The Case for the Real Jesus Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Resources by Lee Strobel

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Contents

  Introduction

  Challenge #1

  Challenge #2

  Challenge #3

  Part 1

  Part 2

  Challenge #4

  Challenge #5

  Challenge #6

  Conclusion

  Appendix A

  Appendix B

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Meet Lee Strobel

  About the Publisher

  The Case for the Real Jesus

  Lee Strobel

  * * *

  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?

  Resources by Lee Strobel

  The Case for Christ

  The Case for Christ (audio)

  The Case for Christ—Student Edition (with Jane Vogel)

  The Case for Christ for Kids (with Rob Suggs)

  The Case for Christmas

  The Case for Christmas (audio)

  The Case for a Creator

  The Case for a Creator (audio)

  The Case for a Creator—Student Edition (with Jane Vogel)

  The Case for a Creator for Kids (with Rob Suggs)

  The Case for Easter

  The Case for Faith

  The Case for Faith (audio)

  The Case for Faith—Student Edition (with Jane Vogel)

  The Case for Faith for Kids (with Rob Suggs)

  Discussing the Da Vinci Code (curriculum; with Garry Poole)

  Discussing the Da Vinci Code (discussion guide; with Garry Poole)

  Exploring the Da Vinci Code (with Garry Poole)

  Experiencing the Passion of Jesus (with Garry Poole)

  Faith Under Fire (curriculum series)

  God’s Outrageous Claims

  Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry and Mary

  Off My Case for Kids (with Robert Elmer)

  Surviving a Spiritual Mismatch in Marriage (with Leslie Strobel)

  Surviving a Spiritual Mismatch in Marriage (audio)

  What Jesus Would Say

  THE CASE FOR THE REAL JESUS

  A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks

  on the Identity of Christ

  LEE STROBEL

  Copyright

  The Case for the Real Jesus

  EPub Reader Format

  Copyright © 2007 by Lee Strobel

  This title is also available as a Zondervan audio product.

  Visit www.zondervan.com/audiopages for more information.

  Requests for information should be addressed to:

  Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530

  ISBN-13: 978-0-310-56571-0

  All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.

  Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) printed in this book are offered as a resource to you. These are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan, nor do we vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Cover design: Kurt Dietsch

  Cover photo: David Paterson / Alamy

  For Frank Cate

  Who’s at Home with the real Jesus

  CONTENTS

  Resources by Lee Strobel

  Copyright

  Introduction: Searching for the Real Jesus

  Challenge #1

  “Scholars Are Uncovering a Radically Different Jesus in Ancient Documents Just as Credible as the Four Gospels”

  Challenge #2

  “The Bible’s Portrait of Jesus Can’t Be Trusted Because the Church Tampered with the Text”

  Challenge #3

  Part 1: “New Explanations Have Refuted Jesus’ Resurrection”

  Part 2: The Cross-Examination

  Challenge #4

  “Christianity’s Beliefs about Jesus Were Copied from Pagan Religions”

  Challenge #5

  “Jesus Was an Imposter Who Failed to Fulfill the Messianic Prophecies”

  Challenge #6

  “People Should Be Free to Pick and Choose What to Believe about Jesus”

  Conclusion: Discovering the Real Jesus

  Appendix A

  A Summary of Evidence from The Case for Christ

  Appendix B

  Helpful Websites to Investigate the Real Jesus

  Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Meet Lee Strobel

  About the Publisher

  INTRODUCTION

  SEARCHING FOR THE REAL JESUS

  Much of the history of Christianity has been devoted to domesticating Jesus, to reducing that elusive, enigmatic, paradoxical person to dimensions we can comprehend, understand, and convert to our own purposes. So far it hasn’t worked.

  Catholic priest Andrew Greeley1

  Can anybody show me the real Jesus?

  from a song by Canadian rock band downhere2

  At first glance, there was nothing unusual about Evergreen Cemetery in Oakland, California. There were the expected rows upon rows of grave markers, some festooned with flowers, others with small American flags hanging limp in the still winter air. I meandered through the property and soon came upon a gently sloping hillside—and there, standing sentry over a wide expanse of grass, was a solitary three-foot headstone. Its stunning inscription: “In Memory of the Victims of the Jonestown Tragedy.”

