Sunday, November 1, 2015

JESUS' HISTORICITY: Resources for Study

“There is not a single well-evidenced historical fact about Jesus that undermines the ‘orthodox’ view of Jesus. Nearly two and a half centuries of assiduous study, research, and discovery by archaeologists, historians, textual critics, and other scholars searching for an alternate Jesus have failed to turn up a scrap of evidence that contravenes what Christians have traditionally said about him.” 

(p. 23-24 of Jesus, Skepticism, and the Problem of History: Criteria and Context in the Study of Christian Origins, edited by Darrell L. Bock and J. Ed Komoszewski)

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Related Resource Pages on My Blog
*Archaeological Confirmation of the New Testament
*Jesus' Resurrection
*Undesigned Coincidences: Undesigned coincidences are a unique and compelling piece of evidence for the historicity of the Bible. This link will take you to an extensive list of videos, audio, articles and books that are organized similar to this one.
*Alleged Pagan Parallels.

*The So-Called Synoptic ProblemA brief but helpful bibliography with a link to a more detailed bibliography.
*So-Called Lost Gospels ("Gnostic" Writings)
*How Jesus Is Unique from All Other Religious Leaders in History
*Jesus Mythicism
*Miracles
*Messianic Prophecy
*Extrabiblical References to Jesus: A long list of documents from the First & Second Centuries that mention Jesus, with brief notes on some. This is followed by links to a series of blog articles that discuss the more important documents.
*Jesus' Legacyaka, "Wisdom's Children": How the teaching of Jesus, his Gospel, and his Church have transformed the world (The article is entitled "Christianity and the Ending of the Roman Games, but see the bibliography at the end of the article.)
*MASTER LIST OF APOLOGETIC RESOURCES



INTRODUCTORY
Videos

*Bock, Darrell and Craig Evans. "Did Jesus Do Miracles?" (5 minutes)
*"Are The Gospels Reliable?" (less than 3 minutes) by Questions from Atheists. A very nice concise outline of the evidence.


Articles (& Book Chapters)
*Cooper, Brad. "The Reliability of the Gospels, Discrepancies and Harmonizing Accounts"

*Cooper, Brad. "The Real Jesus: New Testament vs. Gnostic Writings" (p.28-32 of Equipped: Vol. 1, No. 4, "Evidence for the Reliability of the Bible"
*Cooper, Brad. "Neognosticism." A response to claims that Christianity was originally gnostic until the time of Irenaeus (late 2nd Century).
*Habermas, Gary. "Reinterpretations of the Historical Jesus." This is the fourth chapter from one of Dr. Habermas's books and is available for FREE at the title link.
*"Six Hints that the 'Baby Jesus Stories' of the Gospels Are Not Late Additions" by Rob Bowman, Jr.
*"Geological and Historical Evidence for Jesus' Crucifixion Account." Excellent!
*Last Seminary hosts dozens of articles on the "Historical Jesus" that can be download for FREE--with brief abstracts for each. (Scroll down about half way.)


Books

*Wallace, J. Warner. Cold-Case Christianity (288 pages). HIGHLY RECOMMENDEDAvailable in paperback, Kindle, Audible & Audio CD. Also at OverDrive in ebook & audiobook
*Williams, Peter. Can We Trust the Gospels?. Highly recommended.
*Strobel, Lee. The Case for The Real Jesus. Listen to the audiobook version of the book for FREE! Available on OverDrive in ebook and audio. This book and the whole series by Strobel has been extremely popular and I highly recommend them all. Strobel is an award-winning legal journalist from the Chicago Tribune who came to Christ by investigating Christianity's claims for himself. In these books, he interviews a different expert in each chapter.
*Strobel, Lee. The Case for Christ.
*Strobel, Lee. In Defense of Jesus.
*Habermas, Gary. Evidence for the Historical Jesus: Is the Jesus of History the Christ of Faith?
This is a FREE! ebook by one of the foremost experts on the issue. Available at Dr. Habermas's web site by clicking on the title link. (Only 88 pages)

*Roberts, Mark D. Can We Trust the Gospels?
*The Christian Apologetics Alliance (various authors). "Evidence for the Existence of Jesus." The FREE Journal of the CAA.


