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

by Lee Strobel

they assume that the later church put these sayings into the mouth of Jesus, unless they have good evidence to think otherwise. That assumption is rooted in their suspicion of the gospels, and that comes from their assumption that the supernatural can’t occur.

“Historians usually operate with the burden of proof on the historian to prove falsity or unreliability, since people are generally not compulsive liars. Without that assumption we’d know very little about ancient history.

“The Jesus Seminar turns this on its head and says you’ve got to affirmatively prove that a saying came from Jesus. Then they come up with questionable criteria to do that. Now, it’s OK for scholars to use appropriate criteria in considering whether Jesus said something. But I’m against the idea that if Jesus doesn’t meet these ...

the specific criteria they used,”

“One is called double dissimilarity,”

“This means they can believe Jesus said something if it doesn’t look like something a rabbi or the later church would say. Otherwise they assume it got into th...

“The obvious problem is that Jesus was Jewish and he founded the Christian church, so it shouldn’t be surprising if he sounds Jewish and Christian! Yet they’ve applied this criterion to reach the n...

“Then there’s the criterion of ‘multiple...

which means we can only be sure Jesus said something if it’s found in more than one source. Now, this can be a helpful test in confirming a saying. However, why argue in the other directio...

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...

“Even when Jesus’ sayings are found in two or three gospels, they don’t consider this as passing the ‘multiple attestation’ criterion. If a saying is found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, they consider that only one source, because they assume that Matthew and Luke used Mark in writing their gospels. They’re failing to recognize that an increasing number of scholars are expressing serious reservations about the theory that Matthew and Lu...

One approach taken by naturalistic scholars has been to look for parallels between Jesus and others from ancient history as a way of demonstrating that his claims and deeds were not completely unique. Their goal is to explain away the view that Jesus was one of a kind.

the parallels break down quickly when you look more closely,”

“For one thing, the sheer centrality of the supernatural in the life of Jesus has no parallel whatsoever in Jewish history.

“Second, the radical nature of his miracles distinguishes him. It didn’t just rain when he prayed for it; we’re talking about blindness, deafness, leprosy, and scoliosis being healed, storms being stopped, bread and fish being multiplied, sons and d...

“Third, Jesus’ biggest distinctive is how he did miracles on...

He does give God the Father credit for what he does, but you never find him asking God the Father to do it—he does it in the power of God the Father. And for that there is just no parallel.

a historical figure named Apollonius of Tyana.

his biographer, Philostratus, was writing a century and a half after Apollonius lived, whereas the gospels were written within a generation of Jesus. The closer the proximity to the event, the less chance there is for legendary development, for error, or for memories to get confused.

“Another thing is that we have four gospels, corroborated with Paul, that can be cross-checked to some degree with nonbiblical authors, like Josephus and others. With Apollonius we’re dealing with one source. Plus the gospels pass the standard tests used to assess historical reliability, but we can’t say that about the stories of Apollonius.

“On top of that, Philostratus was commissioned by an empress to write a biography in order to dedicate a temple to Apollonius. She was a follower of Apollonius, so Philostratus would have had a financial motive to embellish the story and give the empress what she wanted. On the other hand, the writers of the gospel had nothing to gain—and much to ...

The gospels have a very confident eyewitness perspective, as if they had a camera there.

Philostratus includes a lot of tentative statements, like ‘It is reported that . . .’ or ‘Some say this young girl had died; others say she was just ill.’ To his credit, he backs off and treats stories like stories.

Apollonius may have done some amazing things or at least tricked people into thinking he did. But that doesn’t in any way compromise the evidence for Jesus. Even if you grant the evidence for Apollonius, you’re still left with having to deal with the evidence for Christ.”

A lot of college students are taught that many of the themes seen in the life of Jesus are merely echoes of ancient “mystery religions,” in which there are stories about gods dying and rising, and rituals of baptism and communion. “What about those parallels?” I asked.

“That was a very popular argument at the beginning of the century, but it generally died off because it was so discredited.

given the timing involved, if you’re going to argue for borrowing, it should be from the direction of Christianity to the...

the Jews carefully guarded their beliefs from outside influences. They saw themselves as a separate people and strongly resisted pagan ideas and rituals.”

with the depiction of Jesus Christ in the gospels. They talk about someone who actually lived several decades earlier, and they name names—crucified under Pontius Pilate, when Caiaphas was the high priest, and the father of Alexander and Rufus carried his cross, for example. That’s concrete historical stuff. It has nothing in common with stories about what supposedly happened ‘once upon a time.’

“No, there are no new discoveries that tell us anything new about Jesus.

The Jesus of history and the Jesus of faith: the Jesus Seminar believes there’s a big gulf between the two. In its view the historical Jesus was a bright, witty, countercultural man who never claimed to be the Son of God, while the Jesus of faith is a cluster of feel-good ideas that help people live right but are ultimately based on wishful thinking.

these liberals say historical research can’t possibly discover the Jesus of faith, because the Jesus of faith is not rooted in history.

Jesus is not a symbol of anything unless he’s rooted in history.

“The theological truth is based on historical truth.

“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.”

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 pipe dream.”

“Let me get this straight,”

“Your Jesus—the Jesus you relate to—is both a Jesus of history and a Jesus of faith.”

To have a relationship with Jesus Christ goes beyond just knowing the historical facts about him, yet it’s rooted in the historical facts about him. I believe in Jesus on the basis of the historical evidence, but my relationship with Jesus goes way beyond the evidence. I have to put my trust in him and walk with him on a daily basis.”

The evidence for Jesus being who the disciples said he was—for having done the miracles that he did, for rising from the dead, for making the claims that he did—is just light-years beyond my reasons for thinking that the left-wing scholarship of the Jesus Seminar is correct.

“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.”

If the Jesus of faith is not also the Jesus of history, he’s powerless and he’s meaningless. Unless he’s rooted in reality, unless he established his divinity by rising from the dead, he’s just a feel-good symbol who’s as irrelevant as Santa Claus.

Greg Boyd isn’t a lone voice crying out against the Jesus Seminar. He’s part of a growing crescendo of criticism coming not just from prominent conservative evangelicals but also from other well-respected scholars representing a wide variety of theological backgrounds.

Dr. Luke Timothy Johnson, the highly regarded professor of New Testament and Christian origins at the Candler School of Theology of Emory University.

systematically skewers the Jesus Seminar, saying it “by no means represents the cream of New Testament scholarship,” it follows a process that is “biased against the authenticity of the gospel traditions,” and its results were “already determined ahead of time.”5 He concludes, “This is not responsible, or even critical, scholarship. It is a self-indulgent charade.”6

John Douglas

the original “psychological profiler” for the Federal Bureau of Investigation,

Douglas has become renowned for his profiling prowess.

“Behavior reflects personality,” Douglas explained

Douglas closely examines the evidence left behind at the crime scene and, where possible, interviews victims to find out exactly what the criminal said and did. From these clues—the left-behind products of the person’s behavior—he deduces the individual’s psychological makeup.