William Lane Craig vs. John Shelby Spong on the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus.

Website of Gary Habermas, world specialist on the resurrection of Jesus.

Craig and Habermas are both evangelical scholars. Spong is a retired Episcopalian bishop who served for fifty years. In the Craig vs. Spong video, at 16:60 minutes, Craig says:

these three facts are agreed upon by the majority of New Testament scholars who have written on the subject:

1. Jesus’ empty tomb
2. his post-mortem appearances
3. and the origin of the disciples’ belief

At 19:05 minutes Craig says:

Does this mean therefore that most scholars accept the resurrection of Jesus as the best explanation? No it does not. For in order to accept the explanation that God raised Jesus from the dead, you must be prepared to affirm that a miracle has occurred and many historians feel that they cannot do that. Not that they deny the possibility of miracles, but they feel that in their capacity as professional historians, it's against the rules, so to speak, to appeal to miraculous explanations.

So it's only the historians and they can't because of the rules of their game. Read on.

Regarding the "most scholars" argument, Spong responds:

Dr. Craig has...done the same thing politicians do. He says "Everybody thinks of it my way." "Most scholars," he said a number of times, "do this. Most scholars do that." Well, he and I must read a totally different group of scholars. I'm a member of the Jesus Seminar. We have 250 Ph.D. Bible scholars, Catholic and Protestant. And they would not agree at all with either the timing that Dr. Craig mentioned or with some of his historicity of such things as the...empty tomb.

So I guess it's not just historians who disagree that the resurrection took place in history. Apparently there are large numbers of New Testament scholars who disagree. My former professors are among these and they are NOT Jesus Seminar people.

As for the number of references in the NT, here is what Spong has to say:

When you read biblical material, you're not always reading primary sources. We know for a fact that Matthew copied Mark into his gospel. Matthew copies about 90% of Mark into his gospel. We know that Luke also had Mark in front of him when he wrote so Luke copies about half of Mark into his gospel. So when Matthew, Mark, and Luke agree, it's no mystery--they have the same source. Mark is the primary source for all of them.

Again, Spong and the Jesus Seminar people are by no means the only batch of scholars who are saying this stuff. Scholars as a whole are saying it. If you disagree show me the evidence.

I want to see archaeologists and astrophysicists who have published since 2005. Anything older than that is no longer "everything we know on the topic" because new things are being discovered all the time.

Originally posted here.