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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Lee Strobel
Read between
April 26 - June 3, 2019
yes, even fingerprint evidence (that sounds intriguing, doesn’t it?).
Sounds like a red flag to me (edit: Coming back to this after having read the book, this is such a misleading string to dangle, since in no way are actual fingerprints involved. The fingerprints are metaphorical.)
“the gospel is obviously based on eyewitness material, as are the other three gospels.”
Thesis of this section
“If we can have confidence that the gospels were written by the disciples Matthew and John, by Mark, the companion of the disciple Peter, and by Luke, the historian, companion of Paul, and sort of a first-century journalist, we can be assured that the events they record are based on either direct or indirect eyewitness testimony.”
Strobel, you gave in a little too easily here. Not much evidence listed here -- doesn't sound skeptical.
“Here’s a modern parallel, from the experience of the Jewish community, that might clarify what I mean. “Some people, usually for anti-Semitic purposes, deny or downplay the horrors of the Holocaust. But it has been the Jewish scholars who’ve created museums, written books, preserved artifacts, and documented eyewitness testimony concerning the Holocaust. “Now, they have a very ideological purpose—namely, to ensure that such an atrocity never occurs again—but they have also been the most faithful and objective in their reporting of historical truth.
This analogy doesn't hold up for me. Comparing a handful of books and letters to the mountains of evidence supporting the holocaust seems unjustified, and even comparing these two events feels cheap. Also, I’m pretty sure this book came out pre-Godwin’s Law, but I still think it applies.
“Now you’re not comparing thirty to sixty years with the five hundred years that’s generally acceptable for other data—you’re talking about two!”
Continuing to use Alexander as a reference is a wierd sticking-point
“We simply do not have any reasonable evidence to suggest they were anything but people of great integrity,”
I raise my eyebrow at this claim. Seems hard to make this judgement from such limited data.
Webster’s dictionary defines corroborate this way: “To make more certain; confirm: He corroborated my account of the accident.”1 Corroborative evidence supports other testimony; it affirms or backs up the essential elements of an eyewitness account.
Wow, are we back in middle school? Not only is this condescending, it's bad writing.
Josephus sounded like a colorful character; I wanted more details about him so I could better understand his motivations and prejudices. “Paint me a portrait of him,” I said.
Redundant writing. Cut the first sentence.
crucifixion was the most abhorrent fate that anyone could undergo, and the fact that there was a movement based on a crucified man has to be explained. “How can you explain the spread of a religion based on the worship of a man who had suffered the most ignominious death possible? Of course, the Christian answer is that he was resurrected.
“Archaeology has not produced anything that is unequivocally a contradiction to the Bible,”
Thesis for this section. Also, highly dubious that NOTHING in the Bible is contradicted by archaeology.
“On the contrary, as we’ve seen, there have been many opinions of skeptical scholars that have become codified into ‘fact’ over the years but that archaeology has shown to be wrong.”
This statement is troubling considering our current struggles with facts. The way this is phrased is so broad, and makes it sound like getting proven wrong about assumptions is not he entire strength of the scientific process.
The burden of proof ought to be on those who dispute its existence.”
“I can see why you’d say that,” McRay replied, “since today an event like that would probably be splashed all over CNN and the rest of the news media.” I agreed. In fact, in 1997 and 1998 there was a steady stream of news accounts about Muslim extremists repeatedly staging commando raids and slaying virtually entire villages, including women and children, in Algeria.
Not sure if this one-off mention of islamic extremists should be filed under islamophobia, but I now want to keep an eye out for this going forward.
Archaeology’s repeated affirmation of the New Testament’s accuracy provides important corroboration for its reliability. This is in stark contrast with how archaeology has proved to be devastating for Mormonism.
Comparing to Mormonism doesn't make Christianity *more* true
Now that I had heard powerfully convincing and well-reasoned evidence from the scholars I questioned for this book, I needed to turn my attention to the decidedly contrary opinions of a small group of academics who have been the subject of a whirlwind of news coverage.
