Wilbur M. Smith, A Great Certainty in This Hour of World Crises (Wheaton, ILL: Van Kampen Press, 1951), 10, 11
The word Jesus uttered, “fulfilled” is tetelestai in Greek which is an accounting term meaning “debt paid in full.” It refers to the debt of our sins.
Historian Will Durant reported, “About the middle of this first century a pagan named Thallus … argued that the abnormal darkness alleged to have accompanied the death of Christ was a purely natural phenomenon and coincidence; the argument took the existence of Christ for granted. The denial of that existence never seems to have occurred even to the bitterest gentile or Jewish opponents of nascent Christianity.” Will Durant, “Caesar and Christ,” vol. 3 of The Story of Civilization (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), 555.
Peter Steinfels, “Jesus Died – And Then What Happened?” New York Times, April 3, 1988, E9.
Lucian, Peregrinus Proteus. Michael J. Wilkins and J. P. Moreland, eds, Jesus Under Fire (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1995), 2.
Josephus, Flavius, Antiquities of the Jews, 18. 63, 64. [Although portions of Josephus’ comments about Jesus have been disputed, this reference to Pilate condemning him to the cross is deemed authentic by most scholars.]
Tacitus, Annals, 15, 44. In Great Books of the Western World, ed. By Robert Maynard Hutchins, Vol. 15, The Annals and The Histories by Cornelius Tacitus (Chicago: William Benton, 1952). “What Is a Skeptic?” editorial in Skeptic, vol 11, no. 2), 5.
Frank Morison, Who Moved the Stone? (Grand Rapids, MI: Lamplighter, 1958), “What Happened Friday Afternoon.”
Josh McDowell, The Resurrection Factor Part 3, Josh McDowell Ministries, 2009, http://www.bethinking.org/bible-jesus/intermediate/the-resurrection-factor-part-3.htm.
Quoted in Josh McDowell, The Resurrection Factor (San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life, 1981), 66.
Gary Collins quoted in Gary Habermas, “Explaining Away the Resurrection,” http://www.garyhabermas.com/articles/crj_explainingaway/crj_explainingaway.htm.
Thomas James Thorburn, The Resurrection Narratives and Modern Criticism (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., Ltd., 1910.), 158, 159.
Sherwin-White, Roman Society, 190.
Even skeptical scholars agree that the creed in 1 Corinthians 15 is not an interpolation but was a creed formulated and taught at a very early date after Jesus’ death. Gerd Lüdemann, a skeptic scholar, maintains that “the elements in the tradition are to be dated to the first two years after the crucifixion of Jesus… not later than three years…”[17] Michael Goulder, another skeptic scholar, states that it “goes back at least to what Paul was taught when he was converted, a couple of years after the crucifixion”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1_Corinthians_15
Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2004), 85.
Habermas and Licona, 87
Acts 10:39-41.
Morison, 104.
J. N. D. Anderson, “The Resurrection of Jesus Christ,” Christianity Today,12. April, 1968.
Morison, 115.
Quoted in Bernard Ramm, Protestant Christian Evidences (Chicago: Moody Press, 1957), 163.
Quoted in Bill Bright, Believing God for the Impossible (San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life, 1979), 177-8.
Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (New York: Pocket, 1961), 428.
Simon Greenleaf, The Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by the Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice (1874; reprint, Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1995), back cover.
C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000 ), 159.