The Case for Christ

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3 Sentence Summary

With the rigor of a seasoned investigative journalist, Lee Strobel’s New York Times bestselling apologetic builds a progressive argument for the reliability and trustworthiness of the New Testament gospels. Through a dozen interviews with world-renowned experts, Strobel tests the accuracy of the gospel narrative and addresses popular critics that challenge the claim that Jesus was the son of God. Regardless of where you are on your faith journey, Christians and nonbelievers alike will enjoy this entertaining quest for the truth about history’s most compelling figure.

5 Key Takeaways

1. The biographies of Jesus are based on eyewitness accounts. Not enough time elapsed between Jesus’ death and the earliest manuscripts for legends to develop.
2. The manuscript evidence for the New Testament is overwhelming when juxtaposed against other revered writings of antiquity. There are ~24,000 manuscripts, some dating back to the second century.
3. The Jesus story is rooted in historical truth. Archaeology’s repeated affirmation of the New Testament’s accuracy provides important corroboration for its reliability.
4. The Jesus in the New Testament fulfills every prophesy made centuries earlier in the Old Testament. This is statistically impossible to happen by chance.
5. Jesus’ death and resurrection is logically supported by affirmative and circumstantial evidence. No other explanation other than what’s presented in the New Testament can adequately explain the massive cultural shift and rapid growth of the Christian church.

The Case for Christ Summary

Part 1: Examining the Record

1. The Eyewitness Evidence: Can the Biographies of Jesus Be Trusted?

Interview #1: Dr. Craig Blomberg

• The book of Matthew was written by the tax collector and disciple Matthew (also knowns as Levi), the book of Mark was written by John Mark, a companion of Peter, and the books of Luke and Acts were written by Luke, the “beloved physician” of Paul.
• The gospel of John is the only book where authorship has any dispute.
• The apostle John is widely believed to be the author, however, there may have been somebody else involved who helped John with stylistic editing.
• All gospels are based on eyewitness accounts.

More Evidence of Authorship

• Papias in year 125 AD specifically affirmed that Mark had carefully and accurately recorded Peter’s eyewitness observations.
• Irenaeus, writing in year 180 AD, confirmed the gospel’s original authorship.

Ancient Biographies

• Ancient biographies were not written in the same literary style as modern biographies.
• The only purpose ancients saw to record history was because there were some lessons to be learned from the characters described. Only the important moments by this standard were recorded.
• The theological reason for not including more detail about Jesus’ life in the gospels is that all of his teachings and miracles were meaningless if it were not historically factual that Christ died and was raised from the dead and that this provided atonement for the sins of humanity. His death and resurrection is the most important narrative and thus receives the most attention by the gospel writers.

The Unique Perspective of John

• The first three gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke are called the synoptics, which means “to view at the same time,” because of their similar outline and interrelationship.
• John includes many different stories of Jesus’ ministry.
• John uses a very different linguistic style and terminology.

Son of Man

• Jesus often refers to himself as the “Son of Man” in the synoptics. This title does not primarily refer to Jesus’ humanity. Instead it is a direct allusion to Daniel 7:13-14.
• “Son of Man” is a title given to someone who approaches God himself in his heavenly throne room and is given universal authority and dominion. It is a title of great exaltation.

In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all nations and peoples of every language worshiped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

Daniel 7:13-14

Theological Emphasis

• Matthew emphasizes the relationship between Christianity and Judaism.
• Mark portrays Jesus as the suffering servant.
• Luke is the theologian of the poor and of social concern.
• John highlights the divinity of Christ and makes clear the claim that Jesus is God.

Were the Gospels Written Too Late?

• Mark was written in the 70s, Matthew and Luke in the 80s, and John in the 90s.
• These are all still within the lifetimes of various eyewitnesses of the life of Jesus, including hostile eyewitnesses who would have served as a corrective if false teaching about Jesus were going around.
• There’s good evidence from the book of Acts that Mark was written even earlier. Perhaps as early as the late 50s.
• The two earliest biographies of Alexander the Great were written by Arrian and Plutarch more than 400 years after Alexander’s death in 323 BC, yet historians consider them to be generally trustworthy.
• The gap between the events of Jesus’ life and the writings of the gospels is negligible by historical standards.

The Earliest Manuscripts

• The New Testament books are not in chronological order.
• The gospels were written after almost all the letters of Paul, whose writing ministry probably began in the late 40s.
• Paul incorporated some creeds, confessions of faith, or hymns from the earliest Christian church. These go way back to the dawning of the church soon after the Resurrection.

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

1 Corinthians 15

2. Testing The Eyewitness Evidence: Do the Biographies of Jesus Stand Up to Scrutiny?

The Intention Test

• The gospels are written in a sober and responsible fashion. You don’t find outlandish flourishes and blatant mythologizing that you see in a lot of other ancient writings.
• It seems quite apparent that the goal of the gospel writers was to attempt to record what had actually occurred.
• The disagreements surrounding the early church, and those that continue today, demonstrate that Christians were interested in distinguishing between what happened during Jesus’ lifetime and what was debated later in the churches.

