PrintThe book, The Apologetics of Jesus–A Caring Approach to Dealing with Doubters, by Norman Geisler and Patrick Zukeran, is a milestone in the discipline of Christian apologetics. As Josh McDowell states in his cover comment, “it is one of the most important books on apologetics.” It is a must read for the current day Christian apologist, and in my opinion, every Christian who is engaged in the proclamation and defense of the Gospel of Christ.

Among the other works that I have studied in relation to the apologetic methodology of Jesus’ ministry, I must say that this book is truly exceptional. In just 207 pages, Geisler and Zukeran bring Jesus’ use of apologetics to life, presenting eight apologetic models used by the greatest Apologist who every lived, which can be applied today, in the communication and defense of the Gospel in our relativistic and post-modern culture.

In the introduction, Geisler and Zukeran state:

“That Jesus is one of the greatest teachers who ever lived is not in dispute, even by most non-Christians who are aware of his teachings. Certainly he is the ultimate model of Christian teaching. Given this fact, we can only conclude that Jesus was also the greatest apologist for Christianity who every lived…Those who oppose apologetics in favor of a leap of faith without evidence will be disappointed in Jesus. Nowhere does he call on anyone to make an unthoughtful and unreasoned decision about his or her eternal destiny. Everywhere Jesus demonstrates a willingness to provide evidence for what he taught to every sincere seeker…The study of Jesus’ apologetics yields some rewarding results. It provides an example to follow, since he is the greatest of apologists. In so doing, such a study benefits not only the apologists but also every Christian who wants to be an effective witness for Christ to an unbelieving world.”

 

Geilser and Zukeran cover eight ways in which Jesus used apologetics in His ministry:

Jesus’ Apologetic Use of:

Testimony
Miracles
the Resurrection
Reason
Parables
Discourse
Prophecy
Arguments for God

 

They conclude the book with the following four insightful chapters:

Jesus’ Alleged Anti-Apologetic Passages
Jesus’ Life as an Apologetic
Jesus and the Role of the Holy Spirit in Apologetics
Jesus’ Apologetic Method

 

In their conclusion of the book, Geilser and Zuckan offer the following:

“In conclusion, Jesus was not only the master teacher, he was also the master apologist. He did not expect people to believe without evidence. He never commended anyone for blind faith. Indeed, they were condemned for refusing to accept the evidence he offered. Of course, Jesus knew that evidence alone could not convert anyone. It could provide a basis for rational belief that he was the Son of God, but only the Holy Spirit, with the cooperation of the human will, could persuade a person to believe in him. Nonetheless, apologetic evidence provides the necessary condition for salvation, while only Spirit-induced saving faith produces the sufficient condition for it. In practice, Jesus offered many different apologetic techniques, depending on what was needed on the occasion. Nonetheless, when an attempt to make an overall synthesis of Jesus’ apologetics, Jesus fit better in the category of classical apologetics that incorporates both rational and historical evidence. And on any counting, Jesus’ methods of attempting to convince people of his claims were not only multiple but masterful. Like his teaching techniques, Jesus’ apologetic strategies are a model for all others who with to fulfill the biblical imperative to be set in “defense of the gospel” (Phil. 1:16) and to “contend for the faith” once for all delivered to the saints (Jude 3).”

 

Norman Geisler-How I got into Apologetics

Key apologetic issues of our time?-Norman Geisler

Other Resources:

The Apologetics of Jesus and Paul–by John W. Robbins, here

Jesus: Philosopher and Apologist–by Douglas Groothuis, here

Jesus the Logician–by Dallas Willard, here

At a time when even the most basic facts about reality are challenged, it is more important than ever for Christians to be able to articulately and persuasively proclaim and defend the Gospel. Learn from some of the leading Christian thinkers in the world about the evidence for the historic Christian faith, navigating controversial social issues, and articulating truth in a secular culture. Now is not the time to disengage. It’s time to get off the sidelines and into the game. Join us for the 23rd Annual SES National Conference on Christian Apologetics, the largest and longest-running apologetics conference in the country.

Speakers: Gary Habermas, Norman Geisler, Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, J. Warner Wallace, and more

Conference info, here

The Thrive Apologetics Conference and Biola University team up to present this two day conference featuring world-class speakers and over 40 breakouts on topics that will help us explore the intersection of faith and culture. Together we will be tackling tough questions and be inspired to an intellectual faith.

