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Coffee House Chronicles #1
Is the Bible True . . . Really?: A Dialogue on Skepticism, Evidence, and Truth
With over 40 million books sold, bestselling author Josh McDowell is no stranger to creatively presenting biblical truth. Now, partnering with fellow apologist Dave Sterrett, Josh introduces a new series targeted at the intersection of story and truth. The Coffee House Chronicles are short, easily devoured novellas aimed at answering prevalent spiritual questions. Each book in the series tackles a long-contested question of the faith, and then answer these questions with truth through relationships and dialogue in each story. In Is the Bible True, Really?: A Dialogue on Skepticism, Evidence, and Truth , we meet Nick, a college freshman at a state school in Texas. Nick has his spiritual world turned upside-down with what he hears in an introduction to religion class. His questions turn into conversations as he dialogues with professors, friends, and family about the authenticity and authority of the Bible. The other two books in the Who is Jesus, Really? and Did the Resurrection Happen, Really? continue the unfolding story at the college campus and the coffee house down the road.
142 pages, Paperback
First published December 17, 2010
About the author
Josh McDowell
510 books663 followersJosh McDowell is a bestselling Christian apologist, evangelist, and author of over 150 books, including Evidence That Demands a Verdict and More Than a Carpenter. Once an agnostic, he converted to Christianity while investigating its historical claims. He went on to earn degrees from Wheaton College and Talbot Theological Seminary. For decades, McDowell has been a prominent speaker with Campus Crusade for Christ, addressing issues of faith, character, and youth culture worldwide. His work emphasizes historical and legal evidence for Christianity and tackles challenges posed by skepticism and non-Christian beliefs. He lives in California with his wife, Dottie, and is the father of four children, including fellow apologist Sean McDowell.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews
March 27, 2016
Is The Bible True...Really was a great read. I liked the way it was written -- not at all the way I was expecting. It reminded me a little of the movie God's Not Dead, but only slightly because it's really not the same. A great read!!
December 5, 2020
3.5 rounding up to 4. This isn't necessarily an apologetics book so if that's what you are looking for, look elsewhere. This may be helpful for a Christian or seeker who has questions but isn't much of a reader or wants a cliff notes about the canon of Scripture. The narrative style may be helpful for some. It wouldn't resolve a lot of issues for those seeking answers but could be helpful for what to explore next via the footnotes.
June 14, 2017
I'm a Christian who never really questioned what I was taught as a child. Now as a mature adult I'm looking for evidence to support these beliefs. This book was very disappointing. It's a cute little story with hardly any substance to it. I felt what it offered insulted my intelligence and genuine desire to learn more. I would also appreciate being given information without the author trying to save me but it's like trying to buy Mary Kay products without getting the sales pitch. Surely there is a book that thoughtfully tackles the authentication of the Bible?
November 18, 2011
This was a pretty good, readable, introduction to issues of Biblical reliability. I really appreciated the beginning - it is a great apologetic for why Campus ministry is so vitally important to our faith.
August 1, 2017
This is a poorly written book. It is supposed to be a dialogue between two men. The language is stilted and not natural. It was a boreing read
June 24, 2019
I gave this a four because I believe it will achieve the goal that the authors intend. It is Christian apologetics in a story form and it makes its points clearly and briefly. The target audience is Christian teenagers going off to college and those in college. It shows teachings contrary to what Christians believe that creep into academia, and then refutes them with research done by Christian academicians. I think the most important lesson that a young person would learn from this is to not take the opinions of any one professor but search out the full scope of research on a topic.
August 28, 2021
I really enjoy this whole series! But I think it’s important to have the right expectations going in. It’s certainly not the most excellent novel I’ve read but that is not its intention. It is also not a comprehensive defense of the Bible—again, I don’t think it’s the point.
What it does really, really well is make basic apologetics accessible and easy to read—even enjoyable because of the narrative! In my experience, that is very rare in apologetics writing. I think this series is an absolute gem.