INTERMEDIATE
Videos

*Williams, Peter. "New Evidences the Gospels Were Based on Eyewitness Accounts." A brilliant lecture. Highly recommended.
*Maier, Paul. "Paul Maier Interviewed by Apologetics315."
*Maier, Paul. "The Real Jesus: Paul Maier presents new evidence from history and archaeology at Iowa State" (The Veritas Forum).
Paul Maier is an eminent expert on ancient history.
*McGrew, Tim. "Reliability of the Gospels" (Lecture Series)

*Bauckham, Richard. "The Authenticity of the Apostolic Eyewitness in the New Testament" (56 minutes)
*"The Case for Christ": (FREE at title link) Award-winning legal journalist for the Chicago Tribune interviews experts about the evidence for Jesus Christ. "The documentary The Case for Christ follows reporter Lee Strobel as he interviews a number of religious and historical scholars in order to find out if there is any proof of the resurrection, and to discover the historical veracity of the New Testament. In trying the case for Christ, Strobel cross-examined a number of experts and recognized authorities in their own fields of study. He conducted his examination with no religious bias, other than his predisposition to atheism. (72 minutes)
*Craig Keener (also in mp3 audio) has three lectures on "The Reliability of the Gospels" in his online course on the Gospel of Matthew. They are the first three lectures in the course: Lecture one focuses on the genre of the Gospels, the written and oral sources behind the Gospels, issues of form criticism and related issues. Lecture two has some limited interaction with the philosophical objections to miracles and then further responds with a very large number of miracles accounts from historical sources, documented studies and accounts that Keener has carefully investigated himself. Lecture three continues with the miracle accounts and then provides similar evidence for demon possession and exorcism. Highly recommended.
*"Everybody Says Mark Was the First Gospel, But Was It?" with David Alan Black (41 minutes)


Audio
*Tim McGrew is interviewed by Nick Peters at Deeper Waters
*Richard Bauckham is interviewed by Nick Peters at Deeper Waters
*Craig Blomberg is interviewed by Nick Peters at Deeper Waters
*Paul Maier is interviewed by Nick Peters at Deeper Waters
*Darrell Bock is interviewed by Nick Peters at Deeper Waters


Articles (& Book Chapters)

*"The State of Historical Jesus Studiesby Sean McDowell
*"The Evidence for Jesusby William Lane Craig
*"Is the Jesus of History the Jesus of Faith?" by Ted Wright of Epic Archaeology
"Are the Gospels Reliable?: 10 Quick Points"
*"Recent Perspectives on the Reliability of the Gospelsby Gary Habermas
*"Evangelical Responses to the Jesus Seminarby Robert L. Thomas
*"The Gospels as Historical Sources for Jesus..." by R.T. France
*"23 Historical Things We Know For Sure About Jesus" by James Bishop
*"Internal Evidence for the Authenticity and Genuineness of John's Gospel": by J.B. Lightfoot. An essay from Biblical Essays, a posthumous collection of his essays (1904).
*I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be An Atheist, Chapters 9 & 10 (p.221-274) by Norm Geisler and Frank Turek
*"The Historicity of Jesus" at Theopedia
*Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus. This journal is published three-times a year and features articles by the world's top scholars. By subscription. Back issues available.