The Ability Test

• The ancient Jews were an oral culture in which there was great emphasis placed on memorization.
• 80-90% of Jesus’ words were originally in poetic form. It had a meter, balanced lines, and parallelism that would have made it much easier to memorize.
• The gospel writers and early Christian community were not playing a game of telephone. They were very careful to preserve the integrity of the message by constant monitoring and intervention to make corrections.

The Character Test

• The writers of the gospel were men of great integrity.
• They reported the words and actions of a man who called them to as exacting a level of integrity as any religion has ever known.
• They were willing to live out their beliefs to the point of ten of the eleven remaining disciples being put to grisly deaths.

The Consistency Test:

• There are numerous points at which the gospels appear to disagree. However, once you allow for paraphrase, of abridgment, of explanatory additions, of selections, of omission—the gospels are extremely consistent with each other by ancient standards, which are the only standards by which it’s fair to judge them.
• There is enough of a discrepancy to show that there could have been no previous concert among them; and at the same time such substantial agreement as to show that they all were independent narrators of the same great transaction.
• It would be very suspicious if all the ancient accounts of Jesus’ life were completely free of contradictions.

The Bias Test

• The gospel writers were not natural observers; they were Jesus’ devoted followers. Could this mean that they were motivated to change things to make him look good?
• It’s also possible they had a desire to record Jesus’ life with great integrity out of honor and respect.
• The disciples had nothing to gain except criticism, ostracism, and martyrdom. They had no financial incentive. If anything, they had every reason to keep quiet, to deny Jesus, and to downplay his teachings.

The Cover-Up Test

• Did the writers conveniently forget to mention details that are embarrassing or hard to explain?
• No—There’s a large body of Jesus’ teaching called the hard sayings of Jesus. Some of it is very ethically demanding.
• Mark 6:5 says that Jesus could do few miracles in Nazareth because the people there had little faith, which seems to limit Jesus’ power.
• Jesus said in Mark 13:32 that he didn’t know the day or the hour of his return, which seems to limit his omniscience.
• The gospels portray Jesus’ disciples as a bunch of self-serving, self-seeking, dull-witted people a lot of the time.

The Corroboration Test

• Within the last hundred years archaeology has repeatedly unearthed discoveries that have confirmed specific references in the gospels.

The Adverse Witness Test

• There were many enemies of Jesus who wanted to discredit the early Christian movement, but were unable to do so because their false version of history was more difficult to believe than the truth.

3. The Documentary Evidence: Were Jesus’ Biographies Reliably Preserved for Us?

Interview #2: Bruce M. Metzger, Ph.D.

• There are no surviving original manuscripts of the New Testament.
• Compared to other ancient texts, the New Testament has by far the most manuscript copies.
• Today there have been over 5,000 Greek manuscripts cataloged, many dating back to within a couple of generations from the writing of the originals.
• In addition to Greek manuscripts, there are thousands of other ancient New Testament manuscripts in other languages. There are 8,000 to 10,000 Latin Vulgate manuscripts, plus a total of 8,000 in Ethiopic, Slavic, and Armenian. In all, there are about 24,000 manuscripts in existence.

How the New Testament Compares to Other Ancient Manuscripts

• Tacitus, the Roman historian, wrote his Annals of Imperial Rome in about 116 AD. His first six books exist today in only one manuscript, and it was copied about 850 AD.
• We have nine Greek manuscripts of the first-century historian Josephus’ The Jewish War, which were copied in the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth centuries.
• There are fewer than 650 Greek manuscripts of Homer’s Iliad (800 BC) that were copied in the second and third century AD.
• The manuscript evidence for the New Testament is overwhelming when juxtaposed against other revered writings of antiquity—works that modern scholars have absolutely no reluctance treating as authentic.

Oldest New Testament Manuscripts

• The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri discovered in 1930 contain portions of the four gospels and the book of Acts. It dates back to the third century.
• A fragment of the gospel of John, containing material from chapter eighteen, dates back to 100-150 AD.

Contradicting Manuscripts

• There are tens of thousands of variations among the ancient manuscripts.
• But in Greek, one word functions as the subject of the sentence regardless of where it stands in the sentence; consequently, the meaning of the sentence isn’t distorted if the words are out of what we consider to be the right order.
• Variations, when they occur, tend to be minor rather than substantive. And the more significant variations do not overthrow any doctrine of the church.

How did the early church leaders determine which books to include in the New Testament?

• First, the books must have apostolic authority—that is, they must have been written either by apostles themselves, who were eyewitnesses to what they wrote about, or by followers of apostles.
• Second, the books must conform to the rule of faith—that is, the document must be congruent with the basic Christian tradition that the church recognized as normative.
• Third, the book had to have had continuous acceptance and usage by the church at large.
• The canon (books of the New Testament) was not the result of a series of contests involving church politics.
• The canon is a list of authoritative books more than it is an authoritative list of books. These documents didn’t derive their authority from being selected; each one was authoritative before anyone gathered them together.

4. The Corroborating Evidence: Is There Credible Evidence for Jesus Outside His Biographies?

Interview #3: Edwin M. Yamauchi, Ph.D.

