Who Moved the Stone?

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Circular Reasoning - Rated
I have tried repeatedly to find some sort of credible evidence of historical truth for the bible and was hopeful that this book would provide it. Unfortunately the basis of the book goes along the lines of 'the bible is true because the bible says so'. Circular reasoning. It relies heavily on a literal interpretation of bible passages - one of the many problems of this lies in the fact that the bible was written at least 4 decades after the supposed lifetime of Christ (the destruction of the Jewish temples in AD70 is in the Gospels).

Modern minds will also be aggrieved (or amused) by the blatent gender bias in the book and a number of assumptions are made on this basis.

I'll keep reading both sides of the argument, but alas the Richard Dawkins/ Sam Harris arguments seem more credible.

Dated - Rated
I call this dated due to the language in places and also the author's views of the psychology of the genders. That aside, the book is readable and in the main the argument is presented well and with conviction. The chapter on James the brother of the Lord is the weakest link and the book would have been strengthened by excluding this chapter. The chapter on Paul is probably the most convincing. I would not recommend this book for would be Christians due to the two problems mentioned above, but for those already convinced about the resurrection, it does provide arguments which can be modernised for contemporary apologetics.

An amazingly clear discussion of Jesus' last days - Rated
This book will make you question everything you think you know about the last days of Jesus, his death and apparant resurrection. Morison leaves no stone unturned in his quest to find the truth, starting from the last supper he uses his amazing logic to pick out each and every clue from the Gospels to ascertain the true course of events. His views are unbiased, and the reader is offered every alternative to the view presented in the Gospels. His writing style is extremely lucid, Morison has an impressive skill in explaining complex historical issues in a clear and understandable way.
I would recommend this book for both believers and unbelievers, for the former it will unlock the Gospel accounts to an amazing degree and for the lattr it goes quite some way to dispelling the idea that Christianity is based on "blind faith" and nothing else. The fact that Morison set out to disprove the resurrection, but found that the facts would not bend this way is surely reason enough to read this book...it is an extremely enjoyable read and one of my all time favourites.

Convincing - Rated
This book, as well as being a gripping read, is a very convinving account of what happened to Jesus in those last days of His life before His crucifixion. But this is really only there to set up the scene. It is Jesus' resurrection which the book sets out to convince us of and it does so very well.

Granted, it relies heavily on the accounts written by Jesus' desciples. But then I've never quite understood why people object to this. Why are we more willing to listen to biased anti-Christian writers like Tacitus and Josephus who wrote long after the events, got there information very second hand and whose writtings we scarcely have any copies written less than 700 years after the originals! With the gospels you eye witness (or in some cases once removed) accounts that were written no more than 30 years after the events took place (and probably long before that), by people who dies for what they had written (so they had to be pretty convinced it was true) and copies of which we have within 100 years of the originals and many fragments much earlier than this. So I think he has every right to use such historical documents as he does. And as to them being inconsistent - they contain just the inconsistencies that you would expect between different eye witnesses. If they were identical then I would smell a rat.

Oh, and in case you were wondering. What little Josephus and Tacitus say about Jesus, agrees with the gospels anyway.

So well done Frank Morison. If you read this boook with an open mind you will surely be convinced of the truth of Christ's resurrection. And if that is true, well then that means we need to take His teaching about Himself pretty seriously too.

Disapointing - Rated
I bought this book at the recommendation of a Christian bookshop. I had enquired after a detailed rebuttal or collection of rebuttals to Thomas Paine's book The Age Of Reason. The latter I am still unable to find and this book is hardly a substitute. Frank Morison claims to have been a sceptic but seems to show very little scepticism here. The book is highly readable, you might even call it a page turner, though claims that the various Biblical accounts of the death and resurrection of Christ are in agreement are a bit wide of the mark, possibly Frank is banking on his readers taking his word for this and not actually checking for themselves. The book goes into the Resurrection in quite considerable detail but basically uses the Bible as "evidence" that the Gospels are true which let's face it amounts to nothing more than circular reasoning.