The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus (Case for ... Series): Lee Strobel: 0025986345860: Amazon.com: Books
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The book consists primarily of interviews between Strobel (a former legal editor at the Chicago Tribune) and biblical scholars such as Bruce Metzger. Each interview is based on a simple question, concerning historical evidence (for example, 'Can the Biographies of Jesus Be Trusted?'), scientific evidence, ('Does Archaeology Confirm or Contradict Jesus' Biographies?'), and 'psychiatric evidence' ('Was Jesus Crazy When He Claimed to Be the Son of God?'). Together, these interviews compose a case brief defending Jesus' divinity, and urging readers to reach a verdict of their own. & nbsp;Read more...
Introduction : Reopening the investigation of a lifetime --
pt. 1. Examining the record --
1. The eyewitness evidence : Can the biographies of Jesus be trusted? / with Dr. Craig Blomberg --
2. Testing the eyewitness evidence : Do the biographies of Jesus stand up to scrutiny? / with Dr. Craig Blomberg --
3. The documentary evidence : Were Jesus' biographies reliably preserved for us? / with Dr. Bruce Metzger --
4. The corroborating evidence : Is there credible evidence for Jesus outside his biographies? / with Dr. Edwin Yamauchi --
5. The scientific evidence : Does archaeology confirm or contradict Jesus' biographies? / with Dr. John McRay --
6. The rebuttal evidence : Is the Jesus of history the same as the Jesus of faith? / with Dr. Gregory Boyd --
pt. 2. Analyzing Jesus --
7. The identity evidence : Was Jesus really convinced that he was the Son of God? / with Dr. Ben Witherington III --
8. The psychological evidence : Was Jesus crazy when he claimed to be the Son of God? / with Dr. Gary Collins --
9. The profile evidence : Did Jesus fulfill the attributes of God? / With Dr. D.A. Carson --
10. The fingerprint evidence ' : Did Jesus - and Jesus alone - match the identity of the Messiah? / with Louis Lapides --
pt. 3. Researching the resurrection --
11. The medical evidence : Was Jesus' death a sham and his resurrection a hoax? / with Dr. Alexander Metherell --
12. The evidence of the missing body : Was Jesus' body really absent from his tomb? / with Dr. William Lane Craig --
13. The evidence of appearances : Was Jesus seen alive after his death on the cross? / with Dr. Gary Habermas --
14. The circumstantial evidence ' : Are there any supporting facts that point to the resurrection? / with Dr. J.P. Moreland --
Conclusion : The verdict of history : What does the evidence establish - and what does it mean today? --
List of citations -- Notes -- Index
If you were a journalist, how would you handle a news story so big it would utterly eclipse all other world events? How thorough would your investigation be? How many hard-hitting questions would you ask? How carefully would you consult with top experts to get detailed, accurate answers?
Lee Strobel knows firsthand. It was as an award-winning reporter for the Chicago Tribune and an avowed atheist that he first investigated the greatest news story of all -- the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now, in The Case for Christ, he presents compelling evidence and expert testimony for the claims of Christianity. As a seasoned journalist with a Yale law background, Strobel systematically tracks down his leads and asks the blunt, tough questions you would want to ask -- questions that can make or break the Christian faith. He refuses contrived, simplistic answers.
Instead, he pieces together hard facts through interviews with a dozen of the country's top scholars. Written in the style of a blockbuster investigative report, The Case for Christ is a provocative and spellbinding read, marshaling expert testimony and persuasive evidence. With unerring instincts, Strobel ferrets out: Historical evidence: Do we possess reliable documents concerning the life, teachings, and resurrection of Jesus? Scientific Evidence: Is there archaeological substantiation for the historical accounts about Jesus? Did Jesus perform miracles? Psychiatric Evidence: Did Jesus really claim to be God? What evidence is there that he fits God's profile? Fingerprint Evidence: What does prophecy have to say about Jesus? Other Evidence: Jesus' death, the missing body, eyewitness accounts, and claims of personal encounters. The Case for Christ reads like a captivating, fast-paced novel. But, it's not fiction. It's a riveting journey to the truth about the most remarkable event in history: the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it's a revealing, personal testimony to his power to transform people yet today -- even the most case-hardened, cynical journalist
Lee Strobel
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4.7 out of 5 stars 996 customer reviews
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER! OVER 5 MILLION COPIES SOLD!
