The diameter of the stellar body on this photograph fudges to about 8 inches (I measured it by matching the curvature to a similar object, in this case a ceramic plate.) The planet Earth has an elliptical orbit around the Sun varying in distance according to its position in that orbit, the mean distance between Earth and the Sun is 14,960,000 10^6 km; the mean diameter of the Sun is 1,392 10^6 km. That means that the Earth should be placed 8,5977 inches away! That’s 2,388.25 yards…for those Americans in my audience, let me lay this one out. To display appropriate scale of Earth to Sun the tract would have to be a length of over 23 football fields.

YOU ARE NOT HERE.

“Did you know that the earth could fit into the volume of the sun over a million times? Think of it… what sort of Being could create the sun?“

I don’t know if this is a red herring or a testimonial. Whatever it happens to be it’s a bunch of irrelevant hand-waving. The tract author is attempting to assert the presence of a “Being”–which is probably the Christian god–by begging the question with this thinly veiled “think about it” line. Occam’s Razor: Star formation is an observed phenomenon and is sufficiently explained by natural forces. Unless this tract is going to demonstrate a star making Being, there is not sufficient evidence to believe that the Sun was made by one.

“Have you ever done that? Have you ever made a god to suit yourself (within your mind)? There is one God, and you have to face Him. Alone. On Judgment Day. That’s a scary thought.“

You are making an appeal to fear. Ever done that? At this point the tract descends into the usual appeals to mythology, glitters with generalities, assertions, and more threats.

“Go to [our website] and click on ‘Save Yourself Some Pain.’“

More pandering.

The hook of this tract is entirely in the false visual on the front of the tract. It then uses the bad visual in order to deliver truthful but irrelevant information. This strategy is used by propagandists to create a false sense of wisdom so that they can set up the question that begs the existence of a Being that created the sun. Also: a photograph is a tangible fact–something that mythology is not. The propagandist is attempting to create a positive bias by correlating the supernatural “Being” with the observable sun. That way the reader is thinking about this Being when they enter into the parts of the tract that appeal to fear and mythology. A critical examination, however, would make it necessary to point out that’s fairly obvious that stars can form without the presence of any beings.

This tract is cute in that it attempts to include some knowledge generated by empirical science. It uses a photograph taken by NASA, which is an excellent empirical data point about our sun. (If you ignore the Photoshopped Earth being in the wrong place.)

These concerts, and the stories of soldiers who were punished for choosing not to attend, were reported in a recent article by Chris Rodda, Senior Research Director for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

Rodda reports that Maj. Gen. James E. Chambers has started these religious conversion oriented concerts at both bases where he has been the commanding officer, and that they have continued at For Lee even after his departure, at an appalling cost to taxpayers.

The costs may be small compared to the enormous military budget, but any money spent on promotion of a religion by government agencies is unacceptable, and “Spiritual Fitness” programs in the military cost uncounted millions of dollars per year. Millions of dollars taken from citizens who for the most part are not Evangelical Christians and who would not willingly pay to promote that religion, or to coerce anyone into sitting through repeated and extended attempts to convert them.

The fact that military officers are wasting up to $100,000 per act at each concert with the clear intent of promoting Evangelical Christianity is disturbing enough, but punishing soldiers who choose not to attend these “Spiritual Fitness” events where their commanders support these blatant attempts to convert them to Evangelical Christianity is an unmitigated abuse of the rights granted to every citizen by the constitution of the United States of America.

Lest there be any confusion as to the purpose of these bands and the officials who hired them, an article in the Fort Eustis Wheel quotes one member of the BarlowGirl trio who headlined this particular concert as stating that their group is “on a mission to bring the armor of God to servicemembers”, and they are doing it with your money and with the support of your military commanders.