Sooooooo much bias oozing from this sentence that I need a napkin to dry the page
He’s too busy thinking, debating, questioning, wondering, dreaming, contemplating, inventing—and tackling one project after another.
My brain slipped into Hamilton mode for a second
“I happened to be in the process of talking about Christianity with a guy whom I was building a relationship with.
Phrasing
They operate under the assumption that everything in history has happened according to their own experiences, and since they’ve never seen the supernatural, they assume miracles have never occurred in history. “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!”
“I think there should be a certain amount of humility in the historical investigation to say, ‘You know what? It is just possible that Jesus Christ did rise from the dead. It’s just possible that his disciples actually saw what the gospels say they saw.’ And if there’s no other way of accounting adequately for the evidence, let’s investigate that possibility.’ “That, I think, is the only way to give the evidence a fair hearing.”
We can't give every religion/historical claim the benefit of the doubt. That is not humility, it is willing gullibility.
“So these liberals say historical research can’t possibly discover the Jesus of faith, because the Jesus of faith is not rooted in history.
Damn liberals need to get off my Bible!
Jesus is not a symbol of anything unless he’s rooted in history.
Symbols don't need to have been factual to have historical rooting. Think of all the important symbolism that western culture has inherited from Greco-Roman mythology.
“Take away miracles and you take away the Resurrection, and then you’ve got nothing to proclaim. Paul said that if Jesus wasn’t raised from the dead, our faith is futile, it’s useless, it’s empty.” Boyd stopped for a moment. His voice dropped a notch, from preaching mode to an intense expression of personal conviction. “I don’t want to base my life on a symbol,” he said resolutely. “I want reality, and the Christian faith has always been rooted in reality. What’s not rooted in reality is the faith of liberal scholars. They’re the ones who are following a pipe dream, but Christianity is not a
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“I don’t buy it. It’s far more reasonable to put my trust in the gospels—which pass the tests of historical scrutiny with flying colors—than to put my hope in what the Jesus Seminar is saying.”
But the falacy in this argument is that there are only two possible interpretations of Jesus and the gospel: yours and the Jesus Seminar's.
This attitude emerged even further when he took me on a tour of a high-tech studio where he had been mixing images of Jesus with songs whose lyrics illuminate the compassion, the sacrifice, the humanity, and the majesty of his life and ministry.
He makes crappy youtube videos? (yeah, I know it's the 90s, so no youtube, but this isn't a credential)
For a scholar who writes heavily footnoted, cautiously nuanced, and academically precise prose on the technical issues involving Jesus, this artistic wedding of video and music is a poetic outlet for exploring the side of Jesus that only the creative arts can come close to capturing.
While that may sound like a detail without a difference, Witherington said it’s quite significant.
This sentence is useless
In dealing with history, he added, all sorts of things are possible, but not all possible things are equally probable.
A really good point
The most human of all human acts—to die.
It's also the most alive act an alive thing can do. Like, this sentence can be swapped out for any creature and still be true.
flinty-eyed
Weird descriptor
“Not only did Jesus forgive sin,” I observed, “but he asserted that he himself was without sin. And certainly sinlessness is an attribute of deity.”
For a skeptic, Strobel really served that one on a silver platter
After having started by lobbing softballs at Carson, I got ready to throw some curves.
Oh, *now* you’re ready to throw curves. Don’t wear yourself out.
“Having said that, hell is not a place where people are consigned because they were pretty good blokes but just didn’t believe the right stuff. They’re consigned there, first and foremost, because they defy their Maker and want to be at the center of the universe. Hell is not filled with people who have already repented, only God isn’t gentle enough or good enough to let them out. It’s filled with people who, for all eternity, still want to be at the center of the universe and who persist in their God-defying rebellion.
He came to free men and women from their sins. And here’s my point: what his message does is transform people so they begin to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love their neighbor as themselves. Naturally, that has an impact on the idea of slavery.
Wow, that really falls flat considering the last 2000 years. Not that Christian ideals didn’t have some impact, but when a religion is dominant for more than a millennia, it doesn’t get to claim exclusive causality for a change in mindset that has happened fairly recently.
