If you know who Richard Swinburne is, then you know that he is a Christian philosopher whose usual trade is arguing for the existence of God. With this brief work, Resurrection of God Incarnate, Swinburne steps outside of his specialty for a defense of the resurrection of Jesus. The result is as you may expect: Swinburne shows significant weaknesses in terms of his familiarity with Biblical scholarship; yet his ability is such that he offers a powerful defense of the resurrection even so.

Swinburne approaches the resurrection with the general thesis that of all possible explanations for the data, it fits better than any other, including naturalistic explanations. He builds his case step by step, starting with some material on historical ways of knowing. Tekton readers will be able to fill in the gaps where data could only have made Swinburne's case even stronger (for example, material on page 30 is added to by material in The Impossible Faith; and Swinburne for example accepts, perhaps merely for the sake of argument, such ideas as a late date for Daniel [70]).

Further on, two of the early chapters set a foundation by arguing that Jesus was and acted like someone who would be God incarnate (call it Josh McDowell's ETDAV Ch. 8 on steroids and weights for several years). It is in the last few chapters that Swinburne takes a close look at historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, as well as naturalistic alternatives.

Readers will certainly appreciate this effort, which, though it has no indication in the bibliography of familiarity with current apologetics for the resurrection (Craig, etc.) nevertheless arrives at much the same destination. It will be a bit more technical than most of those apologetic works but is nevertheless a welcome addition to an apologetics library, with the caveats added about caution due where Swinburne argues outside his area of specialty.