  Beneath the ground were the remains of more than four hundred Californians who had followed the siren call of self-proclaimed messiah Jim Jones down to the jungles of South America to build a paradise of racial equality and harmony. Believing his creed of love and equal opportunity, beguiled by his charisma and eloquence, they put their complete faith in this magnetic visionary.

  His most audacious boast: he was the reincarnation of Christ—the real Jesus.3

  The pilgrims, intent on living out Jones’s doctrine of peace and tolerance, arrived in a remote rainforest of Guyana, only to realize over time that he was building a hellish enclave of repression and violence. When a visiting U.S. congressman and a contingent of journalists threatened him with exposure, Jones ordered them ambushed and killed before they could leave on a private plane.

  Then Jones issued his now-infamous command: all of his followers must drink cyanide-laced punch. Syringes were used to squirt the poison into the mouths of infants. Those who refused were shot. Soon more than nine hundred men, women, and children were in the contorted throes of death under the scorching sun, and Jones ended his own life with a bullet to the head.

  The bodies of 409 victims, more than half of them babies and children, were shipped back to California in unadorned wooden caskets and buried at Evergreen Cemetery. In the nearly thirty years since the Jonestown tragedy, few have come to visit.

  On this day, I stood in silence and reverence. As I shook my head at this senseless loss, one thought coursed through my mind: Beliefs have very real consequences.r />
  These victims believed in Jones. They subscribed to his utopian vision. His dogma became their own. But ultimately the truth is this: Faith is only as good as the one in whom it’s invested.

  WHO IS JESUS?

  Search for Jesus at Amazon.com and you’ll find 175,986 books—and, yes, now one more. Google his name and in a blink of the eye you’ll get 165 million references. Invite people to tell you who they think the real Jesus is—as Jon Meacham and Sally Quinn did at Newsweek’s website “On Faith” just before Christmas in 2006—and you’ll soon be buried in an avalanche of wildly disparate opinions, as these eye-opening excerpts demonstrate:

  “We don’t know many historical facts concerning Jesus, but apparently he was a rabbi who was an example of compassion. Since then he has been exploited by Christians, particularly Americans.”

  “Jesus is real, in the sense that he exists for those who want him to exist.”

  “By today’s standards, Jesus was a liberal.”

  “Jesus was one of a thousand Jews murdered by the Romans for threatening Roman rule.”

  “Jesus is my personal Higher Power. He helps me stay sober one day at a time.”

  “Jesus was Everyman. His name could have as well been Morris. Too bad he was in male form this time around. Better luck next time.”

  “I believe Jesus is the Son of God. I believe I am a Son of God.”

  “Even strict Christians consider Jesus the Son of God only in a symbolic way.”

  “Jesus was an enlightened being.”

  “Jesus is the Son of God who was born, died, and rose from the dead to save us from our sins. He lives today, and he will come to earth again.”

  “It’s not even obvious that Jesus was a historical figure. If he was, the legends around him—a Son of God who was born of a virgin, worked miracles, and rose from the dead—were common stories in the ancient Near East. The myths about Jesus are not even original.”

  “Jesus is about as ‘real’ as Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, or King Arthur.”

  “Jesus was a man who was nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change.”

  “So who was Jesus? A highly moral person, much like Teresa of Calcutta. No less, but no more.”

  “Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher who thought God would intervene to save Israel from Roman rule and himself from death. God didn’t do either. Jesus died disappointed, and that’s that. Anything more is fantasy.”

  “Honestly—I don’t care about Jesus. Who or what he was, is, or isn’t doesn’t affect me.”

  “There is no separation or distinction between where God leaves off and where we begin. We are all One, all Divine, just like Jesus.”

  “Jesus was a man we should pity more than revile or worship. He suffered from what contemporary psychologists now know to be delusions of grandeur, bipolar disorder, and probably acute schizophrenia.”