Atheism offers nothing to me
It never has, and it never will
It does not make me feel good
Or comfort me
It’s not there for me when I’m sick or ill
It can’t intervene in my times of need
It won’t protect me from hate or lies
It doesn’t care if I fail or succeed
It won’t wipe the tears from my eyes
It does nothing when I’ve got nowhere to run
It won’t give me wise words or advice
It has no teachings for me to learn
It can’t show me what’s bad or nice
It’s never inspired or incited anyone
It won’t help me fulfill all my goals
It won’t tell me to stop when I’m having fun
It’s never saved one single soul
It doesn’t take credit for everything I acheive
It won’t make me get down on bended knee
It doesn’t demand that I have to believe
It won’t torture me for eternity
It won’t teach me to hate or dispise others
It can’t tell me what’s right or wrong
It won’t tell anybody that they can’t be lovers
It’s told nobody that they don’t belong
It won’t make you think that life is worth living
It has nothing to offer me, that’s true
But the reason atheism offers me nothing
Is because I’ve never asked it to
Atheism offers nothing because it doesn’t need to
Religion promises everything because you want it to
You don’t need a religon or to have faith
You just want it because you need to feel safe
I want to feel reality
And nothing more
So atheism offers me everything
That religion has stolen before.

"Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples," Walker, who was appointed to the federal bench by former President Ronald Reagan, wrote in his opinion.

"Race restrictions on marital partners were once common in most states but are now seen as archaic, shameful or even bizarre," he added. "Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage; marriage under law is a union of equals."

The written opinion and decision happen to be filled with numerous responses and reasoning why the Prop 8 supporters have failed to make their legal burden. It seems unlikely that an appeal will save them, unless they’ve actually been holding their best arguments in reserve for no reason.

Other sources with much more insight into the opinion have already begun to chime in. I will be compiling them as they fill in over the next few days.

And: “With a stroke of his pen, Judge Walker has overruled the votes and values of 7 million Californians who voted for marriage as one man and one woman.” If that offensive argument is the best that we can expect on appeal, then Prop 8 is certainly not long for this world. In the United States of America you don’t get to vote away basic human rights for a minority because you’re the majority.

Link, via CNN.

“MAN’S GREATEST NEED

Sin has separated man from God. To be separated from God at death means to spend eternity in Hell, because God will not excuse sin, and sin must be punished. Man is sinful, but God is holy. The blood of Jesus Christ is God’s way of meeting man’s greatest need.”

Wow. The jargon density in this paragraph is amazing. Of course, it doesn’t quite explain what “man’s greatest need” is after all, does it? It just threatens the reader with Hell right up front and center and…that’s it. I open this tract and immediately it’s pointing at gun at me, “You need something! The blood of Jesus Christ fulfills this need!” A person who is at least culturally Christian will fill this void of explanation with their own experience, but anyone else is going to look at this with a bemused stare and put it down again.

So, this tract is about blood. Excuse me, I mean, this tract is about BLOOD. So let’s look at the numbered list in the section that tells about this BLOOD. Specifically the blood of Jesus Christ. (For the sake of clarity, I omit the Bible references from these outtakes; often they are superfluous noise anyway.)

“WHAT WILL JESUS’ BLOOD DO?

1. The blood washes and cleanses you from sin.
2. The blood pays for your forgiveness.
3. The blood makes peace with God.
4. The blood saves you from God’s wrath.
5. The blood opens the way to Heaven.”

Oh ho! Check it out! Is this the very first tract that I’ve read that actually mentions the Christian concept of Heaven? I could be mistaken, but I think that so far most of them have been threatening me with Hell over and over and never mention the reward scenario. So this is a singularly interesting specimen of propaganda for us right here.

To put this tract into context, I’m sure you can see that the cover is a two-tone image of a hand, pierced with a large spike, through the carpal bones (someone needs to study their anatomy!), with blood pooling down to form the color space around the word BLOOD. This is attempting to appeal to empathy—that looks like it hurts! And it ensconces the imagery of blood and bleeding in the mind of the reader before they start parsing the text.

I wanted to talk about the offer of Heaven, but the tract never defines it anywhere. The Bible quote that goes along with that line isn’t even helpful, “Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. (Hebrews 10:19.)” I guess that we’re supposed to take the writer’s word that this is referring to Heaven. Boldness? Holiest? I guess that this tract doesn’t actually go the last mile and offer Heaven as an alternative to Hell except in the barest sheen of cultural Christian reference.

The most foretelling portion of this list, I can see, happens to be that four out of the five list items are all about avoiding the threatened beat-down. Only the very last one is some sort of reward; the rest are mere escape from horrible punishment. Perhaps the Heaven reference just got thrown in there as an afterthought. Oh yeah, and there’s also Heaven, by the by.