“I used to say, ‘If there’s a God, I don’t care if I find him on Mount Sinai or Mount Fuji. I’ll take him either way.’
“If the prophecies were so obvious to you and pointed so unquestionably toward Jesus, why don’t more Jews accept him as their Messiah?” It was a question Lapides has asked himself a lot during the three decades since he was challenged by a Christian to investigate the Jewish Scriptures. “In my case, I took the time to read them,” he replied. “Oddly enough, even though the Jewish people are known for having high intellects, in this area there’s a lot of ignorance.
Woof
“This creed is incredibly early and therefore trustworthy material,” Craig said.
the burial story in Mark is so extremely early that it’s simply not possible for it to have been subject to legendary corruption.”
For a philosopher, if something is inconsistent, the law of contradiction says, ‘This cannot be true, throw it out!’ However, the historian looks at these narratives and says, ‘I see some inconsistencies, but I notice something about them: they’re all in the secondary details.’
Wait, earlier in this book, the secondary details were used as evidence for the gospels' accuracy. Now, when they conflict, we chalk it up to same difference
Craig’s explanation, however, left yet another question lingering: why were the women going to anoint the body of Jesus if they already knew that his tomb was securely sealed? “Do their actions really make sense?” I asked. Craig thought for a moment before he answered—this time not in his debater’s voice but in a more tender tone. “Lee, I strongly feel that scholars who have not known the love and devotion that these women felt for Jesus have no right to pronounce cool judgments upon the feasibility of what they wanted to do.
WHAT?! This is the most laughable answer in the whole book, and I am frankly astonished Strobel left it in.
the prophecy in which David says Christ would be raised up—his flesh wouldn’t suffer decay. It’s clearly implicit that the tomb was left empty.”
Craig rose to the challenge. One by one he spelled out his arguments concisely and powerfully.
Another useless sentence. Get an editor.
With that Craig added this clincher: “As long as the existence of God is even possible, it’s possible that he acted in history by raising Jesus from the dead.”
“But,” I protested, “it’s not really a firsthand account. Paul is providing the list second- or thirdhand. Doesn’t that diminish its value as evidence?” Not to Habermas. “Keep in mind that Paul personally affirms that Jesus appeared to him as well, so this provides firsthand testimony. And Paul didn’t just pick up this list from strangers on the street. The leading view is that he got it directly from the eyewitnesses Peter and James themselves, and he took great pains to confirm its accuracy.”
The earliest Christians didn’t just endorse Jesus’ teachings; they were convinced they had seen him alive after his crucifixion. That’s what changed their lives and started the church. Certainly, since this was their centermost conviction, they would have made absolutely sure that it was true.”
even if I accept your thesis as true, it only proves that legends grew up over time—it can’t explain away the original belief that Jesus was risen from the dead.
“Yes,” I agreed, “they were willing to die for their beliefs. But,” I added, “so have Muslims and Mormons and followers of Jim Jones and David Koresh. This may show that they were fanatical, but let’s face it: it doesn’t prove that what they believed is true.”
Here, at the 77% mark, Strobel lobs a good objection.
These Christians worship on Sunday—why? Because that’s when Jesus rose from the dead.
I don't think that's the reason, but I’m no historian. I always thought it came out of the way the work week was structured. (A quick google revealed that there’s some debate on this matter.)
Nobody knowingly and willingly dies for a lie.
Wrong
Frankly, I had wanted to believe that the deification of Jesus was the result of legendary development in which well-meaning but misguided people slowly turned a wise sage into the mythological Son of God. That seemed safe and reassuring; after all, a roving apocalyptic preacher from the first century could make no demands on me. But while I went into my investigation thinking that this legendary explanation was intuitively obvious, I emerged convinced it was totally without basis. What clinched it for me was the famous study by A. N. Sherwin-White, the great classical historian from Oxford
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The whole book hinges on this argument being convincing, and it is not.
I challenged them with the current theories of atheists and liberal professors.
Hardly
