Bill Pratt | March 22, 2013
Post Author: Bill Pratt Perhaps you’ve read or heard that the New Testament (NT) books were produced at the same time as other Christian writings, and that these other writings were unfairly and unceremoniously kicked out of the NT canon. Is this true? New Testament professor Michael J. Kruger says no. In his blog post, [...]
Bill Pratt | January 6, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt In part 1 of this post, we discussed Simon Greenleaf’s conclusion that the Gospel writers’ testimony about Jesus Christ should be considered true, based on the canons of legal evidence, an area in which he was an undisputed expert. Some skeptics, however, have argued that the standards for judging the credibility [...]
Bill Pratt | January 4, 2010
Post Author: Bill Pratt I recently read a short book entitled The Testimony of the Evangelists by Simon Greenleaf. Greenleaf was one of the most respected American jurists of the nineteenth century. He taught law at Harvard University and wrote a judicial classic, Treatise on the Law of Evidence. This work was used as a [...]
Bill Pratt | July 30, 2009
Post Author: Bill Pratt I just finished reading a wonderful book by New Testament scholar Craig Blomberg, called The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. In his chapter where he discusses the miracles recorded in the Gospels, he had this to say about the scientific objection to miracles. In short, the scientific objection to the credibility [...]
Bill Pratt | April 4, 2009
So what about their arguments? Were they effective? First let’s examine Mike Licona. Licona has argued this historical approach for proving the resurrection in a book entitled The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, co-authored with Gary Habermas. The approach is fairly straight-forward and effective at making a historical case for the resurrection. Licona, along with Habermas, [...]
Bill Pratt | April 3, 2009
Last night, Darrell and I attended the debate between Bart Ehrman and Mike Licona at SES in Charlotte. They debated whether historians can prove Jesus rose from the dead. Here is my summary of the arguments that each of them presented. Licona opened the debate with a historical argument that goes like this. First, he [...]
Bill Pratt | February 28, 2009
Recently, one of the commenters on our blog alleged that the documents of the New Testament simply repeat common themes, ideas, and facts that were widely circulated in the ancient world. Perhaps you have heard others make this claim, such as the folks who created the Zeitgeist video. One of the most popular arguments is [...]