What it does really, really well is make basic apologetics accessible and easy to read—even enjoyable because of the narrative! In my experience, that is very rare in apologetics writing. I think this series is an absolute gem.
January 26, 2020
I liked this book well enough.
I feel like the main character Nick(?) was pretty annoying, and the writing style wasn't my favorite, but the content was pretty good. There were a couple of times when I felt like there may have been fallacies, but I don't think it is fair for me to say that these are definite.
Ultimately, this book made me realize that I would like to read something more in depth on the topic of biblical accuracy, and so I would say that it was a good introductory read.
I feel like the main character Nick(?) was pretty annoying, and the writing style wasn't my favorite, but the content was pretty good. There were a couple of times when I felt like there may have been fallacies, but I don't think it is fair for me to say that these are definite.
Ultimately, this book made me realize that I would like to read something more in depth on the topic of biblical accuracy, and so I would say that it was a good introductory read.
June 7, 2024
I've been learned English and wanted a ligthly christian book to read. This was perfect, a story about a young men who has doubts about his faith and how, with help of his friends, he can overcome those doubts, knowing all the evidences that there are about the confiability of the Scriptures.
November 16, 2017
Short, succinct and engaging.
March 6, 2019
review necessary...
November 24, 2020
Kind of cheesy at points, but it has great content.
February 4, 2021
- The narrative of the book was a little weak, but I thoroughly enjoyed the apologetics dimension.
October 2, 2021
Libro sencillo para iniciar el camino hacia la apologetica
July 10, 2022
I really enjoyed this book and it had a lot of interesting information. I was shocked by how much I learned from such a tiny book! Highly recommend.
December 11, 2024
As a fictional novel, 1 star. But as a faith-building tool written into a narrative so it's a bit easier to digest? 5 stars. This information is so good and so concisely put together. I'm grateful!
March 31, 2019
"We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly;..." - Articles of Faith, verse 8a
"Here are the facts that scholars all across the country agree upon. We don't even have the original words that these fundamentalist Christians tell us God inerrantly inspired. That's right. All we have are the words copied by scribes - sometimes correctly, but certainly not always. We have error-ridden copies that are centuries removed from the originals and different from them in thousands of ways" - Is the Bible True....Really [emphasis original in source]
I had bought Is the Bible True....Really by Josh McDowell and Dave Sterrett as a triple pack special from amazon a week ago The book I really wanted to read was The Bible Handbook of Difficult Verses by Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell. This book, however, caught my eye and I finished that first night.
The book through narrative form lays out the skepticism in the bible and some of their arguments, although not all of them. Having said that it does fill a beginning niche for the young adult and hopefully prepared them for some of the questions they may face. The story begins with a typical young adult - Nick - who had been raised a christian all his life and was starting college. It isn't clear whether or not Nick had a personal relationship with Jesus or not, but as a professed Christian his world is shaken fairly hard. Honestly, I can relate as I had a faith crisis of sorts a few months back - which I'll go into in a later blog post - and it's easy, I think, to change how you think and act while going through it. Getting back to the book, the story continues with Nick finding out about the YouTube sensation Zeitgeist which I've watched. He then reads about Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. All of this causes understandable doubt and no one in his support group has any answers and the ones they do seem shallow and intellectually unsatisfactorily. So as Nick continues he makes choices that he wouldn't probably have made ie drinking, premarital sex, etc. At this point Nick is a professed agnostic when professor Jamal enters the scene. Can Jamal help Nick with his faith?
