"Debates on the resurrection of Jesus are basically ritual in nature: one hears the same old arguments again and again. I am not at all surprised to see apologists behaving like "eel wrigglers" (the Buddha's term for wily and evasive opponents), retreating behind ingenious harmonizations. Naturally: they are spin doctors for the dogma of an institution they serve. Nothing here militates against this fact. Carl Stecher does a fine job of exposing this, though he, more of a gentleman than I am, does not put it so bluntly. Surprisingly, though, the whole debate in conducted in the framework of eighteenth-century Protestant Rationalism, where both sides took for granted that the biblical events were largely accurate and only disputed whether a natural or supernatural explanation was better. D. F.

Stauss blew both approaches out of the water in the nineteenth century. Still, it is worth doing what Stecher does, if only to show that the resurrection is implausible even on literalistic terms." --Robert M. Price, Editor, Journal of Higher Criticism.