Josephus

• Josephus was a very important Jewish historian of the first century. He was born in 37 AD and he wrote most of his four works toward the end of the first century.
• Josephus mentions Jesus in The Antiquities and the Testimonium Flavianum.
• Today there’s a remarkable consensus among both Jewish and Christian scholars that the passage as a whole is authentic, although there may be some interpolations.
• Why did Josephus only mention Jesus in passing, but covered other figures like John the Baptist in greater detail? Because Josephus was interested in political matters and the struggle against Rome, so for him John the Baptist was more important because he seemed to pose a greater political threat than did Jesus.

He convened a meeting of the Sanhedrin and brought before them a man named James, the brother of Jesus, who was called the Christ, and certain others. He accused them of having transgressed the law and delivered them up to be stoned.

Josephus, The Antiquities

Tacitus

• Tacitus was the most important Roman historian of the first century.
• This is an important testimony by an unsympathetic witness to the success and spread of Christianity.

Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the populace. Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Jedaea, the first source of the evil, but even in Rome… Accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty: then, upon their information, an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of firing the city, as of hatred against mankind.

Tacitus

Pliny the Younger

• Pliny the Younger was the nephew of Pliny the Elder, the famous encyclopedist who died in the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD. Pliny the Younger became governor of Bithynia in north-western Turkey.
• In book 10 of his letters to his friend, Emperor Trajan, he specifically refers to the Christians he has arrested.
• Most likely written about 111 AD, these letters attest to the rapid spread of Christianity, the worship of Jesus as God, and that they were not easily swayed from their beliefs.

The Day The Earth Went Dark

• The New Testament gospel writers claim that the earth went dark during part of the time that Jesus hung on the cross.
• A historian named Thallus (52 AD) wrote a history of the eastern Mediterranean world beginning with the Trojan War. Although his work has been lost, it was quoted by Julius Africanus in about 221 AD—and it made reference to the darkness that the gospels had written about.

Other Jewish Accounts

• There are a few passages in the Jewish Talmud, an important work finished about 500 AD, that mention Jesus, calling him a false messiah who practiced magic and who was justly condemned to death.
• They also repeat the rumor that Jesus was born of a Roman soldier and Mary, suggesting there was something unusual about his birth.
• In a negative way these Jewish references do corroborate some things about Jesus.

Paul

• The apostle Paul never met Jesus prior to his death, but he said he did encounter the resurrected Christ and later consulted eyewitnesses to make sure he was preaching the same message as them.
• Paul began writing his New Testament letters years before the gospels were written down. His letters contain extremely early reports concerning Jesus.
• Paul focus on Jesus’ atoning death and resurrection. He doesn’t mention the parables or miracles highlighted in the gospels.
• Paul corroborates some important aspects of the character of Jesus—his humility, obedience, love for sinners, and so forth.

5. The Scientific Evidence: Does Archaeology Confirm or Contradict Jesus’ Biographies?

Interview #4: John McRay, Ph.D.

• Spiritual truths cannot be proved or disproved by archaeological discoveries.
• If an ancient historian’s incidental details check out to be accurate time after time, this increases our confidence in other material that the historian wrote but that cannot be as readily cross-checked.

Luke’s Accuracy As A Historian

• The general consensus of both liberal and conservative scholars is that Luke is very accurate as a historian.
• One prominent archaeologist carefully examined Luke’s references to thirty-two countries, fifty-four cities, and nine islands, finding not a single mistake.

Puzzle 1: The Census

• How could a the government possibly force all its citizens to return to their birthplace? Is there any archaeological evidence whatsoever that this kind of census ever took place?
• Discovery of ancient census forms dated back to 104 and 48 AD confirm the practice of requiring families to return to the father’s birthplace.

Puzzle 2: Existence of Nazareth

• Did the town of Nazareth exist during the time when the New Testament says Jesus spent his childhood there?
• Archaeologists have found a list in Aramaic describing 24 families of priests who were relocated, and one of them was registered as having been moved to Nazareth.
• In addition, there have been archaeological digs that have uncovered first-century tombs in the vicinity of Nazareth, which would establish the village’s limits because by Jewish law burials had to take place outside the town proper.
• Such findings suggest that Nazareth existed in Jesus’ time, but there is no doubt that it was a very small and insignificant place.

Puzzle 3: Slaughter at Bethlehem

• The gospel of Matthew records that Herod the Great, the king of Judea, dispatched troops to murder all the children under the age of two in Bethlehem. The problem: there is no independent confirmation that this mass murder ever took place. Nothing from Josephus or other historians.
• First, Bethlehem was probably no bigger than Nazareth, so how many babies of that age would there have been in a village of five or six hundred people? Not that many.
• Second, Herod the Great was a blood-thirsty king. He killed members of his own family, and executed lots of people who he thought might challenge him. So the fact that he killed some babies in Bethlehem is not going to make big news in the Roman world.
• Third, there was no television, radio, or newspapers. Word of this tragedy would have taken a long time to get out, especially from such a minor village way in the back hills of nowhere.

