesus was able to feed 5000 people with 5 loaves and two fishes and end up with 12 baskets of left overs, even though he filled the baskets before their very eyes from the cache the baskets were being filled from!
Luke 8:18-21 Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?
19 When I brake the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? They say unto him, Twelve…………………So the obvious question then was how can you have 12 baskets of fragments from 5 loaves and 2 fishes and they could not answer…..
They could not understand how Jesus could feed that large group of followers without it being a “poof poof” miracle from the supernatural which they noised as a miracle everywhere thereafter.
It was a cache prepared for the retreat but unbeknowns to the disciples beforehand, they just did not have the common sense to figure it out, so bewildered had the people become by the dogmatic nonsense of the religious supernatural indoctrination of the church, they accepted it as a miracle, no questions asked!
And today the modern religious believer is in thrall under the same spell. OMG How can that be in 2017? So it needs, no shouts out, for explanation. And the creationist builds museums of nonsense and hollywood produces movies showing ludicrous events that are impossible..because people today have more money than brains and so they follow mythology and furthermore pass it on to posterity.
Eyes without seeing and ears without hearing…
Christ rose but you cannot understand how…..therefore “….your faith is futile and pointless; you are continuing at present, even now continue in your sins.” Because you cannot understand the spirit within humanity just the fleshly humanity without the spirit within.
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July 17, 2018 at 2:07 pm
Concernin Mike Licona, Jason, I wonder what you think when considering his minimalist historical account of the resurrection? I have read otherwise a maximalist historical account for the resurrection is much more needed and sound than Licona’s apologetic method.
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July 17, 2018 at 11:51 pm
I listened to Mike Licona’s account of the resurrection video. The problem was, I was starting to fall asleep after 22 minutes into the video and he still had not said anything about his resurrection theory. So I shut down the video and have no desire to listen to the next 22 minutes, he tried his hand at a few feeble attempts at humor but failed miserably. His lead up to whatever he was leading up to I already knew was going to be as boring as the lead up.
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July 18, 2018 at 1:12 pm
Hi Andrew, to make sure we are not defining our terms differently, perhaps you could briefly explain to me your understanding of a minimalist vs. maximalist approach, and what you think is deficient about the minimalist approach.
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July 18, 2018 at 2:14 pm
Maybe a minimalist approach was the short amount of time Licona spent talking about the resurrection which after 22 minutes was not only minimalist, it was missing maximally/
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January 8, 2019 at 7:58 am
Fairly informative information, savored every word you wrote above this matter.
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