Description: First of four chapters with Jesus as focus. Seven sections: Resurrection, Crucifixion, Ascension, Genealogy, Ancestry, Historicity and Extrabiblical Sources, and Pagan Figures.

Resurrection - 4 items.

2. A series of complaints about differences between the Gospels. Rather than answer these individually, we refer the reader to our essay on Harmonization and Glenn Miller's essay on that topic and Wenham's Easter Enigma.

3.Eccl. 3:19-21 Man's fate is like that of the animals; the same fate awaits them both: As one dies, so dies the other. All have the same breath ; man has no advantage over the animal. Everything is meaningless. All go to the same place; all come from dust, and to dust all return. Who knows if the spirit of man rises upward and if the spirit of the animal goes down into the earth?

Now answered here.

Crucifixion - 12 items.

The majority of the objections here are "harmonization" complaints. We have covered some of these in detail elsewhere or else they are extremely simple: Matt. 27:28 vs. Mark 15:17//John 19:2 (the color of Jesus' robe - I challenge anyone to discern a difference between those colors!), for example. Upon reassessment of EBE for our encyclopedia, we will place links here for answers. One special item worthy of note shows just how silly our subject is, and how little attention he deserves:

vs.

It is said that these provide contradictory locations for the Crucifixion - though it is added that "Some apologists disputably allege Golgotha is the Hebrew rendering while Calvary is Latin." But there is no "disputably" about it. Both words mean the same thing ("skull") and our subject's lack of knowledge of Biblical-era languages and refusal to read the Biblical material any way but "cold" will not change things in the least.

As added notes on this subject:

• Our subject regards as a "major problem" the issue of "who or what died on the cross." [96] "If a man died on the cross, then nothing was accomplished, for a man's death can save no one. If God died on the cross, then we have an impossibility since God cannot die." Looking for Christian "solutions" to this, our subject consults Hal Lindsey (!), who concludes that since Jesus was fully man and fully God, the problem is solved; our subject persists in saying that this does not resolve the problem. The solution is actually found in recognizing that the Hebrews viewed the body and the spirit as a total identity: If the man died on the cross, then it counts as a "death" of the spirit of the man as well, in that it undergoes a given experience.
• It is objected that the Bible does not mention anyone other than "Stephen and possibly John the Baptist" dying for the Christian cause, and this is taken as indication that martyrdom is part of "Christian mythology". Without exploring issues such as the reliability of Church tradition and the contrary opinions of secular historians, it may be said here that this is yet another example of our subject writing in a way that implies that the Bible is all there is that records relevant Christian history, although he certainly knows better. We recommend the works of Robert Wilken and Robin Lane Fox as a corrective to the general idea that martyrdom is the only type of persecution that matters (as our subject implies).

Ascension - 1 item. See here.

Genealogy - 7 objections.

See Glenn Miller's work on this subject.

A general complaint: "Christians should be glad people aren't judged by their ancestry" in light of Jesus' ancestors including bad folks like Rahab. Well, so what? No has asserted otherwise. This is merely venomous well-poisoning by our subject.

See here.

Two paragraphs endorsing the "pagan borrowing" notion. See Glenn Miller's work on this subject and now ours. That our subject endorses this view widely considered an embarrassment to most skeptics should tell us how much credence is deserved here.