Riddle of the Dead Sea Scrolls

• The Dead Sea Scrolls is a collection of hundreds of manuscripts dating from 250 BC to 68 AD that were found in caves twenty miles east of Jerusalem in 1947.
• Jesus is not specifically mentioned in any of the scrolls. They primarily give insights into Jewish life and customs.
• Manuscript 4Q521 contains a version of Isaiah 61 that includes the missing phrase “the dead are raised” which Jesus paraphrases when questioned by John the Baptists’ disciples. Jesus was not being ambiguous in his answer. John would have instantly recognized his words as a distinct claim that Jesus was the Messiah.

Mormanism

• Archaeology’s repeated affirmation of the New Testament’s accuracy provides important corroboration for its reliability. This is in stark contrast with how archaeology has proved to be devastating for Mormonism.
• No Book of Mormon cities have ever been located, no Book of Mormon person, place, nation, or name has ever been found, no Book of Mormon scriptures, no Book of Mormon inscriptions… nothing which demonstrates the Book of Mormon is anything other than myth or invention has ever been found.

6. The Rebuttal Evidence: Is the Jesus of History the Same As the Jesus of Faith?

Interview #5: Gregory A. Boyd, Ph.D.

The Jesus Seminar

• The Jesus Seminar represents an extremely small number of radical-fringe scholars who are on the far, far left wing of New Testament thinking. It does not represent mainstream scholarship.
• They’ve discovered what they set out to find. A Jesus that must be naturalistic, not the supernatural son of God. His death had no special significance. Stories of his resurrection came later as a way of trying to deal with that sad reality.
• Their major assumption is that the gospels are not even generally reliable. They conclude this at the outset because the gospels include things that seem historically unlikely, like miracles. These things, they say, just don’t happen. That’s naturalism, which says that for every effect in the natural or physical world, there is a natural cause.
• They operate under the assumption that everything in history has happened according to their own experiences, and since they’ve never seen the supernatural, they assume miracles have never occurred in history.

Critiquing the Criteria

• 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 ver 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 a questionable criteria to do that.

Jesus the Wonder Worker

• 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.
• But any parallels between Jesus and other ancient rabbis who did exorcisms or prayed for rain all break down rather quickly when you look closely.
• First, 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 Jesus. It didn’t just rain when he prayed for it. He cured blindness, deafness, leprosy, and scoliosis. He commanded storms to cease, multiplied bread and fish, cast out demons, and raised sons and daughters from the dead.
• Third, Jesus performed miracles on his own authority. He gives 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.

Jesus and the Amazing Apollonius

• Apollonius of Tyana was a philosopher from the first century who was said to have healed people and to have exorcised demons; who may have raised a young girl from the dead; and who appeared to some of his followers after he died.
• If you’re going to admit that the Apollonius story is legendary, why not say the same thing about the Jesus story?
• 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.
• We have four gospels, corroborated with the letters of Paul, that can be cross-checked to some degree with non-biblical authors, like Josephus and others. With Apollonius we’re dealing with only one source.
• 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 lose—by writing Jesus’ story, and they had no ulterior motives such as money.
• The gospels write with a very confident, eye-witness perspective. Philostratus includes many tentative statements, like “It is reported that…” or “Some say this young girl had died; others say she was just ill.”
• Philostratus was writing in the early third century in Cappadocia, where Christianity had already been present for quite a while. So any borrowing would have been done by him, not by Christians.
• Finally, even if you were to grant the evidence of Apollonius, you’re still left with having to deal with the evidence for Christ.

History Versus Faith

• According to the Jesus Seminar, 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.
• But Jesus is not a symbol of anything unless he’s rooted in history. The theological truth is based on historical truth.

Part 2: Analyzing Jesus

7. The Identity Evidence: Was Jesus Really Convinced That He Was the Son of God?

Interview #6: Ben Witherington III, Ph.D.

• Some maintain that the myth of Jesus’ deity was superimposed on the Jesus tradition by over-zealous supporters years after his death.
• Jesus was a bit mysterious about his identity. He tended to shy away from forthrightly proclaiming himself to be the Messiah or Son of God.
• The Jews of Jesus’ day had no concept of the trinity. For someone to say that Jesus was God, or Yahweh, it wouldn’t have made any sense. It would be seen as clear-cut blasphemy.
• There were a host of expectations about what the Messiah would look like, and Jesus didn’t want to be pigeonholed into somebody else’s categories. Consequently, he was very careful about what he said publicly.

Exploring the Earliest Traditions

• If the Twelve disciples represent a renewed Israel, where does Jesus fit in? He’s not just part of Israel, but he’s forming the group—just as God in the Old Testament formed his people and set up the twelve tribes of Israel.
• Jesus says of John the Baptist, “Of all people born of woman, John is the greatest man on earth.” Having said that, Jesus goes even further in his ministry than John did—by doing miracles, for example. What does that say about what he thinks of himself?
• Jesus makes the truly radical statement that it’s not what enters a person that defiles him but what comes out of his heart. This sets aside huge portions of the Old Testament book of Leviticus. What kind of person thinks he has the authority to set aside the divinely inspired Jewish Scriptures and supplant them with his own teaching?
• The Romans hung Jesus on the cross with a sign above his head that said, “This is the King of the Jews.” Either Jesus made that verbal claim, or someone clearly thought he did.

