AP113 Objections to the Gospels
Overview
In his Objections to the Gospels course, Dr. Michael R. Licona explores the major objections to the reliability of the Gospels posed by modern critics. This course provides you with strong historical background to the text and authorship of the Gospels and a greater appreciation for these works.
Top Highlights
“The earliest Greek manuscript of the nt, or portion of it, is dated somewhere between five and sixty years after the originals were written.” (source)
“The closest competitor to our nt literature is the Homeric epics—that’s The Odyssey and The Iliad, written by Homer. With that, there are nearly two thousand manuscripts of the Homeric epics, and the oldest was written about 350 years after the original.” (source)
“When you compare that with the nt, of more than 5,800 Greek manuscripts alone—the earliest being five to sixty years later, nine to fifteen within 150 years of the original, and the first substantial manuscript being fourth century or 250–300 years after the original—well, we’ve got an embarrassing richness of manuscripts when we come to the nt.” (source)
“There are also more than twenty-five thousand manuscripts of the nt that appear in other languages—such as Latin, Coptic, Syriac, Ethiopic—because the early Christians wanted to be able to read the nt literature in their own language, and so it was translated into those languages.” (source)
“The average size of each Greek manuscript—remember, a little over 5,800—the average size of each of those Greek manuscripts is 459 pages. Now, some of them—like our oldest one—some of them are just the size of a credit card, some are a whole page, but some are massive. Again, the average size of the Greek manuscript [is] 459 pages. There are approximately nearly six hundred Greek manuscripts that we have within the first thousand years of Christianity.” (source)
- Title: AP113 Objections to the Gospels
- Author: Michael R. Licona
- Series: Logos Mobile Education
- Publisher: Lexham Press
- Print Publication Date: 2016
- Logos Release Date: 2016
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Courseware
- Subjects: Apologetics; Bible › Evidences, authority, etc; Education › Apologetics; Education › Bible--Evidences, authority, etc; Education › Jesus Christ--Historicity; Jesus Christ › Historicity
- Resource ID: LLS:AP113LICONA
- Resource Type: Courseware Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2022-02-11T17:02:48Z
Dr. Mike Licona is associate professor of theology at Houston Baptist University. He holds a PhD in New Testament studies from the University of Pretoria, which he earned with distinction and the highest mark.
Dr. Licona was interviewed for Lee Strobel’s book The Case for the Real Jesus and he appeared in Strobel’s video The Case for Christ. He is the author of numerous books, including The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach, Paul Meets Muhammad: A Christian-Muslim Debate on the Resurrection, co-author of the award-winning book The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus, and co-editor of Evidence for God: 50 Arguments for Faith from the Bible, History, Philosophy, and Science. His next book will concern ancient compositional devices resulting in discrepancies in the Gospels and Plutarch’s Lives. Dr. Licona is a member of the Society of Biblical Literature, the Institute for Biblical Research, the Evangelical Theological Society, and the Evangelical Philosophical Society. He has spoken on more than 70 university campuses and has appeared on dozens of radio and television programs.