This is interesting.

“YOUR GREATEST DECISION

Jesus shed His blood, was buried, and rose again the third day. At this moment He stands ready, able, and willing to save you. The choice is yours. A song says, ‘If the blood of Christ is sufficient for God, it is surely sufficient for me.’ It is the blood that satisfies God. Why not put your trust in Christ’s finished work, and call on Him for salvation now?”

The tract is quoting a song instead of the Bible here. This is an aberration! To my disappointment, I was unable to determine what song this paragraph refers to. I would like to know if anyone can help guide me to the proper resources, or if they are familiar with the lyric enough to simply fork over the data.

This paragraph is typical of these tracts. The tract spent a while setting up a house of cards series of bald assertions culminating in this: “You’re in trouble; I know the only solution; here’s that solution; take the solution or suffer horribly.” The theme here is just that God is a vampire and the blood of Jesus Christ is sufficient to slake his bloodlust for you…

God does not drink…wine.

Even though I’m not sure if I can always do this, lately I’ve made a resolution to myself to challenge any naysayer on the Internet to a moderated debate. I think this will help people be held accountable for what they say more. In fact, I would say more Christians should do this more often – in a nice and friendly way, of course. I Peter 3:15 tells us, "but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense (apologia) to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect." I pray this debate was a model of sorts for that kind of dialogue. If not, chalk it up to my immaturity, for I am still learning and working on developing a more God-honoring character.

I also want to thank Sean ‘Kazz’ Esplin for being willing to host this debate at Better Than Faith.com. I am so glad to see him being willing to give the other side a voice. I honestly hope this discussion drives up their traffic. I also hope that the comments on the posts are very insightful and lead to new learning on this topic. That way, we all can benefit and maybe BTF will do something like this again in the future? Anyway, here’s to hoping!

I also want to thank Shawn White (please do not ask if he is a snow boarder =) of the blog ‘Living Dead Man‘. He did so much work in formatting our responses so they looked more presentable and fixed a lot of potentially embarrassing spelling errors (mainly on my end). He did so much to make this happen and put in a lot of work – we honestly could not have pulled this off without his commitment and dedication to this mini-project.

At this point people may be asking why I am doing a bunch of shout outs instead of doing what folks traditionally do here, which is rehash their arguments in summary fashion? Well, I figure people can read the debate if they want that! Maybe next time I do a debate I will go the more traditional route but all I ask this time around is for people to read the Opening Statements and Rebuttals and draw their own conclusions. I especially want people to read the Cross Examinations, as I feel they may be the most telling part of the whole back and forth. The comments attached to the Cross Examinations are also very significant; I sincerely hope people can read them and follow along and even chime in.

I promise I do not think I am a "Superman debater" or anything but I do think the resurrection of Jesus has been shown to be a valid historical consideration. In fact, it is really the only plausible explanation to the known facts. On this, let me share two brief frustrations I have: one is dealing with those who reject the resurrection outright due to their philosophical bias against the supernatural. I don’t just mean Tim, for many people I run into share this bias and many of the comments belie it as well. Perhaps we can do another debate on the philosophical possibility of miracles sometime soon to look at this?

A second frustration I have is sometimes it seems as if some of the people making comments on these debates and sometimes the debaters themselves seem ill equipped to discuss first century Palestine. This context is absolutely essential to understanding the historical Jesus. Not so much with Tim but sometimes I get the feeling that some folks have never read any scholarly level works on the historical Jesus. It sure would help if people became familiar with the work of NT Wright, Craig A. Evans, Darrel Bock or Richard Bauckham – maybe even John P. Meier, James Charlesworth, EP Sanders or Burton Mack. But if they can’t do that, then even guys like Jon Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Robert Funk or Bart Ehrman will suffice. But it seems as if more and more atheists have only read Richard Carrier, GA Wells, Robert Price or Earl Doherty. It’s just hard to have an on-the-level serious discussion with those kind of dudes floating in the background because their work is so far afield and speculative. But alas, I digress …

Before I finish, I want to briefly address a few things Tim said in his final statement, such as: “It would be proven if Jesus appeared to each of us daily and had a little chat.” This kind of statement is an illustration of the creature wanting to tell the Creator what to do. It also shows how insanely high Tim wants to set the bar in his state of denial. Tim prophesies in his final remarks that I’ll respond by saying that we have to “access God through faith.” Wrong – we can have access to God’s working by opening our eyes and viewing history. This can bring us to a place where he place our trust in God because of who he is and what he has already done. This is the biblical view of faith – it means a TRUST based upon verifiable evidence, not a blind hoping in the darkness.

