Lee Strobel: The Case for the Real Jesus
Published by Zondervan
Review by Treebeardp;
What is the truth about Jesus?

Lee Strobel, award-winning legal editor at the Chicago Tribune, was a spiritual skeptic until his agnostic wife's conversion to Christ prompted him to use his legal training and journalistic skills to systematically examine the evidence to find out who Jesus really was. "It wasn't the outcome I was necessarily seeking," he writes, but the evidence convinced him that "Jesus is the unique Son of God who authenticated his divinity by returning from the dead."

The result of that investigation was published in 1998 as "The Case for Christ". But since that time the Jesus of historic Christianity has come under fierce attack from all around, and not least from within the Christian Church. This latest book of Strobel is an attempt to deal with this attack in its various forms by first explaining the challenge, then examining the evidence for and against its main theses in a scholarly responsible, and finally relating his investigations and its results in a book for "normal people".

The attack on the identity of the historical Jesus consists of 6 challenges which, on the surface, appears to be devastating to the Christian faith:
1. "Scholars Are Uncovering a Radically Different Jesus in Ancient Documents Just as Credible as the Four Gospels"
2. "The Bible's Portrait of Jesus Can't Be Trusted Because the Church Tampered with the Text"
3. "New Explanations Have Refuted Jesus' Resurrection"
4. Christianity's Beliefs about Jesus Were Copied from Pagan Religions"
5. Jesus Was an Imposter Who Failed to Fulfill the Messianic Prophecies"
6. People should be Free to Pick and Choose What to Believe about Jesus"

These challenges are presented in the media, on the Internet, even in Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code as facts supported by cutting edge scholarship - but is it true?

Read more »

By Treebeard

Have you been confused by the "experts" telling you that the Bible is not correct, that Jesus wasn't a real person, and similar lies?

That's how I started a post in November last year, entitled "Confused by the 'experts'", which really did nothing more than point readers to the site www.y-jesus.com, a site that answers attacks on and questions about the Christian faith by offering solid answers in language understandable to average Jane's and Joe's like most of us.

Since then this short post (96 words) has had thousands of page views, somewhat to my amazement! It seems there's a lot of people out there searching for the true facts about the serious questions of faith, not just simplistic "answers" or outright denial of the issues.

From personal experience I know that answers to the serious questions about our faith are not so easy to find. Most material tend to be so scholarly as to be unintelligible to us "normal" people, or else it is so shallow (typical TV soundbite stuff) as to be totally meaningless to a serious seeker.

So I'm going to try to find some usable resources, and write posts "advertising"them. I can't promise you lots of suggestions, but I'll try my best. And if you know of anything that might be of use to others, please use the "Contact" link at the top of the page to send me the details.

Due to the mountains of spam I receive every day, I have decided to disable comments on all posts. I'm sorry if this inconveniences anybody who wants to leave a genuine comment, but I spend too much time deleting all the rubbish I receive.

If you really want to comment, or need to get in touch with me, please use the "Contact" link on the front page. I really enjoy hearing from "real people", so please use this option!