At the Thrive Apologetics Conference we tackle some of today’s most commonly asked questions. Questions, like: In this scientific age, is it reasonable to believe God exists? How do I talk with my kids about faith? Hasn’t the Bible been changed over time? How do I have tough conversations about faith? Register today and dive deeper into these questions.

We will be covering topics such as: Christianity and World religions, how to deal with contradictions in the Gospels, how do we communicate with those we disagree with, and hot button cultural issues.

Speakers: Craig Hazen, Douglas Groothuis, J. Warner Wallace, Paul Copan, Dena Davidson, and others.

(Conference info, here)

As Christian apologists and/or case-makers, we need to be sure that we have done our due diligence before making our claims, whether it be in arguments for the existence of God, the historicity of the Resurrection, the reliability of the Gospels, etc., so that we don’t find ourselves ‘out on a limb’ and thereby embarrass ourselves and hinder the cause of Christ. As J.R.R. Tolkien once said, “The wise speak only of what they know.”

In this regard, I would like to highlight the following interview with preeminent New Testament scholar, Daniel Wallace, which can be found at Apologetics315. (Click here for interview/downloadable mp3) [Daniel Wallace is professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary and an authority on Koine Greek grammar and New Testament textual criticism. He is founder of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts]

Wallace brings an interesting fact and/or clarification to the table in regards to the popular apologist claim that, “in the first three centuries of Christianity, only eleven verses of the entire New Testament had not been able to be found in those Church Fathers’ writings.” Here is an excerpt from the interview which I found to be enlightening:

BA: Well, that’s all excellent insight. I want to ask you just one more advice question, and that’s in making a case for the reliability of the Bible. I wonder from your perspective if there are some times where you hear someone defending the reliability of the Bible, and you think, “Oh no. Don’t do it that way.” Or maybe in your mind there are do’s and don’ts, and I wonder if you could share some perspectives on how you would go about defending the Scriptures.

DW: There are plenty of do’s and don’ts, and the biggest do’s and don’ts have to do with citing other apologists where you haven’t really studied or gotten your facts straight. I’m embarrassed to say that sometimes there are Muslim apologists who have done really decent research on the nature of the New Testament or on the transmission of the text or things along those lines, and they have cleared up kind of an apocryphal story that Christians believed in.

There was one example: a number of scholars have passed on saying someone had pointed out that in the first three centuries of Christianity, only eleven verses of the entire New Testament had not been able to be found in those Church Fathers’ writings. Well, that was a garbled story that went back to the early 1800s, and it was a third-hand story of a fellow by the name of David Dalrymple. He was the one who actually was doing the research, and somebody heard about this at a party and not directly from Dalrymple but from somebody else, and then put into a book, and it’s been stated for the last 200 years as though it was Gospel fact.

What Dalrymple actually said was in the first two centuries of the Christian faith through A.D. 300, that all but eleven verses of John’s Gospel had been found in the Church Fathers’ writings. He wasn’t talking about the whole New Testament, so this got communicated in such a way that said it was the whole New Testament that’s been found. That’s just irresponsible and not at all helpful. It was Muslim apologists who discovered the error, and it’s been quoted by apologists, even text critical scholars, and it was the Muslims who [did the] research and said sorry that’s not the case.

Well, I don’t like to see us getting embarrassed by that, and that’s why we need to be very serious students and never afraid to really ask the tough questions and get into the details. (end of excerpt from interview-Complete interview transcript, here)

I am sure that many of us, in our zeal, have stated this popular and/or ‘accepted’ claim at one time or another to bolster our case-making. But as Wallace so wisely advises, we need to be sure to do our due diligence, asking the tough questions, putting time into our research, and making sure our facts are indeed facts. “Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.” (2 Timothy 2:15 ESV)

As a follow-up to Wallace’s interview, I’d like to also recommend the following article by J. Warner Wallace, Can We Construct The Entire New Testament From the Writings of the Church Fathers?  J. Warner Wallace confirms Daniel Wallace’s findings, and then adds an excellent summary and defense of the Gospels and the historical Jesus:

