The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus

by Lee Strobel

Papias, who in about A.D. 125 specifically affirmed that Mark had carefully and accurately recorded Peter’s eyewitness observations. In fact, he said Mark ‘made no mistake’ and did not include ‘any false statement.’

“The only purpose for which they thought history was worth recording was because there were some lessons to be learned from the characters described. Therefore the biographer wanted to dwell at length on those portions of the person’s life that were exemplary, that were illustrative,

“Well, you have to keep in mind that Q was a collection of sayings, and therefore it didn’t have the narrative material that would have given us a more fully orbed picture of Jesus,”

if you’re going to be convinced enough to believe, the theology has to flow from accurate history.

they didn’t feel free to leave out stuff when it would have been convenient and helpful to do so, is it really plausible to believe that they outright added and fabricated material with no historical basis?”

“We have a picture of what was initially a very vulnerable and fragile movement that was being subjected to persecution. If critics could have attacked it on the basis that it was full of falsehoods or distortions, they would have.

there was the criterion of conformity to what was called the rule of faith. That is, was the document congruent with the basic Christian tradition that the church recognized as normative? And third, there was the criterion of whether a document had had continuous acceptance and usage by the church at large.”

the canon was not the result of a series of contests involving church politics. The canon is rather the separation that came about because of the intuitive insight of Christian believers.

“Archaeology has made some important contributions,” he began, speaking in a drawl he picked up as a child in southeastern Oklahoma, “but it certainly can’t prove whether the New Testament is the Word of God. If

Luke said the census that brought Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem was conducted when Quirinius was governing Syria and during the reign of Herod the Great. “That poses a significant problem,” I pointed out, “because Herod died in 4 B.C., and Quirinius didn’t begin ruling Syria until A.D. 6, conducting the census soon after that. There’s a big gap there; how can you deal with such a major discrepancy in the dates?”

First, Bethlehem was probably no bigger than Nazareth, so how many babies of that age would there be in a village of five hundred or six hundred people? Not thousands, not hundreds, although certainly a few. “Second, Herod the Great was a bloodthirsty king: he killed members of his own family; he executed lots of people who he thought might challenge him. So the fact that he killed some babies in Bethlehem is not going to captivate the attention of people in the Roman world.

nothing which demonstrates the Book of Mormon is anything other than myth or invention has ever been found.”17 However, the story is totally different for the New Testament.

“Basically, they’ve discovered what they set out to find.

“Here’s what they do: they rule out the possibility of the supernatural from the beginning, and then they say, ‘Now bring on the evidence about Jesus.’ No wonder they get the results they do!”

most of ancient history is based on single sources. Generally, if a source is considered reliable—and I would argue that there are plenty of reasons to believe that the gospels are reliable—it should be considered credible, even if it can’t be confirmed by other sources.

to get to a higher level in the Mithra cult, followers had to stand under a bull while it was slain, so they could be bathed in its blood and guts. Then they’d join the others in eating the bull. “Now, to suggest that Jews would find anything attractive about this and want to model baptism and communion after this barbaric practice is extremely implausible, which is why most scholars don’t go for it.”

“that doesn’t explain all of Jesus’ healings. Often a psychosomatic healing takes time; Jesus’ healings were spontaneous. Many times people who are healed psychologically have their symptoms return a few days later, but we don’t see any evidence of this. And Jesus healed conditions like lifelong blindness and leprosy, for which a psychosomatic explanation isn’t very likely.

“Whereas twenty-five years ago the suggestion of demonic activity would have been immediately dismissed, many psychologists are beginning to recognize that maybe there are more things in heaven and earth than our philosophies can account for.”

Omnipotence? “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me,” Jesus said in Matthew 28:18.

“The odds are so astronomical that they rule that out. Someone did the math and figured out that the probability of just eight prophecies being fulfilled is one chance in one hundred million billion.

“When the gospels were being circulated, there were people living who had been around when all these things happened. Someone would have said to Matthew, ‘You know it didn’t happen that way. We’re trying to communicate a life of righteousness and truth, so don’t taint it with a lie.’ ”

why would Matthew have fabricated fulfilled prophecies and then willingly allowed himself to be put to death for following someone who he secretly knew was really not the Messiah?

So the nails went through the wrists, although this was considered part of the hand in the language of the day.

“I’ll grant you that these soldiers didn’t go to medical school. But remember that they were experts in killing people—that was their job, and they did it very well. They knew without a doubt when a person was dead, and really it’s not so terribly difficult to figure out.

After suffering that horrible abuse, with all the catastrophic blood loss and trauma, he would have looked so pitiful that the disciples would never have hailed him as a victorious conqueror of death; they would have felt sorry for him and tried to nurse him back to health. “So it’s preposterous to think that if he had appeared to them in that awful state, his followers would have been prompted to start a worldwide movement based on the hope that someday they too would have a resurrection body like his.

there were hardened skeptics who didn’t believe in Jesus before his crucifixion—and were to some degree dead-set against Christianity—who turned around and adopted the Christian faith after Jesus’ death. There’s no good reason for this apart from them having experienced the resurrected Christ.”

five weeks after he’s crucified, over ten thousand Jews are following him and claiming that he is the initiator of a new religion.

“if the evidence points strongly in this direction, it’s only rational and logical to follow it into the experiential realm.” He nodded in approval. “That’s precisely right,” he said. “It’s the final confirmation of the evidence. In fact, I’ll say this: the evidence screams out for the experiential test.”