Tim made another misstatement about the nature of Christianity when he said,

Religions have always been with us, and the idea of divine men bending the harsh rules of nature, and promising us the benefits of these powers, have always been in the cultural landscape of religions. Many religions have converted great numbers of people with their basic appeal to the wonderful notion that the converts can, though actions or confessions, be saved from the hardship of daily life and be part of a grander scheme, protected by an all-powerful God.

Christians believe Jesus is the one and only God-Man (not merely ‘divine’) who does not just “bend the rules of nature” but rather holds all of creation together by the sheer power of his will (Colossians 1:17). In fact, Mark talks about Jesus calming a storm and the disciples respond in Mark 4:41: “They were terrified and asked each other, ‘Who is this? Even the wind and the waves obey him!’”

Christianity does not promise that people can be saved “through actions or confessions” but rather by admitting their sin, turning from it and trusting in Christ alone for salvation. This is not a works-based system, unlike every other belief system on the planet, but instead it is a grace-based system – major difference. Also, Christianity does not promise us we will be saved from the hardship of daily life – on the contrary, Jesus constantly spoke of counting the cost of following him and how his disciples had to pick up their cross!

While we’re doing theology, let me mention the awesome beauty of the resurrection of Jesus. It shows us that our Creator God stepped into the time and space continuum to demonstrate his glory and love. The resurrection tells us death is not the final stop but that we can live with God – forever – in a new and glorified body. No more sickness and no more sorrow and we will eternally be giving God all the praise for what he has done via the resurrection. I am so glad it is fact and not fantasy!

Now let me briefly be the evangelical Christian that I am. In these kinds of discussions, we sometimes act as if Jesus – his credentials and the like – is on trial. I just want to remind everyone that if Jesus really did rise from the dead – and we can know that he did – then he is not really the one on trial, so to speak, but rather, we are (John 5:22, 27). Why? Because Jesus executed judgment against the forces of evil through his death on the cross and subsequent resurrection and Acts 10:42 and 2 Timothy 4:1 tell us that Jesus will judge both the living and the dead. Paul informed the Athenians that God "has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to all men by raising him from the dead" (Acts 17:31). And Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive what is due him for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad" (2 Cor. 5:10).

Some may say this seems out of place to bring this up (and I understand their concerns) but what really is this debate about if not the implications of a risen Jesus? I pray we all honestly consider these implications as we go about our days.

Vocab Malone

Phoenix, Arizona, USA

And here is a story about a book with some amazing, fascinating, radical claims about the way the world is. The book claims that it is historical, and a great many of the historical and geographical details indeed turn out to be true. The book now exists in millions upon millions of copies all around the world. There were many people able to challenge the factual content of this book at the time of the writings, and yet many people – even people who could easily themselves have checked the facts! – were convinced of its truthfulness.

I’m talking, of course, about “the Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown. And the person I was talking about first is Mama Domitilla, according to the description by her followers.

My point? A book that claims to be true and containing checkable facts here and there, and which is swallowed as truth by large number of people is not true by default. What is needed is clear evidence, and Vocab can provide no more a snifter of positive, historical evidence for the bodily resurrection of Christ than there is for the ascension of Mohammed to heaven on a donkey or to L. Ron Hubbard’s death-cheating passage from this world to the next.

And a story about a resurrecting person with miraculous powers need not be true even though a lot of people believe it. Mama Domitilla allegedly died and was resurrected (after a tour of Heaven) less than 50 years ago. She is still alive today. There are all manner of fact-checking possibilities available to all of us, regarding this case. And of course, those who have checked her out find her to be either deluded or an outright fraud. (see, for instance, www.csicop.org) And yet, it seems to make no difference – she is still regarded by many, many people as the real deal. I’m not one of them. Nor, I’d wager, are you. You’re too smart to believe a story like that. Go read it if you didn’t already. It’s outrageous!

