This chapter is really on the validity of Jesus’ story from the Bible - did Jesus exist, did He do all the things that the Bible says He did? Was He a man, myth, or Messiah?
Ironically, this is the most easily confirmed historical truth from the Bible - that Jesus was a man who lived on this earth starting around 2020 years ago, that he was highly influential on the people with whom he associated and who later became proclaimed disciples of his, he was eventually hung on a cross and died the death of a hardened criminal by the Roman authorities under Pontius Pilate, and he was seen a few days later by numerous people...numbering in the hundreds. To all of that there is very little debate anymore. And the irony is that THESE truths are rarely the center of discussion when it comes to debating the existence of God and the validity of the Christian faith, and they are ultimately the only points that REALLY matter.
Anyone who takes the time to really look into the life and death of Jesus with truth in mind can’t help but come to the conclusion that the story of Jesus is real. It isn’t really up for debate at this point. We can debate the identity of Jesus I supposed, we just can’t debate the authenticity of the factual elements from scripture...history corroborates the places, the people, and the timelines. That leads to another thought - if history corroborates the places, the people, and the timelines, what does that mean of the people who wrote the Bible (the over 60 authors, 7 or 8 of them from the New Testament after Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection); were they all crazy? They are the ones who claim these events from history that we can’t deny, and they draw the conclusion from these events that Jesus’ is God’s Son, in a sense, God Himself...are they nuts? That hundreds of people claimed to have seen the risen Jesus and go along with their claims, when there would have been a VERY easy out on the grounds of not seeing Jesus, is amazingly strong evidence of the resurrection. What else explains the resurrection? That’s a question atheists really have to contend with and answer...and arguing that Jesus never died doesn’t fly; history refutes that too strongly and non-Christian scientists concede that point as well. But what then?