The first thing I enjoyed about this book was that it mentioned several of the common points of criticism. The for instance, the fact that there are no original manuscripts, called autographs, of the bible - not one. Having said that there is good reason to believe the New Testament is accurately written as we have it today with some exceptions - for example, Mark 16:8-20 is considered to be later revision added in by a scribe; the original text is lost. The second thing I enjoyed about it was the usage of sources. So many books are presented as persuasive, but provide no sources for the reader to read or have sources that only scholars have access to. My main two criticisms would be that I felt like the book seemed to go out of its way to ensure that Nick/the reader knew what degrees and recognitions, although some were just vaguely said to hold many degrees, the people who believe in the evidence for the Bible held and how they were authoritative in their field of study. Not sure if it's and example of the fallacy of authority (This prestigious person believes in it, so you should too) or not, but it did seem to crop up a few times. My final criticism is the typical of modern christian literature usage of the "sinner's prayer" for salvation. I personally don't believe that you can "pray Jesus into your heart" and be saved through this singular action. Having said that, it was enjoyable and a fast read.
"Here are the facts that scholars all across the country agree upon. We don't even have the original words that these fundamentalist Christians tell us God inerrantly inspired. That's right. All we have are the words copied by scribes - sometimes correctly, but certainly not always. We have error-ridden copies that are centuries removed from the originals and different from them in thousands of ways" - Is the Bible True....Really [emphasis original in source]
I had bought Is the Bible True....Really by Josh McDowell and Dave Sterrett as a triple pack special from amazon a week ago The book I really wanted to read was The Bible Handbook of Difficult Verses by Josh McDowell and Sean McDowell. This book, however, caught my eye and I finished that first night.
The book through narrative form lays out the skepticism in the bible and some of their arguments, although not all of them. Having said that it does fill a beginning niche for the young adult and hopefully prepared them for some of the questions they may face. The story begins with a typical young adult - Nick - who had been raised a christian all his life and was starting college. It isn't clear whether or not Nick had a personal relationship with Jesus or not, but as a professed Christian his world is shaken fairly hard. Honestly, I can relate as I had a faith crisis of sorts a few months back - which I'll go into in a later blog post - and it's easy, I think, to change how you think and act while going through it. Getting back to the book, the story continues with Nick finding out about the YouTube sensation Zeitgeist which I've watched. He then reads about Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. All of this causes understandable doubt and no one in his support group has any answers and the ones they do seem shallow and intellectually unsatisfactorily. So as Nick continues he makes choices that he wouldn't probably have made ie drinking, premarital sex, etc. At this point Nick is a professed agnostic when professor Jamal enters the scene. Can Jamal help Nick with his faith?
The first thing I enjoyed about this book was that it mentioned several of the common points of criticism. The for instance, the fact that there are no original manuscripts, called autographs, of the bible - not one. Having said that there is good reason to believe the New Testament is accurately written as we have it today with some exceptions - for example, Mark 16:8-20 is considered to be later revision added in by a scribe; the original text is lost. The second thing I enjoyed about it was the usage of sources. So many books are presented as persuasive, but provide no sources for the reader to read or have sources that only scholars have access to. My main two criticisms would be that I felt like the book seemed to go out of its way to ensure that Nick/the reader knew what degrees and recognitions, although some were just vaguely said to hold many degrees, the people who believe in the evidence for the Bible held and how they were authoritative in their field of study. Not sure if it's and example of the fallacy of authority (This prestigious person believes in it, so you should too) or not, but it did seem to crop up a few times. My final criticism is the typical of modern christian literature usage of the "sinner's prayer" for salvation. I personally don't believe that you can "pray Jesus into your heart" and be saved through this singular action. Having said that, it was enjoyable and a fast read.
June 21, 2011
Josh McDowell and Dave Strerrett hit the ball out of the park in their book, “Is the Bible True… Really?” The book is part of their Coffee House Chronicles which is a series that seeks to foster a dialogue on skepticism, evidence, and truth. I loved the fact that this book deals with the subject matter by way of introducing us to the typical struggles of a college student (Nick) with his faith. This made it EASY to read!
The book was relatively short (You can get through it in a single evening) and yet it dealt with some pretty important questions:
Did Christianity borrow from pagan mythology?
When was the Bible “put together”?
When was the New Testament Written?
Is the Bible Inerrant?
