Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 181:722 (Apr 2024)
Article: Book Reviews
Author: Matthew S. DeMoss

BSac 181:722 (April-June 2024) p. 237

Book Reviews

By The Faculty And Staff Of Dallas Theological Seminary

Matthew S. DeMoss

Editor

On the Resurrection, Vol. 1, Evidences. By Gary R. Habermas. B&H Academic, 2024. xii + 1054 pp. $79.77.

Habermas, distinguished research professor of apologetics and philosophy at Liberty University, has spent most of his career studying the resurrection. He has become known for his “minimal facts” approach to the topic of the reliability of the resurrection. In this book he takes what most scholars share in agreement about the resurrection as the launching point for considering it as a historical event. This book, the first of four volumes, documents and argues for this approach. It is loaded with details and footnotes that show the array of issues tied to a discussion of the resurrection. This series will become a reference encyclopedia for the topic.

The study ranges from treatments of historiography and miracles to a critique of those who claim Jesus never existed to a listing of the key minimal facts recognized, according to Habermas, by a consensus of scholars. There are six key facts plus a few more that get attention: (1) Jesus died due to the effects of Roman crucifixion. (2) The disciples afterward reported experiences they thought were actual experiences of the risen Jesus. (3) These experiences accounted for the thorough transformation of the disciples’ lives, even to the point of being willing to die for their belief. (4) The proclamation of Jesus’s resurrection and appearances took place very early, soon after the experiences themselves. (5) James, the brother of Jesus and a skeptic, most likely believed after he thought he saw the risen Jesus. (6) Just a few years later, Saul of Tarsus (Paul) became a Christian due to an experience that he also concluded was an appearance of the risen Jesus. One additional fact is that the private tomb in which Jesus was probably buried was discovered to be empty after his death.

These facts are widely acknowledged by believers and skeptics alike. Habermas documents this and makes a solid case for each item on the list. The minimal facts grow out of the two kinds of resurrection texts we see in the New Testament: empty tomb texts and appearance texts. The debate then turns to how we move from acknowledging the disciples’ experiences of an appearance to arguing for the resurrection as a real event rather than a visionary experience, which is often the alternative posited by those who do not accept a physical resurrection. Habermas’s subsequent volumes will engage with that larger conversation even more.

In this first volume, Habermas lays the groundwork by discussing historical meth...