To what extent do you think a historian can either prove or disprove the resurrection of Jesus?

So if by history you mean that you can prove that God raised Jesus from the dead, then I don't think so.

I think that's mixing two categories,

theology and history. I think the historian can say certain things. The historian could say,

for example, the tomb was probably empty or the tomb probably wasn't empty. That's independent

of a theological judgment. you can also make arguments about who maybe saw Jesus

or thought they saw Jesus. But part of the theme of my book is that apologists and skeptics

typically reach too far. So while I start out the book by saying,

I'm perfectly happy to say as a Christian, I think God raised Jesus from the dead, this is not

something that I could prove historically to other people. There are parts of the New Testament,

or claims in the New Testament that we can address as historians.

But at the end of the day, I think the skeptic can be reasonable as a skeptic. I think the

Christian can be reasonable as a skeptic. And it's just the case that history does not give

people as much as they want. So the skeptic wants to be able to say it's ridiculous to think that anything happened here.

The apologist wants to say, well, I can show this, that, and the other thing,

and the best hypothesis for that is that Jesus rose from the dead, or God raised Jesus from the dead.

I'm in the middle on this one. I just don't think either

side is persuasive. I actually think at the end of the day that people's worldviews are

configuring the data, whether they know it or not. But I also think the data is pliable enough that it can be configured

reasonably in more than one way. Again, that will depend on your worldview.

Yeah, your book, The Resurrection of Jesus, is a master class of scholarship, and I recommend

it to everybody who has even a passing interest in Jesus and Christianity.

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