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 | | The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ by Lee Strobel ISBN-10: 9780310242109 ISBN-10: 0-310-24210-X ISBN-13: 9780310242109 ISBN-13: 978-0-310-24210-9 Hardcover 2007-09-10 Zondervan Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description From college classrooms to bestselling books to the Internet, the historic picture of Jesus is under an intellectual onslaught. This fierce attack on the traditional portrait of Christ has confused spiritual seekers and created doubt among many Christians – but can these radical new claims and revisionist theories stand up to sober scrutiny? | ||
Reviews | ||
A heavy read It took me a long time to finish this book, not because it isn't good but because it's full of heavy content that can't be taken in large bites. I think it might have been easier to read without the slightly contrived "I interviewed this expert and this is where he sat and this is what he was wearing" style. It is nevertheless an excellent rebuttal of all the shoddy liberal scholarship that masquerades as theology these days. | ||
the case for the REAL JESUS Lee has done it again and written a consise book about his investigations into attacks again Christians about JESUS thanks Lee job well done | ||
Disingenuous This is the second Lee Strobel book I have read. It is clear, as many people have pointed out, that even though Lee presents himself as a seeker who is earnestly trying to find the truth, this is a facade. As a thinking Christian, I have been troubled by many of the issues Lee brings up in his books. I have yet found no simple answers. Yes, research has shown that Mithras was basically an A.D. Religion. But other mystery religions are not so easily dismissed. The fact that Lee interviews one side, and declares them the winner, is disingenuous to me. A true investigative journalist would interview both sides, and then decide. It is even clear from his "thoughts", as he is interviewing people, that he already has decided the outcome. One specific example that irritates me: Was Isaiah 7:14 a messianic prophecy? "A young woman(virgin) will conceive and bring forth a son...". Anyone who has studied the context of this prophesy knows that this was specifically intended for the IMMEDIATE future. Not for Jesus born 700 years later. There's no way around this(unless you believe in dual prophecy). Michael Brown responds to the challenge by saying "No one knows what this prophecy exactly meant". Yet Lee Strobel accepts this explanation!!!! HUH?!! How in the world could you accept this explanation, if you were truly undecided. The only way is, you already have your mind made up. Bottom line is, you can be for or against something. But please be upfront, and don't pretend to undecided, when in fact, you are not. | ||
Very compelling- great book This book is a very good ontological account about the reality of Christ. It is very compelling and unbiased. He was out of prove Christianity a fallacy and ended up with a different verdict based upon his own scientific research. | ||
The Jesus of Faith IS the Jesus of History After reading this book, I believe that Strobel accomplished what he set out to prove, first, that the Jesus of faith IS the Jesus of history and second,as he put it, "the emperors of radical scholarship have no clothes". When I first saw "The Case for the Real Jesus" in the bookstore, I have to admit that I thought that I may have heard most of the arguments since I've read quite a few books on Christian Apologetics. However, that changed for me after thumbing through the book and coming upon a discussion of Mithraism found in the 4th challenge. After finding that, I bought the book then and there because I had come upon that subject quite recently and had done some reading on it but not as much as I had wanted. I'll get to that in a minute. I thought the discussion with Michael Brown was interesting. It gave me a lot of food for thought. I have to admit that I haven't seriously studied the messianic prophecies. After Brown argued that scripture points specifically to events 2000 years ago taking place and that it had to be Yeshua (Jesus) or no one, I'm really interested to go back now and give the Old Testament a serious study regarding that topic. In regard to the fact that messianic scripture exists, I had to ask myself why would writers throughout the centuries be writing about a Messiah the way they did if it there wasn't an expectation of a coming one?" You don't see this in any other kind of religious scripture which makes it unique to the Christian faith. I'm still pondering on what Daniel B. Wallace had to say regarding scriptural infallibility and inerrancy. I may need to rethink these issues. Although I agree with Wallace that God spoke through different men with varying writing abilities, it doesn't seem to make sense to me, at least at this point, to say that the Bible can be trusted if it does contain incontrovertible errors, even one. Cannot the God of heaven make a revelation to mankind without incontrovertible errors? It would only make sense to. Wallace's reply leads me to wonder if he really does think that there are or could be a incontrovertible error(s) in the Bible. My question is: How many incontrovertible errors in the Bible do we have to have in order to come to the conclusion that God did not write it? As I said though, still thinking on this one. The discussion with Yamauchi on Mithraism, as I mentioned before, is what got me to purchase the book. I had come across the claim before in my reading that Christianity stole from this ancient, little known mystery religion. I couldn't find very much on it and came to the conclusion that scholars didn't have that much information. Yamauchi pretty much confirmed my conclusion - there isn't much that scholars really know about Mithraism. Many of the sources that exist regarding the practices and rituals that liberal scholars say Christianity stole came after Jesus, not before. Yamauchi's debunking of claims that liberal scholars make, near the end of the chapter, is interesting and worth the read. Finally, although Copan's interview wasn't anything really new for me, in regards to postmodernism (since I have read on this subject before), I felt that he was right on the button. Postmodernism, and hence relativism, whether it be any kind, is really self-contradictory. For relativism to be true for everyone, a relativist has to be an absolutist in order to believe that it holds true for everyone. I remember my professor in my critical thinking class in college discussing absolutism and the "fact" that absolutism wasn't true. I should have raised my hand at the time and asked, "Are you absolutely certain about that, Professor?" In all, Strobel's book is worth the read. Of course, again, there will be those who will complain that Strobel only interviews believers. This is true, and I agreed with it at first, but when I thought about it some more, two things came to mind: 1) No skeptic even attempts to write a book like this that I know of, answering arguments against their own theories/beliefs in this fashion (even if Strobel's is exhaustive) and, 2) no book would be able to contain a back and forth thorough discussion between the skeptic and the believer. | ||