2008-09-15 Resurrection of the Son of God

This was the most exciting book I have read for years. I couldn't put it down (didn't sleep for a week!)! People constantly say to Christians, "where is your evidence?" expecting that we would be floored! Here is the evidence, with a long and careful discussion of all the details, including Homer and Virgil, Philo and Pliny, Josephus and Plato, the Dead Sea Scrolls and lots you haven't heard of. And he goes through the Gospels and the Letters too, very carefully and hugely informatively. And I have been reading the Bible for many years!

His thesis is, what historical explanation is there for the sudden large and demonstrable change in how people thought about resurrection, other than that Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead as the Gospels tell us? The book is a cold historical examination of the facts, and also addresses the concerns of a huge number of modern commentators.

This is that rare and beautiful thing: a work of true scholarship that really makes a difference to the way we think. Before, we believed it for pretty good reasons, now we believe it with copper-bottomed first-class unassailable reasons.

Hooray!