Even if we can’t reconstruct the entire New Testament (save 11 verses) as claimed in the citation of Dalrymple’s work, we really don’t need to. The early disciples of the apostles confirm the content of the apostolic teaching. If skeptics are looking for an early version of Jesus that is less divine, less miraculous and less supernatural, they aren’t going to find it in the writings of the first generation that followed the apostles. Instead, they’re going to find the very same Jesus that you and I know from the writings of the New Testament. Jesus didn’t evolve over the centuries to become the “legend” he is today. Jesus (the very same Jesus you and I know and love) has been emphatically described from the very earliest period of Christian history. We don’t need to reconstruct the entire New Testament to have great confidence that the writings of the New Testament have been delivered to us accurately. The Early Church Fathers confirm this for us, even if they don’t repeat every line of the canonical narrative.

 

William Lane Craig’s Advice to Christian apologists/case-makers
(Note: Dr. Craig makes an excellent case for preparation in communicating and defending the Christian faith-preparation that requires due diligence on the part of the Christian case-maker.)

The Importance of Becoming a Christian Case-Marker–J. Warner Wallace

“Michael Licona is one of the world’s leading experts on the historical evidence for resurrection. I use his book The Resurrection of Jesus in my Master’s Level course at Biola. For the past few years, Dr. Licona has been working on some cutting-edge research related to Gospel contradictions. His research is both fascinating and groundbreaking. He answers a few of my questions:

SEAN MCDOWELL: Mike, what got you interested in the question of Gospel contradictions?

MIKE LICONA: Back in 2008 and 2009 I was publicly debating Bart Ehrman on the resurrection. He brought up Gospel contradictions as one of his major objections to the Gospels. I have noticed that this genuinely bothers many Evangelical Christians. As a result, I decided to look into it in more depth. I wasn’t so much concerned about resolving them, because I understood that if Jesus rose from the dead, Christianity is true, regardless of any errors that might be present in the Bible. So, even if there are contradictions in the Gospels, it wouldn’t negate the truth of Christianity. But it does bother a lot of Evangelicals, so that’s what got me interested in the topic. And to be honest, it did make me question the historical reliability of the Gospels.” Complete interview, here

As the augmented reality game Pokémon Go is increasingly gaining popularity across the world, Christians have expressed varying viewpoints across the spectrum, with some calling the game a demonic influence, and others embracing it and putting up signs at their churches welcoming Pokémon Go players.

The game has been a topic of concern and interest for Christians not only because it is one of the most significant cultural phenomena in recent weeks (the game has had more than 15 million downloads as of July 13 according to SensorTower, and has some 21 million active daily users in the U.S. as of July 11 according to SurveyMonkey), but also because many churches are actually a part of the game, either as PokéStops (locations where players can gather free items) or gyms (where players can battle against each other with their best Pokémon). For complete article, here

Our world has never been a place of ease. Torn by war, famine, disease, and natural disasters, the earth, and the humanity that dwells upon it, are regularly rocked by tragedy. Our recent past, certainly, is rife with it, with incidents such as the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando being a prime example. But how do we reconcile the reality of tragedy—of the existence of evil—with the existence of God? How do we hold to the idea that God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and also all-loving, yet allowed something like the Holocaust to happen? Do we simply let go of our faith, declaring it untenable? No—this is a problem worthy of exploration, one that Christians have struggled with since the Fall, but it’s not one that is without an answer. The answer to this problem boils down to one concept—that of free will.

God is inarguably good. Psalm 145:9 sums up God’s scriptural character well with “The Lord is good to all; He has compassion on all He has made”. Jesus later reinforces this in Matthew 19:17, saying that “There is only One who is good,” speaking of God. He is also definitively all-powerful and all-knowing, attributes which God, Himself declares to Job throughout Job 38. So if God is, scripturally, all-knowing, all-powerful, and good, shouldn’t all evil intention be squashed before it can bloom into consequence?

The answer to that lies in what Alvin Plantinga, noted scholar of Christian apologetics, calls libertarian free will—free will that is genuinely free. This kind of free will is morally significant—we are free to choose between the moral and the immoral. In that way, we, as God’s creations can be rightfully punished or praised for our actions, as God does throughout scripture. For complete article, here

Oral FormulaicIn the following video presentation, Dr. Andy Bannister presents a compelling analysis of the origins of the Quran which challenges the standard popular model that states that Mohammad borrowed or did a bit of ‘cut & paste’ from the Taurat and the New Testament Gospels/Injil, as well as other sources such as, the heretical Christian and Jewish sects that lived in Arabia at that time.

