Rene Salm, “The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus,”American Atheist.org, December 22, 2009, http://www.atheists.org/The_Myth_of_Nazareth,_Does_it_Really_Matter%3F.
Paul Johnson, “A Historian Looks at Jesus,” speech to Dallas Seminary, 1986.
Quoted in Josh McDowell and Bill Wilson, Evidence for the Historical Jesus (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1993), 23.
Darrell L. Bock, Studying the Historical Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2002), 46.
D. James Kennedy, Skeptics Answered (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1997), 76.
Flavius Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 1966), 423. The quote is from book 20 of the Antiquities.
Ibid., 379. Quotation is from the Arabic translation of Josephus’ words about Jesus because some scholars believe the Christian version, which affirmed Jesus’ resurrection as historical, was altered. However, the Arabic translation cited here was under non-Christian control, where alterations by Christians would have been virtually impossible.
Bock, 57.
McDowell and Wilson, 42-43.
Ibid., 44.
Will Durant, “Caesar and Christ,” vol. 3 of The Story of Civilization (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1972), 555.
Quoted in Durant, 281. The quote is from Annals 15:44.
Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2004), 127.
Norman Geisler and Peter Bocchino, Unshakable Foundations (Grand Rapids, MI: Bethany House, 2001), 269.
Habermas, “Was Jesus Real”.
Quoted in Josh McDowell, Evidence That Demands a Verdict, vol. 1(Nashville: Nelson, 1979), 87.
Habermas and Licona, 212.
McDowell and Wilson, 74-79.
Norman L. Geisler and Paul K. Hoffman, eds., Why I Am a Christian(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2001), 150.
Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), 86.
Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels (London: Rigel, 2004), 199-200.
Luke 1:1-3.
Quoted in Josh McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict(Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1999), 61.
William Albright, “Toward a More Conservative View,” Christianity Today,January 18, 1993.
John A. T. Robinson, Redating the New Testament (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976), 352-3.
C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), 158.
F. F. Bruce, The Books and the Parchments (Old Tappan, NJ: Revell, 1984), 168.
Paul Johnson, Ibid.
Quoted in Christopher Lee, This Sceptred Isle (London: Penguin, 1997), 1.
Will Durant, The Story of Philosophy (New York: Pocket, 1961), 428.
Quoted in Bill Bright, Believing God for the Impossible (San Bernardino, CA: Here’s Life, 1979), 177-8.
Quoted in Bernard Ramm, Protestant Christian Evidences (Chicago: Moody Press, 1957), 163.
Jaroslav Pelikan, Jesus through the Centuries (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 1.
Quoted in “What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester Viereck,” Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929, 17.
Peter Joseph, Zeitgeist, http://zeitgeistmovie.com/http://vimeo.com/13726978. In the YouTube documentary, Zeitgeist, Peter Joseph uses hand-picked sources (Gerald Massey and Acharya S.), attempting to build a case that Jesus is a “copycat” of the ancient Egyptian god, Horus. Regarding Zeitgeist’s sources, Dr. Ben Witherington notes, “Not a single one of these authors and sources are experts in the Bible, Biblical history, the Ancient Near East, Egyptology, or any of the cognate fields….they are not reliable sources of information about the origins of Christianity, Judaism, or much of anything else of relevance to this discussion.” http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/12/zeitgeist-of-zeitgeist-movie.html. The alleged parallels between Jesus and Horus are analyzed and systematically refuted in the following website:http://kingdavid8.com/Copycat/JesusHorus.html.
Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 170-71. Mithraism developed too late to have influenced Christianity. “Mithraism was a late Roman mystery religion that became a chief rival to Christianity in the second century and later.” Quoted in Strobel, 166-76.
Quoted in Strobel, 160-61. [In his interview with Strobel, Michael Licona states that Mettinger takes exception to that nearly universal scholarship by claiming that there are at least three and possibly as many as five dying and rising gods that predate Christianity. However, after combing through all these accounts and critically analyzing them Mettinger adds that “none of these serve as parallels to Jesus.” Mettinger writes, “There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world.… The death and resurrection of Jesus retains its unique character in the history of religions.”]