Religions have always been with us, and the idea of divine men bending the harsh rules of nature, and promising us the benefits of these powers, have always been in the cultural landscape of religions. Many religions have converted great numbers of people with their basic appeal to the wonderful notion that the converts can, though actions or confessions, be saved from the hardship of daily life and be part of a grander scheme, protected by an all-powerful God.

Vocab’s claim is that Christianity, out of all the religions, is more than yet another fanciful dream arising from the breathless hopes, dreams and superstitions of the general population. This is a strong claim which requires a lot more evidence than the type Vocab has provided, which have largely been appeals to authority, arguments of the sort “I can’t see how this happened, so it couldn’t have happened” and a conspicuous lack of anything approaching firm historical evidence for the central tent-pole in the Christian creed – the bodily resurrection of Jesus.

The divinity of Jesus is not an ahistorical claim. It can be proven. It would be proven if Jesus appeared to each of us daily and had a little chat. It would be proven if the Bible were an amazing book, full of stuff only an omniscient and omnipotent being could know and say, deep truths that were, and still are, inaccesible to human inquiry but observed to be true. It would be proven if prayers actually worked over random statistical noise. There *are* measurable consequences to the world if Christianity were true – consequences anyone would be able to detect. It doesn’t all happen in a faith vacuum. If anything, the evidence we would have of an omnipotent being should be the strongest, most awe-inspiring and undoubtable evidence we would have of ANYTHING. No-one on earth would be an unbeliever.

I can almost hear you saying “that’s not how it works! You access God only through faith, you can’t expect God to reveal himself in this way to suit your desires for evidence, we must have faith that He knows what he’s doing!” Christians have become entirely used to not expecting actual evidence for the existence of their God, to the point that it seems childish and naive to them when someone like me starts asking for it.

However, if Vocab is right, this kind of thing was EXACTLY what happened at the time of Jesus. Jesus DID appear to lots of people, 500+ according to Paul, after his resurrection – proving to them that he was indeed God. If Vocab is right, this experience WAS so awe-inspiring that it converted skeptics. Right here, in the Gospels, we see described an event where God, indisputably, intervened in the world in such a way that it left no room for faith. The early Christians, if Vocab is right, were Christians not of faith, but of reason: they SAW this stuff happen. Paul converted because he SAW Jesus in a vision, not because of faith.

There is something odd about the fact that this debate is being held at all. The resurrection of Jesus, according to the Christian creed, is of fundamental importance. It is this event, more than any other, that showed humanity the way to Heaven and avoiding Hell, and this distinction is entirely dependant on whether or not you accept Jesus as your saviour – in other words, whether you believe the resurrection of Jesus. This makes the event, if it happened, the most important ever in the history of humanity. And God, in sending his son to die for our sins, seems interested in saving humanity from Hell by giving them this choice. And as I stated, to the witnesses of the resurrection, there was nothing to doubt about this revelation. Jesus went as far as allowing people to touch his resurrected body and, essentially, perform small experiments to verify the truthfulness of this most important fact.

What changed? Why are Christians today content with faith and not evidence? They are, because they have to be – the well of evidence, overflowing beyond any reasonable doubt to a number of people in the right place at the right time – has now dried up. The mindset has to change if one is to remain a Christian after Jesus’ ascension. From there on in, you had no more evidence except the stories of other Christians. Truth comes from trust in other people’s stories, not from evidence. Maybe this is why Vocab seems so easily satisfied by his presentation, lacking in evidence that it is, though rich in confident conclusions based on his own or other autorities’ personal convictions. Maybe that’s all there is left. But believable arguments from trusted sources don’t make for evidence. “The Da Vinci Code” is an example of that. As another, we all thought peptic ulcers were cause by stress and lifestyle – it seemed so plausible! – until evidence forced us to change our views and accept that they are caused by bacteria. We can put too much trust in an idea because we love the sound of it, because everyone else believes it, or because the alternative just seems too far-fetched. Skepticism disallows such cognitive luxury.