Highlighting the Quranic story of Iblis and Adam (Sura 7:11-18) which appears seven times in the Qur’an, each time as a different version of the story, Dr. Bannister makes the case that Mohammad wasn’t a cut and paste plagiarist, as has been promoted by popular scholarship.

He outlines three problems with the borrowing hypothesis as it relates to the Qur’an:

1. There really is no textual overlap between the Qur’an and any of these so-called sources.

2. If Mohammad simply copied the story from earlier writings, why is every time that the story of Iblis and Adam, for instance, that as it occurs in the Quran, is told differently? Not only is every telling of the Iblis and Adam story different from the Jewish and Christian tellings, each story is different from the other versions in the Qur’an. It is very hard to see how that could be the case if Mohammad was simply copying and pasting uncritically.

3. The idea that Mohammad copied ‘scissor and paste’ style, for much of the material found in the Qur’an, assumes that written copies of these stories were circulating in the Arabia of his day. It assumes that Mohammad or a scribe, perhaps working for him, had access to the Jewish Talmud, ideally in Arabic, or the Old Testament in Arabic, and so on and so forth. But to the best of our knowledge, as scholars, those documents were not available in Arabic and had not been translated into Arabic by the time of Mohammad.

Dr. Bannister states, “The borrowing theories…initially looked quite compelling, [but] when you begin to dig into them, you hit a problem very quickly.”

His analysis revealed the following:

“Formulaic language is found throughout the whole of the Qur’an. The Qur’an is steeped in formulaic language. In short, the Qur’an looks like it has its roots in oral tradition. It is not a written document, its an oral document, it contains all of the evidences, all of the clues, all of the signifiers that would tell us that it is a document that was not composed in writing, but was composed extemporaneously in oral performance. And that explains why the stories of Iblis and Adam look the way they do in the Qur’an. Mohammad was fishing from this pool of tradition reshaping the material and retelling the stories live in his preaching before the audiences that he spoke too…Mohammad as an oral story teller, can know that his audience knows the stories that he is alluding too, he only has to mention a couple of words and he knows they will remember the rest. All of these features, performance variance, formulaic language, highly illusive referencing, all occur throughout the Qur’an.”

 
Dr. Bannister offers the following summary of his findings:

1. It shows that the Quran has a history. It puts the Qur’an into context-the Qur’an did not drop from heaven fully formed.

2. The Qur’an has human finger prints all over it. They are very oral finger prints, but they are finger prints nevertheless.

3. Mohammad used oral tools to construct the Qur’an-and those tools that he used, performance variance, formulaic language, highly illusive referencing have left their mark on the text.

Dr. Bannister concludes:

“The best way to explain the features that we see in the Qur’an today, is not by claiming that Mohammad was a copy and paste artist, a plagiarist or entirely unoriginal, but rather by looking to orality and saying that Mohammad was an oral preacher, fishing from a pool of common religious stories and material known to his audience in Mecca and in Medina. Taking that material and reforming it, reconstructing it, and retelling it a fresh for the audience he was faced with. The Qur’an contains both originality, but also influence, but above all we can show it to be a very human product indeed.”

 
Dr. Bannister also refutes the Muslim claim that the Qur’an is a miracle because Mohammad was unread and illiterate. He states, “Claims that Mohammad’s illiteracy mean the Qur’an is a miracle fail to appreciate that we have examples of hundreds of other cultures around the world that don’t have writing that have been able in history to produce amazing works of literature. It assumes that oral cultures are primitive and that is not the case at all.” He goes on to give a number of examples of such cultures.

The Qur’an-an oral-formulaic construction-“a very human product indeed”-Andy Bannister

In the above video, Dr. Bannister unpacks his findings from his mile-stone book, An Oral-Formulaic Study of the Qur’an. Dr. Bannister is an adjunct research fellow at the Centre for the Study of Islam and Other Faiths, Melbourne School of Theology, and visiting lecturer at the Centre for Islamic Studies and Muslim-Christian Relations, London School of Theology, and is the director of Solas Centre for Public Christianity based in Scotland.