By the Finger of God

• Jesus doesn’t merely see himself as a worker of miracles; he sees himself as the one in whom and through whom the promises of God come to pass. It’s a bold claim of transcendence.
• Jesus as “rabbi” taught in a radical new way. He begins his teachings with the phrase, “Amen I say to you,” which is to say, “I swear in advance to the truthfulness of what I’m about to say.”
• In Judaism you needed the testimony of two witnesses, so witness A could witness the truth of witness B and vice versa. But Jesus witnesses to the truth of his own sayings. Instead of basing his teaching on the authority of others, he speaks on his own authority.
• Jesus used the term “Abba” when he was relating to God. Abba connotes intimacy in a relationship between a child and his father. Jesus and his disciples are the only ones to use this term.
• The significance of “Abba” is that Jesus is the initiator of an intimate relationship that was previously unavailable.

Confirming His Mission

• Jesus had points in his life of identity confirmation—at his baptism, at his temptation, at the Transfiguration, and in the Garden of Gethsemane. These were crisis moments in Jesus’ life in which God confirmed to him who he was and what his mission was.
• Jesus saw his mission as coming to free Israel, God’s chosen people. His ministry was not directed at the Gentiles. That was the role of the early church.

“I and the Father are One”

• Church historian Jaroslav Pelikan has pointed out that the oldest Christian sermon, the oldest account of a Christian martyr, the oldest pagan report of the church, and the oldest liturgical prayer (1 Cor. 16:22) all refer to Jesus as Lord and God.

8. The Psychological Evidence: Was Jesus Crazy When He Claimed to Be the Son of God?

Interview #7: Gary R. Collins, Ph.D.

• People with psychological difficulties may have thinking disorders—they can’t carry on a logical conversation, they’ll jump to faulty conclusions, they’re irrational. We don’t see this in Jesus. He spoke clearly, powerfully, and eloquently. He was brilliant and had absolutely amazing insights into human nature.
• Jesus was loving, but didn’t let his compassion immobilize him; he didn’t have a bloated ego, even though he was often surrounded by adoring crowds; he maintained balance despite an often demanding lifestyle; he always knew what he was doing and where he was going; he cared deeply about people, including women and children, who weren’t seen as being important back then; he was able to accept people while not merely winking at their sin; he responded to individuals based on where they were at and what they uniquely needed.

Jesus the Hypnotist

• Was Jesus a master hypnotist, capable of convincing people under his spell to believe in his exorcisms, his transfiguration, and even his healings?
• Not everybody is equally susceptible to hypnosis. Jesus performed many miracles in front of large crowds of people. There would have been my people present resistant to hypnosis.
• Hypnosis generally doesn’t work on people who are skeptics and doubters. So how did Jesus hypnotize his brother James, who doubted him but later preached the gospel? Or Saul of Tarsus, the opponent of Christianity who later became the leader of the early church?
• Hypnosis does not explain the empty tomb.
• Hypnosis doesn’t last very long. If Jesus tricked people into believing that he had healed a man, eventually they would have found out the truth.

Jesus the Exorcist

• Is it rational to believe that evil spirits are responsible for some illnesses and bizarre behavior?
• We live in a society that believes in angels. There are spiritual forces out there, and it’s not too hard to conclude that some might be malevolent.
• When you see God working, sometimes those forces are more active, and that’s what was probably going on in the time of Jesus.

There are two equal and opposite errors we can fall into concerning demons. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are pleased with both errors.

C.S. Lewis

9. The Profile Evidence: Did Jesus Fulfill the Attributes of God?

Interview #8: Donald A. Carson, Ph.D.

Living and Forgiving Like God

• The most striking thing Jesus does is forgive sins.
• Sin, even if it is against another person, is first and foremost a defiance of God and his laws.
• When Jesus comes along and says to sinners, “I forgive you,” the religious leaders immediately recognize it as blasphemy, because nobody but God can forgive sin.

Mystery of The Incarnation

• Incarnation = God becoming man in Jesus.
• This is one of the central mysteries of Christianity. You’re dealing with formless, bodiless, omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent Spirit and finite, touchable, physical, time-bound creatures.
• If the Incarnation is true, it’s not surprising that finite minds couldn’t totally comprehend it.
• One of the closest explanations is taken from Philippians 2, where Paul tells us that Jesus, being in the form of God, did not think equality with God was something to be exploited, but emptied himself.
• Perhaps Jesus chose independently which attributes of God he would exhibit during his earthly existence.

Creator or Created?

• John 3:16 includes the phrase “his only begotten Son.” This Greek translation does not mean that Jesus was ontologically begotten in time, but rather that Jesus was unique and beloved.
• Colossians 1:15 includes the phrase “firstborn over all creation”. In this case, firstborn does not refer to a birth order, but refers to the Old Testament culture of blessing the firstborn with the lion’s share of the family estate. Firstborn is better translated to mean “supreme heir.”