Evidence is king.

In the end, as always, the burden of proof lies on the claimant. Vocab’s job was to convince his readers of the resurrection of Jesus.

As a reader, I enjoyed the ride. As a debater, I went in with an open mind, I learned a lot and thank Vocab for keeping the debate on a level of seriousness and politeness most apologist/skeptic debates can only aspire to. But in the echoing lack of evidence, I remain unconvinced.

A4. None of the above. I hold that the idea of resurrection from the dead is an ancient idea, way back to the old farmer religions where death and rebirth was a symbol of the season cycle. Like so many other religions, Christianity incorporated many miraculous memes into it, including the concept of a resurrection. Prove me wrong

A4. This question actually contains about five questions. I cannot answer them all here, especially since I feel I have answered some of them already during the course of this debate. One thing Tim is confused about is he seems to think that lower class Jews had entirely different theological beliefs than upper class Jews. There is a small grain of truth in this; for example, the unpopular Saducees were an elite aristocratic power group who did not even believe in a general resurrection of the dead. They were a small minority, though. The Pharisees did believe in a general resurrection and most common people theologically aligned with them on a large host of issues. We know why many of these working class folks, such as fishermen and tax collectors, changed their theological convictions – it was because they claimed to have seen the risen Jesus. Many of them give their reasons and we have many of their stories documented – in a first century Jewish Christian work now called The New Testament.

Although we have the seen the foolishness of discounting the Gospels as historically reliable, I do want to briefly mention some writings of the early church dealing with the resurrection so we can look at some early evidence for the resurrection outside of the NT.

One early non-canonical Christian source – I Clement – is highly significant because it is so early – 96 AD. This means Clement was writing contemporaneously with the last author of the NT itself – John. Some folks who deny the bodily resurrection as the central early Christian belief will say resurrection belief evolved and grew later. But here we have Clement, writing from Rome, attesting to this belief several times in his little letter. NT Wright, who wrote a whole chapter on the resurrection in non-canonical early Christian texts had this to say about Clement:

"Clement is quite clear that the future resurrection is based upon the resurrection of Jesus himself." [1]

Another clear example of resurrection belief outside the NT was Ignatius of Antioch, who wrote around 107 AD:

"For I know and believe that after the resurrection he was in the flesh. … After the resurrection he ate and drank with them as a fleshly being …" (Smyrn 3.1-3).

Wright provides a longer list and more precise exposition that shows resurrection belief was indeed alive and well outside of the NT from the first century on.

Those were from Christian sources and very clear about belief in the resurrection. These next two are from non-Christian sources and are not very clear. I would not build an entire case around them. Still, they are worthy to mention as a sort of ‘closing excursus’.

A governor in Asia Minor named Pliny the Younger, writing around 112 AD, relates some information he has learned about Christians (via torture):

"They were in the habit of meeting on a certain fixed day before it was light, when they sang in alternate verses a hymn to Christ, as to a god…"

The phrase ‘certain fixed day’ refers to Sunday and is proof from a non-NT source that early Christians met on a specific day and then worshipped Jesus as a god." Historically, we know the certain day would be Sunday – in honor of the event of the resurrection. As a side note, Pliny’s statement "as to a god" implies “unlike other gods who were worshipped, Christ was a person who had lived on earth.” [2]

The Roman historian Tacitus wrote this about Jesus:

"Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of . . . Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome. . ."

Tacitus reports the Christians had derived their name from a historical person, Christus (from the Latin). His details about Jesus’ crucifixion comport to the NT record. But there’s something else here: what of the odd statement by Tacitus where he says this “most mischievous superstition,” was "checked for the moment" but then it "again broke out not only in Judaea, but also in Rome?" One historian thinks Tacitus is “bearing indirect . . . testimony to the conviction of the early church that the Christ who had been crucified had risen from the grave." [3] We can’t be certain, of course, but that would help explain how a movement based upon a disgraced criminal could have spread to the capital so quickly.

NOTES:
[1]N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2003), 483.
[2] M. Harris, “References to Jesus in Early Classical Authors,” in Gospel Perspectives V, 354-55.
[3] N.D. Anderson, Christianity: The Witness of History (London: Tyndale, 1969), 19.