The following is a book description of his An Oral-Formulaic Study of the Qur’an:

The Qur’an makes extensive use of older religious material, stories, and traditions that pre-date the origins of Islam, and there has long been a fierce debate about how this material found its way into the Qur’an. This unique book argues that this debate has largely been characterized by a failure to fully appreciate the Qur’an as a predominately oral product. Using innovative computerized linguistic analysis, this study demonstrates that the Qur’an displays many of the signs of oral composition that have been found in other traditional literature. When one then combines these computerized results with other clues to the Qur’an’s origins (such as the demonstrably oral culture that both pre-dated and preceded the Qur’an, as well as the “folk memory” in the Islamic tradition that Muhammad was an oral performer) these multiple lines of evidence converge and point to the conclusion that large portions of the Qur’an need to be understood as being constructed live, in oral performance. Combining historical, linguistic, and statistical analysis, much of it made possible for the first time due to new computerized tools developed specifically for this book, Bannister argues that the implications of orality have long been overlooked in studies of the Qur’an. By relocating the Islamic scripture firmly back into an oral context, one gains both a fresh appreciation of the Qur’an on its own terms, as well as a fresh understanding of how Muhammad used early religious traditions, retelling old tales afresh for a new audience.

“Christian morality is being ushered out of American social structures and off the cultural main stage, leaving a vacuum in its place—and the broader culture is attempting to fill the void. New research from Barna reveals growing concern about the moral condition of the nation, even as many American adults admit they are uncertain about how to determine right from wrong. So what do Americans believe? Is truth relative or absolute? And do Christians see truth and morality in radically different ways from the broader public, or are they equally influenced by the growing tide of secularism and religious skepticism?

absolute-truth-5A majority of American adults across age group, ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status and political ideology expresses concern about the nation’s moral condition—eight in 10 overall (80%). The proportion is closer to nine in 10 among Elders (89%) and Boomers (87%), while about three-quarters of Gen-Xers (75%) and Millennials (74%) report concern. Similarly, practicing Christians (90%) are more likely than adults of no faith (67%) or those who identify with a religious faith other than Christianity (72%) to say they are concerned about the moral condition of the nation. Though measurable differences exist between population segments, moral concern is widespread across the demographic board.”

For complete article, here

We’ll now move on to numbers three and four on the list of naturalistic theories presented to ‘explain away’ the resurrection accounts—the hallucination and wrong tomb hypothesis.

The Hallucination Theory

In a nutshell, the hallucination theory claims that all of Jesus’ post resurrection appearances, were in fact, hallucinations or possibly visions. There are several factors that soundly refute this theory which is succinctly and thoroughly explained by the following New Testament scholars/critics.

Diversity of the Appearances-Different People, Different Times

In his article, Visions of Jesus: A Critical Assessment of Gerd Lüdemann’s Hallucination Hypothesis, William Lane Craig offers the following:

“…with respect to the appearances, the diversity of the appearances is not well explained by means of such visions. The appearances were experienced many different times, by different individuals, by groups, at various locales and under various circumstances, and by not only believers, but also by unbelievers like James the brother of Jesus and the Pharisee Saul of Tarsus.
This diversity is very difficult to explain by recourse to hallucinations. For hallucinations require a special psychological state on the part of the percipient. But since a guilt complex ex hypothesis obtained only for Peter and Paul, the diversity of the post-mortem appearances must be explained as a sort of contagion, a chain reaction…It is important to keep in mind that it is the diversity that is at issue here, not merely individual incidents. Even if one could compile from the casebooks an amalgam consisting of stories of hallucinations over a period of time (like the visions in Medjugorje), mass hallucinations (as at Lourdes), hallucinations to various individuals, and so forth, the fact remains that there is no single instance in the casebooks exhibiting the diversity involved in the post-mortem appearances of Jesus. It is only by compiling unrelated cases that anything analogous might be constructed.

