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Showing posts from April, 2015

"Jesus: Dead or Alive? Evaluating the evidence for the Resurrection (2013)" by Neil J Foster

This is looking at a paper I came across recently, and seems topic as it is kind of Easter or thereabouts. The paper can be found here: http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1096&context=neil_foster We have almost exactly the same material to make a decision about the events of the first Easter. Of course that happened a long time ago, probably in 33 AD, nearly 2000 years ago. But we have a plethora of reports and evidence of the same sort- works written by eyewitnesses, works written by people who interviewed eyewitnesses, things we can dig up from the same era. And what this article suggests is that that evidence can be assessed and weighed up, and supported as reliable, by the legal principles used in courts every day to make key decisions about people’s lives. Big claims. Do we really have "works written by eyewitnesses"? I think not. Do we have evidence anyone "interviewed eyewitnesses"? Not that I am aware of. Has a