Historical Jesus

Articles on Jesus of Nazareth as a historical figure, focusing on the historicity of his resurrection from the dead.

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05 / 06

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'Noli Me Tangere': Why John Meier Won't Touch The Risen Lord

John Meier distinguishes 'the real Jesus' from 'the historical Jesus.' Meier claims that whatever happened to the real Jesus after his...

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Dale Allison On Jesus' Empty Tomb, His Post-Mortem Appearances, and the Origin of the Disciples' Belief in His Resurrection

I limit myself principally to a discussion of Dale Allison's treatment of what I take to be the three central facts undergirding a historical inference to Jesus' resurrection, namely, the disc...

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Rediscovering the Historical Jesus: Presuppositions and Pretensions of the Jesus Seminar

In this first part of a two-part article, the presuppositions and pretentions of the Jesus Seminar are exposited and assessed. It is found that the principal presuppositions of (i) scientific naturali...

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Rediscovering the Historical Jesus: The Evidence for Jesus

Five reasons are presented for thinking that critics who accept the historical credibility of the gospel accounts of Jesus do not bear a special burden of proof relative to more skeptical critics. The...

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Visions of Jesus: A Critical Assessment of Gerd Lüdemann's Hallucination Hypothesis

[1]Gerd Lüdemann's provocative hypothesis that early Christian belief in Jesus' resurrection was the product of hallucinatory experiences originally induced by guilt-complexes in Peter an...

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Reply to Evan Fales: On the Empty Tomb of Jesus

Evan Fales' curious hypothesis that the gospel narratives of the empty tomb are of the genre of mythology and so were not taken to be historical accounts by either their purveyors or their recipie...

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From Easter to Valentinus and the Apostles' Creed Once More: A Critical Examination of James Robinson's Proposed Resurrection Appearance Trajectories

James Robinson argues that parallel trajectories, springing from primitive Christian experiences of post-resurrection appearances of Christ as a luminous bodily form, issued in the second-century Gnos...

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The Guard at the Tomb

Matthew's story of the guard at the tomb of Jesus is widely regarded as an apologetic legend. Although some of the reasons given in support of this judgement are not weighty, two are more serious:...

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The Problem of Miracles:  A Historical and Philosophical Perspective

Modern skepticism concerning the gospel miracles first asserted itself by denying the miraculous nature of the events. Soon, however, the historicity of the events themselves was denied. Behind this s...

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The Historicity of the Empty Tomb of Jesus

An examination of both Pauline and gospel material leads to eight lines of evidence in support of the conclusion that Jesus's tomb was discovered empty: (1) Paul's testimony implies the histor...

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Jesus' Resurrection

In writing to the church at Corinth, the Apostle Paul declared that without Jesus’ resurrection their faith is worthless. The resurrection of Christ is central to Christianity and it is thus oft...

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The Bodily Resurrection of Jesus

It has been argued on the basis of Paul’s testimony that Jesus’s resurrection body was spiritual in the sense of being unextended, immaterial, intangible, and so forth. But neither the arg...

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The Disciples' Inspection of the Empty Tomb

There are three alternatives concerning the relation of Luke and John's stories of the disciples' inspection of Jesus's empty tomb: (1) Luke is dependent upon John, (2) John is dependent u...

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