The Disquieting Question of Hell

• Would God, who is described as a loving Father, really create an endless hell and consign millions of people to it simply because they do not or cannot or will not accept certain religious beliefs?
• With the entrance of sin and rebellion into the world, all humans—who are image bearers of God—have chosen to believe that we are the center of our own universe. We shake our fists at God and say, “I’ll do it my way.” The consequence is that people get hurt.
• From God’s perspective, this is shockingly disgusting. The pinnacle of his good creation have chosen to reject Him and live in a world of pain and suffering.
• What should be God’s response? If he says, “Well, I don’t give a rip,” then he’s saying that evil doesn’t matter to him. What about horrific events like the Holocaust? Don’t we expect that a good and just God would have moral judgements on evil such as this?
• If he’s the sort of God who has moral judgements on these glaring examples of evil throughout history, then he must also have moral judgements on all the divine image bearers shaking their puny fists at his face saying “I’ll do it my way.” That’s the real nature of sin.
• Hell is not a place where people are consigned because they were pretty good blokes but just didn’t believe the right stuff. They’re consigned there, first and foremost, because they defy their Maker and want to be at the center of the universe.
• Hell is not filled with people who have already repented, only God isn’t gentle enough or good enough to let them out. It’s filled with people who, for all eternity, still want to be at the center of the universe and who persist in their God-defying rebellion.
• The Bible says that there are different degrees of punishment, so it’s not clear that hell is the same level of intensity for all people.
• If God took his hands off this fallen world (common grace) so that there were no restraint on human wickedness, we would make hell. Thus if you allow a whole lot of sinners to live somewhere in a confined space where they’re not doing damage to anyone but themselves, what do you get but hell? There’s a sense in which they’re doing it to themselves, and it’s what they want because they still don’t repent.
• The Bible insists that in the end not only will justice be done, but justice will be seen to be done, so that every mouth will be stopped. No one will walk away saying they have been treated unfairly by God.
• Justice is not always done in this world; we see that every day. But on the Last Day it will be done for all to see.

Jesus and Slavery

• Why didn’t Jesus explicitly condemn the practice of slavery?
• Every major world culture until the modern period has had slavery.
• In most cases, slavery served an economic function. Without bankruptcy laws, selling yourself and/or your family into slavery was a way to discharge your debt while also providing work.
• In Roman times there were menial laborers who were slaves, and there were also others who were the equivalent of distinguished Ph.D.’s who were teaching families.
• Slavery was not tied to a particular race.
• Under the Law in ancient Jewish society, all slaves were to be set free every seventh year. This was the framework of slavery that Jesus lived through.
• Jesus did not come to overturn the Roman economic system, which included slavery. He had a greater mission—to free men and women from their sins. His message transforms people so they begin to love God with all their heart, soul, mind, and strength and to love their neighbor as themselves. Naturally, that must have an impact on the idea of slavery.
• The overthrowing of slavery is through the transformation of men and women by the gospel rather than through merely changing an economic system.
• If you want lasting change, you need to transform the hearts of human beings.
• The driving impetus for the abolition of slavery was the evangelical awakening in England. Christians rammed abolition through Parliament in the beginning of the nineteenth century and then eventually used British gunboats to stop the slave trade across the Atlantic.

Matching the Sketch of God

Every attribute of God, says the New Testament, is found in Jesus Christ:

• Omniscience: John 16:30 “Now we can see that you know all things.”
• Omnipresence: Matthew 28:20 “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
• Omnipotence: Matthew 28:18 “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
• Eternality: John 1:1 “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
• Immutability: Hebrews 13:8 “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

10. The Fingerprint Evidence: Did Jesus—and Jesus Alone—Match the Identity of the Messiah?

Interview #9: Louis S. Lapides, M.Div., Th.M.

• The Jesus in the New Testament fulfills every prophesy made centuries earlier in the Old Testament.

The Coincidence Argument

• Could Jesus have merely fulfilled the prophesies by chance?
• No, it is mathematically impossible.
• The probability of fulfilling all forty-eight prophecies is one in a trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion.

The Altered Gospel Argument

• Did the gospel writers fabricate details to make it appear that Jesus fulfilled the prophecies?
• There are checks and balances both inside and outside the Christian community. When the gospels were first being circulated, there were other people living who had witnessed the same events of Jesus’ life. They would have disputed any lies.
• Why would the disciples die for a story that they fabricated?
• The Jewish community would have jumped on any opportunity to discredit the gospels by pointing out falsehoods. While the Talmud refers to Jesus in derogatory ways, it never once makes the claim that the fulfillment of prophecies was falsified.

The Intentional Fulfillment Argument

• Could Jesus have merely maneuvered his life in a way to fulfill the prophecies?
• For some prophecies (e.g. riding into Jerusalem on a donkey), that is conceivable. But there are many other prophecies where that wouldn’t have been possible.
• Jesus’ ancestry, birth place, method of execution, and amount of silver Judas was paid to betray him were all outside of his control.

Part 3: Researching The Resurrection

11. The Medical Evidence: Was Jesus’ Death a Sham and His Resurrection a Hoax?

Interview #10: Alexander Metherell, M.D., PH.D.

