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

by Lee Strobel

“you have to remember that you wouldn’t get many miracle stories per se, because they’re normally found in the narrative, and Q is primarily a list of sayings.”

the first three gospels—called the synoptics, which means “to view at the same time,” because of their similar outline and interrelationship4

Anyone who reads all four gospels will immediately recognize that there are obvious differences between the synoptics and the gospel of John, and I wanted to know whether this means there are irreconcilable contradictions between them.

John is more different than similar to the synoptics,”

“Only a handful of the major stories that appear in the other three gospels reappear in John, although that changes noticeably when one comes to Jesus’ last week. From that point forward the parallels are much closer.

there seems to be a higher Christology—that is, more direct and more blatant claims that Jesus is one with the Father; God himself; the Way, the Truth, and the Life; the Resurrection and the Life.”

the most significant issue of all concerning the differences between the synoptics and John’s gospel.

“John makes very explicit claims of Jesus being God, which some attribute to the fact that he wrote later than the others and began embellishing things,” I said. “Can you find this theme of deity in the synoptics?”

“Yes, I can,” he said. “It’s more implicit but yo...

in Matthew 14:22–33 and Mark 6:45–52. Most English translations hide the Greek by quoting Jesus as saying, ‘Fear not, it is I.’ Actually, the Greek literally says, ‘Fear not, I am.’ Those last two words are identical to what Jesus said in John 8:58, when he took upon himself the divine name ‘I AM,’ which is the way God revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush in Exodus 3:14. So Jesus is revealing himself as the one who has the same divine power over nature as Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament.”

See "More than A Carpenter" - Search for "I AM"

“contrary to popular belief, ‘Son of Man’ does not primarily refer to Jesus’ humanity. Instead it’s a direct allusion to Daniel 7:13–14.”

"“Son of Man” is not a lowly title referring to his humanity but a high claim to be the majestic figure from heaven who is given glory, honor, and authority over all people and an eternal kingdom." - From Josh McDowell's "More than a Carpenter"

one like a son of man,

“This is someone who approaches God himself in his heavenly throne room and is given universal authority and dominion. That makes ‘Son of Man’ a title of great exaltation, not of mere humanity.”

William Lane Craig,

made a similar observation.

“Son of Man” is often thought to indicate the humanity of Jesus, just as the reflex expression “Son of God” indicates his divinity. In fact, just the opposite is true. The Son of Man was a divine figure in the Old Testament book of Daniel who would come at the end of the world to judge mankind and rule forever. Thus, the claim to be the Son of Man would be in effect a claim to divinity.6

In authoring the last gospel, John did have the advantage of being able to mull over theological issues for a longer period of time. So I asked Blomberg, “Doesn’t the fact that John was writing with more of a theological bent mean that his historical material may have been tainted and therefore less reliable?”

don’t those theological motivations cast doubt on their ability and willingness to accurately report what happened?” I asked. “Isn’t it likely that their theological agenda would prompt them to color and twist the history they recorded?”

“In the ancient world the idea of writing dispassionate, objective history merely to chronicle events, with no ideological purpose, was unheard of. Nobody wrote history if there wasn’t a reason to learn from it.”

if we can reconstruct reasonably accurate history from all kinds of other ancient sources, we ought to be able to do that from the gospels, even though they too are ideological.”

the Holocaust.

museums, written books, preserved artifacts, and documented eyewitness testimony

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.

“Christianity was likewise based on certain historical claims that God uniquely entered into space and time in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, so the very ideology that Christians were trying to promote required as careful historical work as possible.”

It’s one thing to say that the gospels are rooted in direct or indirect eyewitness testimony; it’s another to claim that this information was reliably preserved until it was finally written down years later.

“Some scholars say the gospels were written so far after the events that legend developed and distorted what was finally written down, turning Jesus from merely a wise teacher into the mythological Son of God. Is that a reasonable hypothesis, or is there good evidence that the gospels were recorded earlier than that, before legend could totally corrupt what was ultimately recorded?”

“There are two separate issues here, and it’s important to keep them separate,”

there’s good evidence for suggesting early dates for the writing of the gospels.

Mark in the 70s, Matthew and Luke in the 80s, John in the 90s.

that’s still within the lifetimes of various eyewitnesses of the life of Jesus, including hostile eyewitnesses who would have served as a corrective if false teachings about Jesus were going around.

“The two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than four hundred years after Alexander’s death in 323 B.C., yet historians consider them to be generally trustworthy.

So whether the gospels were written sixty years or thirty years after the life of Jesus, the amount of time is negligible by comparison. It’s almost a nonissue.”

“You indicated that you believe they were written sooner than the dates you mentioned.”

we can support that by looking at the book of Acts,

What happens to Paul? We don’t find out from Acts, probably because the book was written before Paul was put to death.”

Acts cannot be dated any later than A.D. 62.

we know

the gospel of Luke—must have been written earlier than that.

And since Luke incorporates parts of the gospel of Mark, that means ...

you end up with Mark written no later than about A.D. 60, maybe even the late 50s. If Jesus was put to death in A.D. 30 or 33, we’re talking about a maximum gap of thirty years or so.”

closing the gap between the events of Jesus’ life and the writing of the gospels to the point where it was negligible by historical standards.

“The gospels were written after almost all the letters of Paul, whose writing ministry probably began in the late 40s. Most of his major letters appeared during the 50s.

“We find that Paul incorporated some creeds, confessions of faith, or hymns from the earliest Christian church. These go way back to the dawning of the church soon after the Resurrection.

“Those are certainly significant in explaining what the earliest Christians were convinced about Jesus.

according to the Scriptures,

according to the Scriptures,

“If the Crucifixion was as early as A.D. 30, Paul’s conversion was about 32.

His first meeting with the apostles in Jerusalem would have been about A.D. 35. At some point along there, Paul was given this creed, which had already been formulated and was being used in the early church.

A good case can be made for saying that Christian belief in the Resurrection, though not yet written down, can be dated to within two years of that very event.

The time had come to subject Dr. Blomberg’s testimony to tests that would either reveal its weaknesses or underscore its strength.