Jesus and the Logic of History

Barnett hits the target with an excellent apologetical approach to anwswering the historical Jesus Quest. If you are concerned with this issue, you must read this one!

Paul Barnett is also known as Bishop Paul Barnett of the diocese of Sydney, Australia. Apart from his theological qualifications, he has a doctrate in Ancient History and lectures at Macquarie University and Moore Theological College. Barnett has addressed the views of John Spong (and others) in specific and general ways in this book (and others). His thesis is that the life, death and resurrection of Jesus is not only historically defensible - and that conversely other views (such that it is all a myth etc), are indefensible and do not come to grips with the phenomenon of early Christianity attested to both in Biblical sources and extra biblical sources. Bishop Barnett's careful scholarship takes on the selective and naive historical analysis of Spong, Theiring and the Jesus Seminar. Barnett shows that the historical Christian explanation for the events of the New Testament are water tight. You would use this book if you wanted to seriously investigate the claims of the Bible, devoid of modern gnosticism (Spong), reductionist emoiricism (Jesus Seminar) or pure speculation (Theiring). This is a book for the serious sercher of the facts of the matter.