The Torture Before the Cross

• Jesus sweat blood as he prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before his crucifixion. This medical phenomena is known as hematidrosis, and is associated with a high degree of psychological stress.
• Roman floggings were terribly brutal. A soldier’s whip would consist of braided leather thongs with metal balls and sharp bones woven into them.
• A typical flogging was 39 lashes, but frequently were many more. The back would be so shredded that part of the spine was sometimes exposed by the deep cuts. The whipping would have gone all the way from the shoulders down to the back, the buttocks, and the back of the legs.
• Victims of floggings often died before crucifixion. At the very least, the victim would experience extreme pain and go into hypovolemic shock.
• Hypovolemic shock occurs when you lose large amounts of blood. As a result, the heart races, blood pressure drops, causing fainting or collapse, kidneys stop producing urine, and the person becomes very thirsty as the body craves fluids to replace the lost blood volume.

The sufferer’s veins were laid bare, and the very muscles, sinews, and bowels of the victim were open to exposure.

Eusebius, A third-century historian

The Agony of the Cross

• Spikes five to seven inches long would be driven into the wrists. This would crush the median nerve causing excruciating pain.
• The stress of hanging on the cross would immediately dislocate both shoulders.

The Cause of Death

• Crucifixion is essentially an agonizing slow death by asphyxiation.
• Stresses on the muscles and diaphragm put the chest into the inhaled position. In order to exhale, the individual must push up on their feet so that the tension on the muscles would be eased for a moment.
• As a person slows down his breathing, he goes into respiratory acidosis—the carbon dioxide in the blood is dissolved as carbonic acid causing irregular heartbeat.
• With an erratic heartbeat, Jesus would have known that he was at the moment of death, which is when he was able to say, “Lord, into your hands I commit my spirit.” And then he would have died of cardiac arrest.
• Hypovolemic shock would have caused a sustained rapid heartbeat, contributing to heart failure, and resulting in a collection of fluid in the membrane around the heard and lungs.
• When the Roman soldier pierced Jesus’ side, this fluid would have come gushing out like “water,” followed by a large volume of blood.

12. The Evidence of the Missing Body: Was Jesus’ Body Really Absent from His Tomb?

Interview #11: William Lane Craig, PH.D., D.Th.

Is Joseph of Arimathea Historical?

• Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin. In Mark’s gospel it says that the entire Sanhedrin voted to condemn Jesus. Why would Joseph give Jesus a ceremonial burial after voting for his death?
• Luke’s gospel adds the important detail that Joseph of Arimathea was absent for the Sanhedrin vote.
• Joseph of Arimathea would be a highly improbable figure for the early Christian gospel writers to invent. The Jewish leaders instigated the crucifixion. Why would Christians invent one who did the right thing?
• If this burial by Joseph was a legend that developed later, you’d expect to find other competing burial traditions about what happened to Jesus’ body. However, you don’t find these at all.

Reconciling Contradictions

The discovery of the empty tomb is differently described by the various gospels, but if we apply the same sort of criteria that we would apply to any other ancient literary sources, then the evidence is firm and plausible enough to necessitate the conclusion that the tomb was, indeed, found empty.

Michael Grant

• We have two narratives of Hannibal crossing the Alps to attach Rome, and they’re incompatible and irreconcilable. Yet no classical historian doubts the fact that Hannibal did mount such a campaign. That’s a nonbiblical illustration of discrepancies in secondary details failing to undermine the historical core of a historical story.
• Most scholars recognize that according to early Jewish time-reckoning, any part of a day counted as a full day.

Can the Witnesses Be Trusted?

• The gospels agree that the empty tomb was discovered by women who were friends and followers of Jesus. Does their relationship with Jesus call the reliability of their testimony into question?
• Women were on a very low run on the social ladder in first-century Palestine.
• Women’s testimony was regarded as so worthless that they weren’t even allowed to serve as legal witnesses in a Jewish court of law.
• It is absolutely remarkable that the chief witnesses to the empty tomb are these women who were friends of Jesus. Any later legendary account would have certainly portrayed male disciples as discovering the tomb.
• This shows that the gospel writers faithfully recorded what happened, even if it was embarrassing.

The Affirmative Evidence

• The empty tomb is definitely implicit in the early tradition that is passed along by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15, which is a very old and reliable source of historical information about Jesus.
• The site of Jesus’s tomb was known to Christian and Jew alike. So if it weren’t empty, it would be impossible for a movement founded on belief in the Resurrection to have come into existence in the same city where this man had been publicly executed and buried.
• We can tell from the language, grammar, and style that Mark got his empty tomb story from and earlier source. In fact, there’s evidence it was written before 37 AD which is much too early for legend to have seriously corrupted it.
• There’s the simplicity of the empty tomb story in Mark. Fictional apocryphal accounts from the second century contain all kinds of flowery narratives.
• The unanimous testimony that the empty tomb was discovered by women argues for the authenticity of the story.
• The earliest Jewish polemic presupposes the historicity of the empty tomb. In other words, there was nobody who was claiming that the tomb still contained Jesus’ body.
• As long as the existence of God is even possible, it’s possible that he acted in history by raising Jesus from the dead.

