Bill Pratt | March 29, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt If it could be conclusively shown that the gospel accounts of Jesus were literally cribbed from pre-existing pagan sources, it would be quite damaging to the credibility of the gospels. As I was re-reading Geisler and Turek’s I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist the other day, I was [...]
Bill Pratt | February 22, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt In part 1 we introduced A. N. Sherwin-White’s analysis of myth-making in the ancient near east in his book Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament. Sherwin-White uses the Greek historian Herotodus to test the tempo of myth-making. He concludes: Herodotus enables us to test the tempo of myth-making, and [...]
Bill Pratt | February 20, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt The stories about Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection, as reported in the 27 New Testament documents, were all written down within 70 years of Jesus’s death. In fact, most of the documents were written within 50 years of his death. Given that average life expectancy in first century Palestine was around [...]
Bill Pratt | December 31, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt Every once in a while, you may hear from hyper-skeptics that Jesus probably never existed, or that if he did exist, we cannot know anything about him because the historical evidence is so poor. Mike Licona, in his book The Resurrection of Jesus, provides a sampling of quotes from scholars who [...]
Bill Pratt | December 21, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt Historical scholar Mike Licona, in his book The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, asks just this question. His answer is important to understand. A priority must be assigned to Paul because he is the earliest known author to mention the resurrection of Jesus, and there are numerous extant texts he wrote that [...]
Bill Pratt | October 29, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt In part 1 of the post series, we looked at three guidelines for historians who are attempting to limit the undue influence of their horizons. These guidelines are taken from Mike Licona’s book The Resurrection of Jesus. In part 2, we will review Licona’s next three guidelines. 4. Submitting ideas to unsympathetic [...]
Bill Pratt | October 26, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt Those who take on the task of interpreting the ancient accounts of Jesus’s life are faced with a difficult task. As we’ve seen from previous posts, the horizon of each individual must be faced and addressed before investigation begins. But does the horizon of an individual render objective study of history [...]
Bill Pratt | October 24, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt In the previous blog post, I cited Mike Licona’s analysis of horizons and their impact on historical interpretation. In this post, I will go back to Licona and review just a handful of the numerous examples he gives of horizons affecting particular scholars’ historical analysis. The scholars who Licona quotes are [...]
Bill Pratt | October 22, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt When it comes to a person interpreting historical texts, particularly where ultimate issues (e.g., heaven, hell, God, sin) are at stake, that person’s horizon often plays a critical role. What is involved in a person’s horizon? Historical scholar, Mike Licona, provides a useful explanation of horizon in his book The Resurrection [...]
Bill Pratt | October 10, 2012
Post Author: Bill Pratt Mythicists claim that the stories about Jesus were merely copied from other pagan myths circulating around the Roman Empire in the first century. If this is true, it does cast some doubt on the uniqueness of the Gospel accounts of Jesus, and it certainly makes one wonder if all the stories [...]
