Introduction: Refutations
Introduction: REFUTATIONS
In volume 1 of this study, I made a detailed positive case for the resurrection of Jesus. Obviously, rejoinders to the resurrection facts have been in existence virtually as long as the resurrection data have been proclaimed. In the pages of the Gospels alone, it was suggested that Jesus’s dead body might be stolen by the disciples (Matt 27:62–66) or perhaps had already been moved by the gardener (John 20:13–16). Pilate wondered that Jesus had died so quickly and checked out the news with the centurion (Mark 15:43–45). The disciples thought that the women who had returned from the empty tomb were spreading tall tales (Luke 24:11). When the disciples saw Jesus, they thought that he might be a spirit or ghost of some sort (Luke 24:36–40). Ironically, three of these five issues were expressed by believers, perhaps signaling the hint that people on both sides of the aisle can doubt.
Over the centuries the challenges to belief in Jesus’s resurrection have grown in variety and number as well as in sophistication, being declared in debates, university lectures, and elsewhere. On the heels of these questions, equally refined and complex defenses have appeared as well. In the field of religious studies, it seems that few subjects have received this much attention.
Among the pro-resurrection volumes that address the naturalistic and other alternative theses, twenty pages of attention is fairly lengthy. Thus, Michael Licona’s nearly 200 pages on this topic are definitely exemplary, particularly as he works carefully through the details of six major challenges. Licona’s text drew much praise for the quality of the entire work, not to mention his attention to the more skeptical analyses. The coauthored work between Licona and me tallied slightly fewer than 100 pages on alternative challenges, counting the applicable endnotes. By such standards, some may judge this present volume to be a case of overkill, though it is the companion to the larger first volume of evidence, and thus a much smaller treatment might be considered inappropriate by comparison. Nonetheless, the hope is that the details here will encourage further evaluation and discussion, regardless of the readers’ perspectives.
In volume 1, I acknowledged and saluted my research assistants who helped extraordinarily throughout various stages of this huge, multiyear research project. Since the first volume, Dr. Ben Shaw has continued to interact with this work on nearly a daily basis, and I would once again like to acknowledge his very special and ongoing commitment to this project. His insights have been profound.
Notes
Michael R. Licona, The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Academic, 2010), 465–610.
Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 2004).