13. The Evidence of Appearances: Was Jesus Seen Alive After His Death on the Cross?

Interview #12: Gary Habermas, Ph.D., D.D.

• The creed in 1 Corinthians 15 can be traced back to within two to eight years of the Resurrection, when Paul received it in either Damascus or Jerusalem. It is incredibly early material—primitive, unadorned testimony to the fact that Jesus appeared alive to skeptics like Paul and James, as well as to Peter and the rest of the disciples.
• The creed mentions that Jesus appeared to Peter first. Not surprising because women were not considered competent eye-witnesses. Placing Peter first could indicate logical priority rather than temporal priority.

14. The Circumstantial Evidence: Are There Any Supporting Facts That Point to the Resurrection?

Interview #13: J.P. Moreland, Ph.D.

Exhibit 1: The Disciples Died for Their Beliefs

• The disciples faced a life of hardship. They often went without food, slept exposed to the elements, were ridiculed, beaten, imprisoned, and most of them executed in torturous ways. Why? Because they were convinced without a shadow of a doubt that they had seen Jesus Christ alive from the dead.
• How is this different than Muslims, Mormans, and followers of Jim Jones who died for their beliefs?
• Muslims might be willing to die for their belief that Allah revealed himself to Muhammad, but this revelation was not done in a publicly observable way. So they could be wrong about it. They may sincerely thing it’s true, but they can’t know for a fact, because they didn’t witness it themselves. However, the apostles were willing to die for something they had seen with their own eyes and touched with their own hands.
• People will die for their religious beliefs if they sincerely believe they’re true, but people won’t die for their religious beliefs if they know their beliefs are false.

Exhibit 2: The Conversion of Skeptics

• There were hardened skeptics who didn’t believe in Jesus before his crucifixion who turned around and adopted the Christian faith after Jesus’ death. E.g. James and Paul.

Exhibit 3: Changes to Key Social Structures

• The Jewish culture has thousands of years of maintaining social institutions entrusted to them by God.
• But five weeks after Jesus is crucified, over 10,000 Jews are following him and claiming that he is the initiator of a new religion. And they’re willing to give up all five of the social institutions that they have been taught since childhood have such importance.
• Jewish people no longer offer sacrifices.
• Jews began to teach that you don’t become an upstanding member of the community merely by keeping Moses’ laws.
• The “sabbath” moves from Saturday to Sunday, because Sunday is when Jesus rose from the dead.
• Jews believed in monotheism—only one God. While Christians teach a form of monotheism, they say that the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God.
• Christians pictured the Messiah as someone who suffered and died for the sins of the world, whereas Jews had been trained to believe that the Messiah was going to be a political leader.

Exhibit 4: Communion and Baptism

• Early Christians celebrate by remembering Jesus’s death through communion. Why? Because they realized that Jesus’ slaying was a necessary step to a much greater victory. His murder wasn’t the last word—the last word was that he had conquered death for all of us by rising from the dead.
• The early church adopted a form of baptism from their Jewish upbringing, called proselyte baptism. When Gentiles wanted to take upon themselves the laws of Moses, the Jews would baptize those Gentiles in the authority of the God of Israel.
• But in the New Testament, people are baptized in the name of the God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Jesus has been elevated to the full status of God.
• Baptism is also a celebration of Jesus’ death. By going underwater, you’re celebrating his death, and by being brought out of the water, you’re celebrating the fact that Jesus was raised to newness of life.

Exhibit 5: The Emergence of the Church

• When a major cultural shift takes place, historians always look for events that can explain it.
• The Christian church was a movement that began shortly after the death of Jesus. It spread rapidly and triumphed over a number of competing ideologies, eventually overwhelming the entire Roman empire.
• Who would have predicted in the first century that the early Christian church, whose primary message was that a crucified carpenter from an obscure village triumphed over the grave, would outlast the Roman Empire?

Final Evidence

• All over the world, in every culture, people from all kinds of backgrounds and personalities—well educated and not, rich and poor, thinkers and feelers, men and women—they all will testify that more than any single thing in their lives, Jesus Christ has changed them.

15: The Verdict of History: What Does the Evidence Establish—And What Does It Mean Today?

• If Jesus is the Son of God, his teachings are more than just good ideas from a wise teacher; they are divine insights on which I can confidently build my life.
• If Jesus sets the standard for morality, I can now have an unwavering foundation for my choices and decisions, rather than basing them on the ever-shifting sands of expediency and self-centeredness.
• If Jesus did rise from the dead, he’s still alive today and available for me to encounter on a personal basis.
• If Jesus conquered death, he can open the door of eternal life for me, too.
• If Jesus has divine power, he has the supernatural ability to guide me and help me and transform me as I follow him.
• If Jesus personally knows the pain of loss and suffering, he can comfort and encourage me in the midst of the turbulence that he himself warned is inevitable in a world corrupted by sin.
• If Jesus loves me as he says, he has my best interests at heart. That means I have nothing to lose and everything to gain by committing myself to him and his purposes.
• If Jesus is who he claims to be, as my Creator he rightfully deserves my allegiance, obedience and worship.

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