Christianity appeals to history and to history it must go.

In other words, it really matters that this stuff did happen.

There's a very interesting passage in Acts chapter 23 when St. Paul says,

this is all about resurrection, knowing perfectly well that that puts the cat among the pigeons.

We know of roughly a dozen Jewish, Messianic, or revolutionary or prophetic movements in the 100 years or two

either side of the time of Jesus. Once we think about how resurrection language actually worked in the first century,

then I think we have to say that the most likely explanation, historically speaking, is that Jesus really was bodily

raised from the dead, leaving the empty tomb behind him.

The Ask Antirite Anything podcast.

Welcome back to another edition of the Ask Entryte Anything podcast.

I'm Dr. Michael Bird from Melbourne, Australia. And I'm Tom Wright from Oxford in

England. We're going to tackle some questions about the historical details in the Bible. Tell me, Tom,

why are there so many questions about the Bible and history, the past, the future? What is all the

fuss about? It's a good question,

because until about 200 years ago, I don't think people bothered about that much. I think

they just thought the Bible's an ancient document like Herodotus or whatever. It's probably

telling us what happened, and that's all we need to know. And it was really only in the last 250 years or so

that particularly in Europe, people who were probing and prodding at all sorts of other issues

historically and whether the ancient texts were all they seemed to be and so on. And also when

they were discovering new things in what we broadly call science, that people were

questioning everything and looking at everything and did this really happen like this.

And this got bundled up with some fairly skeptical agendas in Western European philosophy,

...