Peace of Christ, Mr. Minton, hope that this email isn’t too big an ask. if you’ve noticed, my Q’s have trended toward the Resurrection. Probably due to the church season. Thus, I thought to myself instead of emailing you every time I have a question about the Resurrection, twould be more efficient to learn more about the Resurrection myself. Below I’ve catalogued the resources I have studied, and am considering.

*Have studied:– IP’s playlist 

– Cerebral Faith Video playlist (which I liked more than IP’s, but that might be bias talking)

– The ten part blog post series- Every single resurrection blog you’ve written

– The Case for Christ

– On Guard

– Some of Peter Kreeft’s online work

– WLC’s popular and scholarly articles on it/ Defenders podcast

– Blog posts by CrossExamined and FreeThinking Ministries- 

Various youtube videos (nothing too in depth)

– Assorted websites (nothing too in depth)

*Considering– The big 4:

 “The Resurrection Of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach” By Michael Licona, 

“The Case For The Resurrection Of Jesus” by Gary Habermas and Michael Licona, 

“The Resurrection Of The Son Of God” by N.T Wright, 

“The Resurrection Of God Incarnate” –  Andrew Loke’s book on the Resurrection- BeliefMap.orgs advanced flowchart

– A compilation of resources from “2 be sure . . . god loves you”

– The results I find from academic databases and search engines- Random playlists/podcasts/videos/website I find

As you can see, my “have studied” is quite limited. So, the question is, what are your recommended resources on the Resurrection? Your “turning a dollar into a million” post was amazing. IP is great, Defenders is very thorough, and CrossExamined is how I found out about you so I obviously love it. I was wondering you you could provide a similar list of resources but for the Resurrection. Preferably no-cost since it will be difficult enough for me to get the big 4.  

* Andro

Andro, I’m really happy to see that you’re taking advantage of the resources I’ve made available here on The Cerebral Faith website. I would recommend everyone to check out the resources of mine that you’ve mentioned such as the 12 part video series I made defending the case for the resurrection of Jesus, as well as my blog post series, and some of other blog posts I’ve written such as “The Minimal Facts Case For Jesus’ Resurrection PART 1” and “The Minimal Facts Case For Jesus’ Resurrection. – PART 2”. 

Andro, it does my heart glad to know that Christians are educating themselves through the free resources I’ve labored to put out to help them be better able to defend their faith. 

Resources I Recommend 

Now, as for resources you haven’t studied yet, you should definitely read Gary Habermas’ and Michael Licona’s “The Case For The Resurrection Of Jesus”. This is a popular level book, but it is rich in content both in the main body of text as well as the footnotes. Moreover, if you buy the paperback edition, it comes with a free interactive CD. Put the CD into your computer, and you’ll install a game that will quiz you on the material you’ve read. It’s got a fun game show theme with an animated show host and a catchy opening theme. I read this book 10 times in a row back in 2015 when preparing for my debate with Nathan Reese, and I learned a lot. I played the Resurrection Challenge computer game until I got a 100% score every time! 

Because it’s a popular level book, it’s not very expensive. Both the paperback and Kindle version are around 14 dollars. So I highly highly recommend that you buy and read Habermas and Licona’s “The Case For The Resurrection Of Jesus”. 

Michael Licona’s “The Resurrection Of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach” is also a fantastic book. It’s a scholarly level book. It’s a bit more expensive than the previous one, but I can guarantee you that it is well worth the money. I’ve read it once and I hope to return to it again soon. Same goes for N.T Wright’s “The Resurrection Of The Son Of God”. Actually, this book is much cheaper on ChristianBook.com because they’re having a summer sale. I don’t know how long it will last. ChristianBook.com has books for a cheaper price than Amazon anyway (for physical books at least), but at the time of writing this book, the cost of this book has been lowered even there. So I would hop on this opportunity as fast as possible. It’s currently $30.00 on ChristianBook.com. 

Of course, you yourself already brought up these. What about ones you haven’t brought up? Well, Gary Habermas has a course on the resurrection that’s sold on DVD and Digital Video over at Credo House. Click here to check it out. Most of the time, this is very expensive, but every now and then it’ll go on sale and will either be free or be at a very low price. It looks like it’s free at the time of writing this, but I don’t know how much longer that will last. It’s a fantastic course that I’ve learned a lot from. 

Another resource you didn’t bring up is Lee Strobel’s “The Case For The Resurrection”. This is a small booklet that is an excerpt from The Case For Christ Study Bible. There are articles from Strobel throughout the book talking about the evidence for Jesus’ empty tomb and postmortem appearances, naturalistic theories, and so forth. But it also has the resurrection narratives from the 4 gospels in it, and footnotes at the bottom. This is because it’s taken from a study Bible exclusively dealing with the topic of Jesus’ resurrection. The Kindle version of this book is very cheap; $1.99. The paperback version is $18.94. 

This is valuable not only for the articles and footnotes but also because of the gospel resurrection narratives. If you already know about the criteria of authenticity and how they can be applied to The New Testament, you can use this booklet to carefully comb through the narratives seeing if there’s any part of the record which you could apply one of the criteria to that perhaps you never thought of before. 

Finally, there’s Dale Allison’s newest book on the resurrection of Jesus. I have not read this yet as it’s just come out, and I’ve had neither the time nor the money to get it. However, Caleb Jackson of the Proselytize or Apostatize Podcast highly recommends it. 

I’d also recommend you watch debates on this. William Lane Craig, Michael Licona, Gary Habermas, and yours truly have all done public debates on the resurrection.

And all of this has to do with the minimal facts approach for the resurrection. For books on the reliability method, Craig Blomberg has a Credo Course on this, some books on it, Lydia McGrew is a good resource for NT reliability, and Inspiring Philosophy has a whole video series on New Testament reliability on his YouTube channel. I’ve probably watched that 3 times already! And J. Warner Wallace’s book “Cold Case Christianity” is both an informative and a fun read. 

Tips For Mastering This Material

Now, if you want to master this material; here’s what I do. I have a learning disability. So it helps me master a subject if I read about it over and over and over and over. It especially helps if I hear what I’m reading while my eyes follow along. For several years, I read paperback books aloud to myself in my bedroom, but now I read ebooks. And here’s what I do with ebooks; 

(1) I either have Alexa (my echo dot) read it to me via Text-To-Speech while my eyes follow along the text in the e-book. 

(2) If it’s a non-DRM book I got from somewhere other than Amazon, I’ll go over to Zamzar and convert it to an MP3 file. I’ll then read along to that Text-To-Speech. 

(3) If there’s an audiobook available, I’ll get that. Often times, Amazon will allow you to get the audiobook on Audible for a mere 7 dollars if you’ve already bought the Kindle book. Not always, but often. 

I’m not sure what kind of learner you are, but for me, this has been the best way to learn what I’ve learned; multi-sensory method of repetition. 

So, for example, you can watch the 12 part resurrection series on the Cerebral Faith YouTube channel over and over until you’ve got the material down-pat. 

Conclusion