Is there credible evidence that Jesus of Nazareth really is the Son of God? Former atheist and Chicago Tribune journalist Lee Strobel says yes! In this revised and updated bestseller, The Case for Christ, Strobel cross-examines a dozen experts with doctorates from schools such as Cambridge, Princeton, and Brandeis, asking hard-hitting questions - and building a captivating case for Christ's divinity.
Strobel challenges them with questions like, How reliable is the New Testament? Does evidence for Jesus exist outside the Bible? Is there any reason to believe the resurrection was an actual event?
Winner of the Gold Medallion Book Award and twice nominated for the Christian Book of the Year Award, Strobel's tough, point-blank questions read like a captivating, fast-paced novel. But it's not fiction. It's a riveting quest for the truth about history’s most compelling figure.
The new edition includes scores of revisions and additions, including updated material on archaeological and manuscript discoveries, fresh recommendations for further study, and an interview with the author that tells dramatic stories about the book's impact, provides behind-the-scenes information, and responds to critiques of the book by skeptics.
As The Case for Christ and its ancillary resources approach 10 million copies in print, this updated edition will prove even more valuable to your spiritual journey.
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
Lee Strobel was the award-winning legal editor of The Chicago Tribune and is the bestselling author of The Case for Christ, The Case for Christ Devotional, The Case for Christianity Answer book, The Case for Faith, The Case for a Creator, and The Case for Grace. With a journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale, Lee has won four Gold Medallions for publishing excellence and coauthored the Christian Book of the Year. He serves as Professor of Christian Thought at Houston Baptist University. Visit Lee’s website at: leestrobel.com
Product details
Series: Case for ... Series
Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Zondervan; Updated, Expanded edition (September 6, 2016)
Language: English
› Visit Amazon's Lee Strobel Page
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Biography
Lee Strobel (www.LeeStrobel.com), with a journalism degree from the University of Missouri and a Master of Studies in Law degree from Yale Law School, was the award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune and a spiritual skeptic until 1981. His books include four Gold Medallion winners and the 2005 Christian Book of the Year (coauthored with Garry Poole). He and his wife live in Colorado.
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lee strobel case for christ jesus christ highly recommendgreat book must read new testament well written son of godeasy read excellent book open mind years ago search for the truthrecommend it to anyone many questions well researchedclear and concise death and resurrection eyewitness
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Larry Hilton
5.0 out of 5 starsTo Infinity & Beyond!May 23, 2017
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Lee Strobel's "A Case for Christ" was highly instrumental in leading me to accept Jesus Christ as my Lord & Savior. Coming from a scientific background, I was also skeptical about this whole "religion thing". However, the methodical scientific approach and evidence he discovered in his search for the truth, convinced me it is far more logical to place my faith in Jesus than not. I can do nothing but highly recommend this book and the movie if you are searching for the truth about Jesus Christ.
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsRead the book! Watch the movie!June 11, 2017
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Lee was an Atheist, and his wife, an Agnostic.What makes this book so interesting, even as a believer, is the fact that Lee, former legal editor for the Chicago Tribune, embarked on a 2 year investigation into the reality of Christ.
Was Jesus who He said He was? Did He really exist in the flesh? Are the biblical accounts just made up? Were there eye witness testimonies to miracles that supposedly happened through Jesus? Can groups of people maintain eye witness accounts without those stories becoming totally altered after passing down through even the first 20 people let alone generations?
The really great thing about Lee's "investigation" was that he set out to prove that his wife, who became a believer, and all the rest of us, were caught up in a huge scam. Experts in the fields where Lee's questions could be addressed were engaged in this quest. This book is not fiction!
Also, the movie, if you see it, does a great job of summarizing the whole investigation, and you get to "meet" those who were called on to fully answer Lee's questions, and they are not actors.
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Amazon Customer
2.0 out of 5 starsApologetics for beginnersAugust 30, 2018
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As a student of Christianity and other religions for a while now, I found this book to be a big disappointment. I was drawn to it given the description of it by many of my peers - a hard look at the evidence from a skeptics perspective. Some even go as far as to say an atheist seeking to disprove Christianity being convinced by the evidence. This interested me in the book - what did Strobel find that was so compelling that it could change a staunch atheist's mind? I was genuinely interested in the answer for my own faith journey.
However, after reading this book, I can say the atheist narrative simply does not hold water with me. Strobel was clearly not trying to disprove Christianity here - not even to "give it a fair trial by weighing the evidence".