Did the Disciples make it up?
What about the “mistakes” in the Bible?
How is the Bible different from other truth claims (Joseph Smith, Muhammad, etc.)?
What about the other Gospels (the Gnostic Gospels)?
The chapter I got the most out of was chapter 14 that dealt with all the so called, “Mistakes,” in the Bible. Here are some of the notes I gleaned from the chapter:
Critics love to point out that there are anywhere from 300,000 to 400,000 variants among the New Testament manuscripts. A textual variant is any instance where the New Testament manuscripts have alternate wordings. What the critics don’t point out is that the large number of variants is a direct result of the extremely large number of New Testament manuscripts available. By far, the most significant category of variants is spelling differences (75% or between 225,000 and 300,000 of all the variants!) Another large category of variants consist of synonyms used across manuscripts. Such differences hardly call the meaning of the text into question. When all variations are honestly and objectively considered, only about one percent involves the meaning of the text, but not significantly.
What was eye opening to me was that even the process of comparing the discrepancies only served to reinforce the inerrancy of Scripture. For example suppose we have four different manuscripts that have four different errors in the same verse (Philippians 4:13 – I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.)
Here are the hypothetical copies of variant texts:
I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
McDowell/ Strerrett point out that there is no question as to what the original text said. By comparing and crosschecking, the original New Testament can be reconstructed with GREAT accuracy.
The book really served to strength my faith and appreciation for God’s Word. Thank you McDowell/ Strerrett for putting together such a book. I look forward to reading the other books in your series.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
The book was relatively short (You can get through it in a single evening) and yet it dealt with some pretty important questions:
Did Christianity borrow from pagan mythology?
When was the Bible “put together”?
When was the New Testament Written?
Is the Bible Inerrant?
Did the Disciples make it up?
What about the “mistakes” in the Bible?
How is the Bible different from other truth claims (Joseph Smith, Muhammad, etc.)?
What about the other Gospels (the Gnostic Gospels)?
The chapter I got the most out of was chapter 14 that dealt with all the so called, “Mistakes,” in the Bible. Here are some of the notes I gleaned from the chapter:
Critics love to point out that there are anywhere from 300,000 to 400,000 variants among the New Testament manuscripts. A textual variant is any instance where the New Testament manuscripts have alternate wordings. What the critics don’t point out is that the large number of variants is a direct result of the extremely large number of New Testament manuscripts available. By far, the most significant category of variants is spelling differences (75% or between 225,000 and 300,000 of all the variants!) Another large category of variants consist of synonyms used across manuscripts. Such differences hardly call the meaning of the text into question. When all variations are honestly and objectively considered, only about one percent involves the meaning of the text, but not significantly.
What was eye opening to me was that even the process of comparing the discrepancies only served to reinforce the inerrancy of Scripture. For example suppose we have four different manuscripts that have four different errors in the same verse (Philippians 4:13 – I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.)
Here are the hypothetical copies of variant texts:
I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength.
McDowell/ Strerrett point out that there is no question as to what the original text said. By comparing and crosschecking, the original New Testament can be reconstructed with GREAT accuracy.
The book really served to strength my faith and appreciation for God’s Word. Thank you McDowell/ Strerrett for putting together such a book. I look forward to reading the other books in your series.
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
September 3, 2014
One of the three books in the "Coffee House Chronicles" series.
Presented as a narrative dialogue between a group of college students and a couple of disagreeing professors, the two authors address the issue of the Bible' historical reliability from a Christian perspective.
How do we know that the Bible we have now is the Bible that was originally written so many centuries ago?
How do you reconcile the fact that there are so many variances in the wording between documents of the biblical books?
Didn't Christianity borrow its teachings from similar pagan myths?
An excellent short resource.
Presented as a narrative dialogue between a group of college students and a couple of disagreeing professors, the two authors address the issue of the Bible' historical reliability from a Christian perspective.
How do we know that the Bible we have now is the Bible that was originally written so many centuries ago?
