51004.1 Endnotes Jesus’ Death and Resurrection: Copied from Other Ancient Deities?

Jesus’ Death and Resurrection: Copied from Other Ancient Deities?

1. Corinthians 15:3-6, J. B. Phillips.
2. Norman Geisler, I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be An Atheist (Wheaton IL: Crossway, 2004), 312.
3. Ibid.
4. Cited in Norman Geisler’s Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics pg. 490, and his quote from Y.S. Chishti, What is Christianity?, pg. 87.
5. Ronald H. Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions,” Christian Research Journal, Winter 1994. www.inplainsite.org.
7. Cited in Maarten Jozef Vermaseren, Eugene N. Lane, Cybelle, Attis and Related Cults(New York: 1996), 42.
8. Cited in Lee Strobel, The Case for the Real Jesus (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007), 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.”
9. Ben Witherington, http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/2007/12/zeitgeist-of-zeitgeist-movie.html.
10. Michael Grant, Jesus: An Historian’s Review of the Gospels (London: Rigel, 2004), 200.
11. Paul Johnson, “A Historian Looks at Jesus,” speech to Dallas Seminary, 1986.
12. H. G. Wells, The Outline of History (New York: Doubleday, 1949), 528.
13. Peter Steinfels, “Jesus Died – And Then What Happened?” New York Times, April 3, 1988, E9.
14. R. C. Sproul, Reason to Believe (Grand Rapids, MI: Lamplighter, 1982), 44.