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

by Lee Strobel

evidence can be aligned to point in more than one direction.

One reason the evidence originally looked so convincing to me was because it fit my preconceptions at the time.

Looking through those lenses, all the original evidence seemed to fall neatly into place.

But when I changed those lenses—trading my biases for an attempt at objectivity—I saw the case in a whole new light. Finally I allowed the evidence to lead me to the truth, regardless of whether it fit my original presuppositions. That was more than twenty years ago. My biggest lessons were yet to come.

For much of my life I was a skeptic. In fact, I considered myself an atheist.

As far as I was concerned, the case was closed. There was enough proof for me to rest easy with the conclusion that the divinity of Jesus was nothing more than the fanciful invention of superstitious people. Or so I thought.

my wife.

Leslie stunned me in the autumn of 1979 by announcing that she had become a Christian.

I was pleasantly surprised—even fascinated—by the fundamental changes in her character, her integrity, and her personal confidence. Eventually I wanted to get to the bottom of what was prompting these subtle but significant shifts in my wife’s attitudes, so I launched an all-out investigation into the facts surrounding the case for Christianity.

Setting aside my self-interest and prejudices as best I could, I read books, interviewed experts, asked questions, analyzed history, explored archaeology, studied ancient literature, and for the first time in my life picked apart the Bible verse by verse.

And over time the evidence of the world—of history, of science, of philosophy, of psychology—began to point toward the unthinkable.

Maybe you too have been basing your spiritual outlook on the evidence you’ve observed around you or gleaned long ago from books, college professors, family members, or friends. But is your conclusion really the best possible explanation for the evidence? If you were to dig deeper—to confront your preconceptions and systematically seek out proof—what would you find?

In a trial, jurors are asked to weigh the evidence and come to the best possible conclusion. In other words,

which scenario fits the facts most snugly?

If Jesus is to be believed—and I realize that may be a big if for you at this point—then nothing is more important than how you respond to him. But who was he really? Who did he claim to be? And is there any credible evidence to back up his assertions?

Eyewitness testimony is powerful.

eyewitness testimony is

crucial in investigating historical matters—even the issue of whether Jesus Christ is the unique Son of God.

Dr. Craig Blomberg, author of

The Historical Reliability of the Gospels.

Craig Blomberg is widely considered to be one of the country’s foremost authorities on the biographies of Jesus, which are called the four gospels.

Jesus and the Gospels; Interpreting the Parables; How Wide the Divide?;

Introduction to Biblical Interpretation.

Reasonable Faith

Jesus unde...

Blomberg speaks with the precision of a mathematician (yes, he taught mathematics too, earlier in his career), carefully measuring each word out of an apparent reluctance to tread even one nuance beyond where the evidence warrants. Exactly what I was looking for.

“is it really possible to be an intelligent, critically thinking person and still believe that the four gospels were written by the people whose names have been attached to them?”

“The answer is yes,” he said with conviction.

would anyone have had a motivation to lie by claiming these people wrote these gospels, when they really didn’t?”

“Probably not. Remember, these were unlikely characters,”

“Mark and Luke weren’t even among the twelve disciples. Matthew was, but as a former hated tax collector, he would have been the most infamous character ...

there would not have been any reason to attribute authorship to these three less respected people if it weren’t true.”

“What about John?” I asked. “He was extremely prominent; in fact, he wasn’t just one of the twelve disciples but one of Jesus’ inner three, along with James and Peter.”

interestingly, John is the only gospel about which there is some question about authorship.”

a Christian writer named Papias, dated about A.D. 125, refers to John the apostle and John the elder, and it’s not clear from the context whether he’s talking about one person from two perspectives or two different people.

granted that exception, the rest of the early testimony is unanimous that it was John the apostle—the son of Zebedee—who wrote the gospel.”

if you read the gospel closely, you can see some indication that its concluding verses may have been finalized by an editor.

The issue of who wrote the gospels is tremendously important, and I wanted specific details—names, dates, quotations.

Irenaeus, writing about A.D. 180, confirmed the traditional authorship.

how people wrote biographies in the ancient world.

They did not have the sense, as we do today, that it was important to give equal proportion to all periods of an individual’s life or that it was necessary to tell the story in strictly chronological order or even to quote people verbatim, as long as the essence of what they said was preserved. Ancient Greek and Hebrew didn’t even have a symbol for quotation marks.

“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 illustrativ...

scholars often refer to what they call Q, which stands for the German word Quelle, or “source.”

it has traditionally been assumed that Matthew and Luke drew upon Mark’s earlier gospel in writing their own.

scholars have said that Matthew and Luke also incorporated some material from this mysterious Q, material that is absent from Mark.

“What exactly is Q?” I aske...

“It’s nothing more than a hypothesis,” he replied, again leaning back comfortably in his chair. “With few exceptions, it’s just sayings or teachings of Jesus, which once may...

“If you isolate just the material from Q, what kind of picture of Jesus do you get?”

“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,” he replied,

“Would he be seen as a miracle worker?”