How do you reconcile the fact that there are so many variances in the wording between documents of the biblical books?
Didn't Christianity borrow its teachings from similar pagan myths?
An excellent short resource.
August 20, 2013
Nice little intro to Textual Criticism. Since I'm new to the topic (and Christianity in general) I actually got a lot out of the book although the target is definitely late teens/ early twenties. A couple of Gospel messages thrown in so can be a good book for an unbeliever who is convinced of the Zeitgeist arguments that permeate the Internet these days. I think this would be a great book for a youth group discussion since many young people are unprepared for the textual criticism arguments they are going to get when going to a secular High School or College.
September 18, 2016
This is an easy read, designed to read like a short story, but is also filled with facts regarding the truth of the Bible. This book would be perfect for people who are intimidated by the topic of apologetics and just don't know where to start. While not in huge depth it touches on some good issues on why we can trust the scriptures. From manuscript evidence , how the Bible was formed, what about the "other gospels" etc. I would hope it will lead to more in depth reading for Christians and seekers alike.
January 27, 2014
I think this book possibly changed my life and spiritual journey! I have so much more confidence and understanding in faith and all! i'm starting to read the other 2 books of the Coffee House Chronicles and i'm so excited! I'm already telling all my friends to read this!! And it was SOOOO cool how the facts were made into a relate able story so it was easy to want to read. EXACTLY what I've been looking for! LOVE LOVE LOVE
August 23, 2012
Good intro for those searching for the answers about the validity of the Bible. It does not go extremely in depth, but the use of a fictional diolouge that happens over a few months makes what would otherwise be a dry topic (to me) easier to make it through. Information given in the book that is based on research is well documented with sources listed in the back, so it is a good place to start and get more info on what else to read.
August 18, 2013
I came across this book a couple of days ago and thought I would check it out. It is a short and easy read that offers simplistic explanations explaining the authority of the scriptures. The book itself is well written and can be read fairly quickly. Personally, it was not one of my favorites but beneficial insights are provided and the reader can glean nuggets of knowledge that give fundamental truths for the inerrancy of the scriptures.
September 14, 2013
Josh McDowell is the expert at describing life's most important spiritual truths in plain, easy to understand English. This book will not disappoint you in any way. In fact, buy several to give away, but don't forget to keep one for yourself to reread periodically. Keep it on your bookshelf right beside that other McDowell classic, "More Than a Carpenter." Buy some more of those too and give them away along with "Is the Bible True." Everyone won't thank you, but a few will be changed eternally.
April 11, 2011
This is the first of three books called the Coffee House Chronicles. This is the story of several religion students at a college start questioning the questions of the faith and the discussions they have, often at the Coffee House. There are some believers and some atheists so both side of the discussion is discussed and proven or dis-proven.
July 18, 2011
I would save time and just read more than a carpenter. His points are good, but they are hidden among cheesy dialogue and stereotyped characters (not to say these types of people don't exist, just to say it feels like it was written in a high school creative writing class). I liked it I guess, but I'm not sure what audience it was intended for.
August 14, 2013
A short read, in a story format, but very thorough in documenting sources for its points. The information was useful to learn but the format is really only appealing to someone who grew up in a church then left in high school or college - not as much use for someone with a more extensive history outside the church or no church experience at all.
October 9, 2013
I laughed a lot - and this was not intended to be a humorous book. (Paraphrased example: Silly questioning student, you need scholarly sources to back up that assertion! Here, check out Lee Strobel, a non-academic sharing my viewpoint.) This isn't a book for critcal thinkers. It seems best suited for readers who want their beliefs validated without having to challenge themselves too much.
June 29, 2014
This was a great dialogue. I was reading it to get a better understanding myself so I can explain to others why I believe the Bible is true. The examples given of why other historical documents are decided to be true, and the actual documents of the Bible far surpass any other historical documents. I really enjoyed this quick read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 39 reviews