In the first chapter, he describes what began the journey - his wife converted to Christianity (much to his dismay), but then he noticed that she was becoming a better person. He says, “Instead, I was pleasantly surprised – even fascinated – by the fundamental changes in her character, her integrity, and her personal confidence ... I wanted to get to the bottom of what was prompting these subtle but significant shifts in my wife's attitudes". This is a great motivation to investigate the religion - but it is certainly not what the narrative suggests - something like "I set out to show her that Christianity is a sham".
Secondly, every scholar Strobel interviews is a Christian, most seminary-educated and many actively working at a seminary. We know this from the pages of credentials Strobel gives us and his habit of asking every expert if their research has strengthened or reduced their faith (spoiler: all say strengthened). This is not to say Christians aren't good scholars (two of them are undeniably genuine experts in their fields - hailed by Christian and secular scholars), but I find it very hard to believe a committed atheist would forego all secular scholars and seek out only Christians for an objective look at the evidence. I suspect the purpose was to present the illusion that all biblical scholars are strengthened in their faith due to their research, which simply is not the case.
Thirdly, and most importantly for me, I do not feel Strobel gives skepticism the trial he claims to, nor the trial it deserves. He is content to accept vague and/or circular explanations (we should trust the disciples' word in the Bible because we have no reason not to - after all they wrote the Bible) and toward the middle and end of the book he is actually putting arguments for Christianity into the mouths of the experts (isn't it true that there is proof of the eclipse at the Crucifixion because a church historian quoted a lost text that talked about it?). He ignores major controversies outright and skirts legitimate problems about biblical authorship, biblical inconsistency, translation/transcription issues, etc. that any half-interested skeptic would know about and takes almost every assertion presented without question.
In the rare case that Strobel does raise a somewhat skeptical objection, he generally presents the most outrageous position a skeptic could take, setting up a strawman argument. An example of what I mean (obviously paraphrased for brevity):
Strobel: Are there non-Christian sources that support the story of Jesus as described in the Bible?
Expert: Yes (a generally cogent argument here)
Strobel: But wait, this author says that Jesus never even existed! What do you say to that?
Expert: We're confident Jesus existed because we have tiny snippets of text that mention him in a Jewish religious book, a pair of Jewish/Roman histories, and a Roman letter.
Strobel: Clearly, there is overwhelming corroborative evidence that Jesus is the unique Son of God!
My problem with this is that the objection raised is extreme - *most* academics and people at large - including atheists - believe that a man named Jesus existed, they're just not sure that he was who Christians have claimed he was (God). Secondly, showing that a human being named Jesus very likely lived does not prove that he is divine or that anything else written in the Bible is true. By presenting the argument this way, he is waving off all the legitimate concerns scholars have raised over the centuries by deconstructing the least plausible of them all.
In sum, what all of these means to me is that Strobel is either dishonest in his motivation/backstory (setting out to disprove Christianity) to create a more compelling apologetic, or he is criminally negligent in his investigation. Either way, I do not recommend this for anyone who want more than superficial confirmation of their active Christian faith. For anyone else who is interested in a real investigation, there is no shortage of books or courses - see Bart Ehrman's books and/or the religious curriculum on The Great Courses for a good start.
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Chef Perry
5.0 out of 5 starsBest book next to the Bible.April 3, 2017
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It's hard to rate this book with only 5 stars. I was raised a Mormon. After leaving the cult due to the Mormon inconsistencies and contradictions I found myself in a state of limbo. I didn't know what to believe. I knew that a God existed but wasn't sure if it was the Christian God, the many many Hindu gods or maybe some deity that was unknown and impersonal.
The Case for Christ was a critical look at Christianity from the perspective of an atheist. Lee Strobel left no stone unturned. He tackled the historicity of the person Jesus, the resurrection account, miricals and every objection to which I wanted answers.
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Paul Muwanguzi
5.0 out of 5 starsCompellingAugust 20, 2017
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I am a christian. My parents were born again long before I was born. My father was immensely and I mean it, immensely transformed after receiving christ. We prayed three times a day, and I was a firm beleiver in Christ simply by reading the bible and listening to men of God. Mama always spoke vividly about the Kingdom yet to come. It is the happiest time of my parents lives, speaking about Christ. I therefore knew christ without reviewing the evidence. Reviewing the evidence in this book has given me a new drive and commitment to the cause and now I am altogether stronger and better grounded. I wish I had read this book years ago! I would definately have had better use of my time witnessing for christ.
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B. Neuls
5.0 out of 5 starsFive StarsFebruary 23, 2017
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Well written and logical. A must for anyone investigating the validity of the claims of the Gospel.
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