The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ

by Lee Strobel

“I would say the Gospels are essentially reliable, and there are lots and lots of other scholars who agree. There’s every reason to conclude that the Gospels have fairly and accurately reported the essential elements of Jesus’ teachings, life, death, and resurrection. They’re early enough, they’re rooted into the right streams that go back to Jesus and the original people, there’s continuity, there’s proximity, there’s verification of certain distinct points with archaeology and other documents, and then there’s the inner logic. That’s what pulls it all together.”

“One way to do that is to look for viewpoints that are shared by more than one group of people. The fact is that scholars across the theological spectrum say that in all essentials—not in every particular, but in all essentials—our New Testament manuscripts go back to the originals. Ehrman is part of a very small minority of textual critics in what he’s saying. Frankly, I don’t think he has challenged his biases; instead, I think he has fed them.”

Wallace had brought balance and perspective to the issue of whether the New Testament’s text can be trusted. While scholars cannot pin down every single word with absolute confidence, there was no dispute over the fundamentals. As for Jesus, there was nothing that would compel a new perspective on his life, character, miracles, or resurrection.

“Let’s consider what we have. Shortly after Jesus died from crucifixion, his disciples believed that they saw him risen from the dead. They said he appeared not only to individuals but in several group settings—and the disciples were so convinced and transformed by the experience that they were willing to suffer and even die for their conviction that they had encountered him. “Then we have two skeptics who regarded Jesus as a false prophet—Paul, the persecutor of the church, and James, who was Jesus’ half-brother. They completely changed their opinions 180 degrees after encountering the risen Jesus. Like the disciples, they were willing to endure hardship, persecution, and even death rather than disavow their testimony that Jesus’ resurrection occurred. “Thus we have compelling testimony about the resurrection from friends of Jesus, an enemy of Christianity, and a skeptic. Finally, we have strong historical evidence that Jesus’ tomb was empty. In fact, even enemies of Christianity admitted it was vacant. Where did the body go? If you asked the disciples, they’d tell you they personally saw Jesus after he returned to life. “So we’ve looked at relevant sources, and we’ve applied responsible historical methodology. Now we need restrained results. We have to ask ourselves: What’s the best explanation for the evidence—the explanation that doesn’t leave out any of the facts or strains to make anything fit? My conclusion, based on the evidence, is that Jesus did return from the d...

New Testament historian Michael Licona had presented seemingly conclusive arguments for Jesus’ resurrection by using only five “minimal facts” that are well-evidenced and accepted by the vast majority of critical scholars: Jesus was killed by crucifixion; his disciples believed he rose and appeared to them; the conversion of the church persecutor Paul; the conversion of the skeptic James, who was Jesus’ half-brother; and Jesus’ empty tomb.

Mettinger caps his study with this stunning statement: “There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world.”

We can talk about the real Jesus of history as being a unique individual who claims to stand in the place of God, who does remarkable things, who claims that in him the Kingdom of God has come, who says that in him a new creation is dawning, and whose claims are vindicated by his resurrection and then corroborated by the lofty beliefs about him in the early church.”

Are scholars discovering a radically different Jesus in ancient documents just as credible as the four Gospels? No, the alternative texts that are touted in liberal circles are too late to be historically credible—for instance, the Gospel of Thomas was written after AD 175 and probably closer to 200. According to eminent New Testament scholar I. Howard Marshall of the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, the Thomas gospel has “no significant new light to shed on the historical Jesus.”17 The Secret Gospel of Mark, with its homoerotic undercurrents, turned out to be an embarrassing hoax that fooled many liberal scholars too eager to buy into bizarre theories about Jesus, while no serious historians give credence to the so-called Jesus Papers. The Gnostic depiction of Jesus as a revealer of hidden knowledge—including the teaching that we all possess the divine light that he embodied—lacks any connection to the historical Jesus. Is the Bible’s portrait of Jesus unreliable because of mistakes or deliberate changes by scribes through the centuries? No, there are no new disclosures that have cast any doubt on the essential reliability of the New Testament. Only about one percent of the manuscript variants affect the meaning of the text to any degree, and not a single cardinal doctrine is at stake. Actually, the unrivaled wealth of New Testament manuscripts greatly enhances the credibility of the Bible’s portrayal of Jesus.

Have new explanations refuted Jesus’ resurrection? No, the truth is that a persuasive case for Jesus rising from the dead can be made by using five facts that are well-evidenced and which the vast majority of today’s scholars on the subject—including skeptical ones—accept as true: Jesus death by crucifixion; his disciples’ belief that he rose and appeared to them; the conversion of the church persecutor Paul; the conversion of the skeptic James, who was Jesus’ half-brother; and Jesus’ empty tomb. All the attempts by skeptics and Muslims to put Jesus back into his tomb utterly fail when subjected to serious analysis, while the overblown and ill-supported claims of the Jesus Tomb documentary and book have been decimated by knowledgeable scholars. Were Christian beliefs about Jesus stolen from pagan religions? No, they clearly were not. Allegations that the virgin birth, the resurrection, communion, and baptism came from earlier mythology simply evaporated when the shoddy scholarship of “copycat” theorists was exposed. There are simply no examples of dying and rising gods that preceded Christianity and which have meaningful parallels to Jesus’ resurrection. In short, this is a theory that careful scholars discredited decades ago.

Was Jesus an imposter who failed to fulfill the messianic prophecies? On the contrary, a compelling case can be made that Jesus—and Jesus alone—matches the “fingerprint” of the Messiah. Only Jesus managed to fulfill the prophecies that needed to come to fruition prior to the fall of the Jewish temple in AD 70. Consequently, if Jesus isn’t the predicted Messiah, then there will never be one. What’s more, Jesus’ fulfillment of these prophecies against all odds makes it rational to conclude that he will fulfill the final ones when the time is right. Should people be free to pick and choose what they want to believe about Jesus? Obviously, we have the freedom to believe anything we want. But just because the U.S. Constitution provides equal protection for all religions doesn’t mean that all beliefs are equally true. Whatever we believe about Jesus cannot change the reality of w...