The fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. –Revelation 21:8 (KJV)

The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness. –Romans 1:18 (KJV)

Is it really true that God said…   –Satan in Genesis 3:1 (NET)

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Josh McDowell, More Than a Carpenter (Tyndale House, 2024).

—. The New Evidence That Demands a Verdict (Thomas Nelson, 1999).

Dr. Kenneth Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Eerdmans, 2006). This is considered the top evangelical, Bible believing, “maximalist” book on defending the historical truthfulness, accuracy, and reliability of the Old Testament narratives.

Dr. Shelton Smith, Why I Still Believe the Bible (Sword of the Lord, 2000).

Dr. Raymond Barber, The Bible Is Right (Sword of the Lord, 2007).

Dr. Norman Geisler, When Critics Ask: A Popular Handbook on Bible Difficulties (Baker Books, 1992).

—. When Skeptics Ask: A Handbook of Christian Evidences (Baker Books, 1990).

Randall Price, Zondervan Handbook of Biblical Archaeology (Zondervan, 2017). In the world of Bible scholars the “maximalists” are the people who generally take the Bible on faith value as a reliable source for the history of Israel–and assume that it’s telling the truth in good faith. This is generally the position taken by Bible scholars in the fundamentalist, Reformed, and conservative evangelical tradition. This archaeology handbook is by Zondervan and is probably evangelical and maximalist, like myself. Its the “minimalists” who are the agnostic Bible scholars: they generally doubt the historical truth of the Bible; and will only skeptically believe some aspect about it if they can find some archaeology evidence for it. This is to put more faith in archaeology than Scripture; and is essentially the position of liberal Christians on the subject of creation: they adopt theistic evolution because their priorities are flipped: they exalt the opinions of the scientific community, which is anti-Christian and atheistic in bias, above the authority of Scripture. This leads minimalists to entertain the most outrageous unbeliever speculations, such as saying none of the major figures of the Bible even existed, that every supernatural occurrence in the Bible is a myth or legend, that Christianity used to be a cult just like the Jim Jones cult, and that Christian theology is no different than a human philosophy, some man-made ideology, like Socrates would have made up.