Books

*Skepticism, and the Problem of History: Criteria and Context in the Study of Christian Origins, edited by Darrell L. Bock and J. Ed Komoszewski
*Jesus Is No Myth by David Marshall. My review. Here are a couple of blurbs from two top scholars on the historicity of the Gospels: Dr. Craig Blomberg: “Support for the credibility of Christianity can be found here that is available nowhere else. A must read. ” Dr. Timothy McGrew: "Full of fresh insights, penetrating analysis, and dry wit -- the section on the Baal Shem Tov alone is worth the price of the book -- and some of the best material from the rich storehouse of the history of apologetics." This book responds to Bart Ehrman, Richard Carrier and Reza Aslan, and then builds a strong case for the historicity of the Biblical Gospels.
*Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham
*Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels by Craig Keener
*The Historical Reliability of the Gospels by Craig Blomberg
*The Historical Jesus of the Gospels by Craig Keener
*Who Is Jesus?: Linking the Historical Jesus with the Christ of Faith by Darrell Bock
*Jesus and His World: The Archaeological Evidence by Craig Evans. Available at OverDrive.
*The Historical Reliability of John's Gospel by Craig Blomberg
*The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ by Brant Pitre
*The Gospel of the Lord: How the Early Church Wrote the Story of Jesus by Michael F. Bird
*Finding the Historical Christ by Paul Barnett
*The Gospels and Acts (The Holman Apologetics Commentary on the Bible) by Michael Wilkins, Craig Evans, Darrell Bock, et al.
*Jesus and the Remains of His Day by Craig Evans
*The Works of Nathaniel Lardner: This has been called "the apologetics masterpiece of the 18th Century" and it's FREE! See a nice summary of Lardner's work at The Library of Historical Apologetics.
*The Evidences of the Genuineness of the Gospels, Volume 1 (1847) by Andrews Norton. Volume 2FREE!
*Dethroning Jesus by Darrell L. Bock and Daniel B. Wallace. This book answers common objections: (1) The original New Testament has been corrupted so badly it canot be recovered; (2) Secret Gospels Show Early Alternative Chrisitianities; (3) The Gospel of Thomas radically alters our understanding of Jesus; (4) Jesus' message was fundamentally political and social; (5) Paul changed Jesus' message; (6) Jesus' Tomb has been found and his resurrection did not involve a physical body; (7) Other popular claims
*Historical Tradition in the Fourth Gospel by C.H. Dodd
*The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus by Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory Boyd. Available at OverDrive.
*The Earliest Christian Artifacts by Larry Hurtado.
*The Mystery of the Last Supper: Reconstructing the Final Days of Jesus by Colin J. Humphreys.
*Was Christ Born in Bethlehem? by William Mitchell Ramsay
*Why Four Gospels: The Historical Origins of the Gospels by David Alan Black


Ancient Historiography & the Genre of the Gospels
*Timeline of the Ancient Greco-Roman Historians: accompanied with concise biographies. A great way to orient yourself to the primary sources.
*The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices by Lydia McGrew. Reigns in some of the "chreia-zy" ideas about ancient historiography current in New Testament studies. The 3 chapters and appendix examining the primary sources are worth the price of the book by themselves! Careful, cogent and lucid. A must read.
*Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham. Masterful! A must read.
*The Gospels as Histories by Richard Bauckham. A series of four lectures. FREE!
*"Imitatio Christi and the Gospel Genre" by David B. Capes. FREE PDF article
*Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels by Craig Keener
*What Are the Gospels?: A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography by Richard Burridge
*Why Are There Differences in the Gospels?: What We Can Learn from Ancient Biography by Michael Licona
*Plutarch's Lives translation and commentary by Bernadotte Perrin. FREE! Also FREE on audiobook at Librivox are the first 4 volumes of this work (through the comparison of Lysander and Sulla). Since Plutarch's Lives comprise 50 of the 90 extant Greco-Roman biographies, they are important background to the discussion on ancient biographies.


THE QUEST FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS
Audio
*Quest for the Historical Jesusa 39-minute audio lecture by Robert Stein. 
*For a more comprehensive treatment of how the Bible's critics have framed the "quest for the historical Jesus" over the last 250 years, check out this set of three excellent lectures by Michael Krueger: Reimarus to StraussBaur to Schweitzerand the 20th Century--surveying the Old Quest, No Quest, New Quest & Third Quest for "the historical Jesus." You can also access it through iTunes or through the RTS Android app from Google Play. It is lectures 2-4 of the Gospels class. 


Books
*Jesus in European Thought, 1778-1860 by Colin Brown
*Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth by Ben Witherington III
*The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede (1906) by Albert Schweitzer, translated by W. Montgomery. FREE!



STILL LOOKING?....

Check out this extensive bibliography topically arranged by my friend and expert apologist, Eric Chabot....
OR this massive 657-page bibliography: Gospel Origins by Alan Bill
OR this very large bibliography compiled by William Harmless at Creighton University....
OR the extensive list of resources at Christian CADRE.....
OR "Retrospective Bibliographies" by John Kloppenborg. Bibliographies for a large number of topics in New Testament studies, especially focused on the Gospels. (Seems to be focused on skeptical works but does include some biographies from more conservative scholars.)
OR the lists of General Resources, Audio and Video, Books, Dissertation & Articles, Discusson at The New Testament Gateway: Part of a large directory of academic internet resources, though sadly lacking in some of the best evangelical scholarship.



Painting by Pieter Lastman (1616) Image Source

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