One might mention three specific cases which are not well explained by the Hallucination Hypothesis:

•James: Jesus’s brother did not believe that his elder sibling was the Messiah or even anybody special during his lifetime (Mk. 3.21, 31-35; 6.3; Jn. 7.1-10). But unexpectedly we find Jesus’s brothers among those gathered in the upper room in Christian worship following the resurrection appearances (Acts 1.14), and in time James emerges as a leader in the Jerusalem church (Acts 12.17; Gal. 1.19). We learn from Josephus that James was eventually martyred for his faith in Jesus Christ during a lapse in the civil government in the mid-60s. This remarkable transformation is in all probability due to the fact, recorded by Paul, that “then he appeared to James” (I Cor. 15.7)….The Hallucination Hypothesis has weak explanatory power with respect to this appearance, since James, as an unbeliever and no part of the Christian community, was unlikely to experience a “secondary vision” of the Risen Jesus.

•The 500 brethren: Most of these people were still alive in AD 55 when Paul wrote I Corinthians and could be questioned about the experience. Lüdemann explains this appearance as a legendary reference to the event of Pentecost, which he represents as an experience of “mass ecstasy.”52 But such an explanation is weak, not only because the eyewitnesses were still around, but because the event of Pentecost was fundamentally different from a resurrection appearance.

•The women: That women were the first recipients of a post-mortem appearance of Jesus is both multiply attested and established by the criterion of embarrassment. For this reason, as Kremer reports, there is an increasing tendency in recent research to regard this appearance as “anchored in history.”54…Nowhere in the New Testament, however, not even in I Cor. 15.5, is it said that Peter was the first to see a resurrection appearance of Christ, despite the widespread assumption of his chronological priority. Rather the women have priority. They are doubtless omitted from the list in 1 Cor. 15.5-7 because naming them as witnesses would have been worse than worthless in a patriarchal culture….the women’s experience cannot be regarded as a “secondary vision” prompted by Peter’s experience. Since they did not share Peter’s guilt, having remained singularly faithful to Jesus to the end, they lacked the special psychological conditions leading to hallucinations of Jesus.

In sum, the Hallucination Hypothesis does not have strong explanatory power with respect to the diversity of the resurrection appearances.[1]

J. T. Thorburn puts the nail in the hallucination hypothesis ‘coffin’ via the following statement:

[Hallucinations have never] stimulated people to undertake a work o enormous magnitude, and, while carrying it out, to lead lives of the most rigid and consistent self-denial and even suffering. In a word…we are constrained to agree with Dr. Sanday, who says, “No apparition, no mere hallucination of the senses, ever yet moved the world.”[2]

 

Does the Hallucination theory disprove the resurrection?-Lee Strobel

Were the disciples having hallucinations?-Gary Habermas and William Lane Craig

The Wrong Tomb Theory

A theory propounded by Professor Kirsopp Lake assumes that the women who reported that the body was missing had mistakenly gone to the wrong tomb. If so, then the disciples who went to check up on the women’s statement must have also gone to the wrong tomb. We may be certain, however, that Jewish authorities, who asked for a Roman guard to be stationed at the tomb to prevent Jesus’ body from being stolen, would not have been mistaken about the location. Nor would the Roman guards, for they were there. One point of refutation is: If the resurrection-claim was merely because of a geographical mistake, the Jewish authorities would have lost no time in producing the body from the proper tomb, thus effectively quenching for all time any rumor resurrection.

Wilbur Smith cites the verdict of the British scholar, Professor Morse:

Their theory that the women were approaching the wrong tomb arises, not from any evidence, but from disbelief in the possibility of the supernatural emptying of the Lord’s tomb.

 
If the women went to the wrong tomb (an empty sepulchre), then the Sanhedrin could have gone to the right tomb and produced the body (if Jesus did not rise). this would have silenced the disciples forever! The high priests and the other enemies of Christ would certainly have gone to the right tomb! Even if the women, the disciples, the Romans and the Jews all went to the wrong tomb, one thing is sure, as Paul Little points out: “Certainly Joseph of Arimathea, owner of the tomb, would have solved the problem.”[3] 

Is there historical data on the empty tomb?-Gary Habermas

Peter Kreeft sums up and refutes the naturalistic explanations of the Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth

Resurrection: Swoon, Conspiracy Hallucination, Myth-or Still Alive?-Peter Kreeft

Notes:
[1] William Lane Craig, Visions of Jesus: A Critical Assessment of Gerd Lüdemann’s Hallucination Hypothesis, here
[2] Thomas J. Thorburn, The Resurrection Narratives and Modern Criticism, 1910, pg. 136
[3] Josh McDowell, The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict, 1999, pg. 279