  “Jesus is a fairy tale for grown-ups. Unfortunately, he’s a fairy tale that leads people to bomb clinics, despise women, denigrate reason, and embrace greed. Any behavior can be justified when you have Jesus as your eternal ‘Get out of Jail’ card.”

  “Who was Jesus? An apocalyptic prophet who bet wrong and died as a result. He should be ignored, not celebrated.”4

  As you can see, after two thousand years there’s not exactly a consensus about the founder of Christianity.

  “Everyone claims their Jesus is the ‘real one,’ the only authentic Christ unperverted by secular society or religious institutions,” said Chris Suellentrop, who writes for Slate and the New York Times. “The emergence of Jesus as a computer programmer in The Matrix shows how he can be reinvented for any age, even the future.”5

  Jesus has been called an intellectual who spouted pithy aphorisms; a Mediterranean cynic leading a wandering band of proto-hippies; an androgynous feminist and ambassador of Sophia, the female embodiment of divine wisdom; a clever messianic pretender; a gay magician; a peasant revolutionary; and a Jewish Zen master. Asked one philosopher:

  So who was Jesus? Was he a wandering hasid, or holy man, as Géza Vermès and A. N. Wilson propose? Was he a “peasant Jewish cynic,” as John Dominic Crossan alleges? Was he a magician who sought to lead Israel astray, as the Talmud holds? Was he a self-proclaimed prophet who died in disillusionment, as Albert Schweitzer maintained? Was he some first-century personage whose purported miracles and divinity were mere myths or fabrications by the early church—as David F. Strauss, Rudolf Bultmann, and John Hick suggest? Or was he, as the Gospels assert, “The Christ, the Son of the living God”?6

  People who have searched for Jesus through history have often discovered exactly who they wanted to find in the first place. “In other words,” said Charlotte Allen in The Human Christ, “the liberal searchers found a liberal Jesus…the deists found a deist, the Romantics a Romantic, the existentialists an existentialist, and the liberationists a Jesus of class struggle.”7

  Is it possible to find the real Jesus? That depends on how you answer a more foundational question: Are you willing to set aside your preconceptions and let the evidence take you wherever it will? And what about me—am I willing to do the same?

  I had to honestly ask myself that question when I was an atheist and decided to investigate the identity of Jesus. And more recently, this time as a Christian, I had to face that issue squarely once again when I was confronted by six potent challenges that could undermine everything I had come to believe about him.

  NOT SO FAST…

  If you had asked my opinion about Jesus when I was the legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, I would have given you an adamant answer: if he lived, he was undoubtedly a rabble-rousing prophet who found himself on the wrong side of the religious and political leaders of his day. Claims about his divinity clearly were manufactured by his followers long after his unfortunate demise. As an atheist, I ruled out any possibility of the virgin birth, miracles, the resurrection, or anything else supernatural.

  It was my agnostic wife’s conversion to Christianity and the ensuing positive changes in her character that prompted me to use my legal training and journalism experience to systematically search for the real Jesus. After nearly two years of studying ancient history and archaeology, I found the evidence leading me to the unexpected verdict that Jesus is the unique Son of God who authenticated his divinity by returning from the dead. It wasn’t the outcome I was necessarily seeking, but it was the conclusion that I believe the evidence persuasively warranted.

  For my book The Case for Christ, in which I retraced and expanded upon my original journey, I sat down with respected scholars with doctorates from Brandeis, Cambridge, Princeton, the University of Chicago, and elsewhere, peppering them with the tough questions that had vexed me as a skeptic. I walked away all the more persuaded that the cumulative evidence established the deity of Jesus in a clear and convincing way.8

  But not so fast…

  That book was published in 1998. Since then the Jesus of historic Christianity has come under increasingly fierce attack. From college classrooms to bestselling books to the Internet, scholars and popular writers are seeking to debunk the traditional Christ. They’re capturing the public’s imagination with radical new portraits of Jesus that bear scant resemblance to the time-honored picture embraced by the church.

  In 2003, Dan Brown’s wildly successful novel The Da Vinci Code provided a flashpoint for the controversy, bringing jaw-dropping allegations about church history and Jesus’ identity into the public’s consciousness through an intoxicating brew of fact and fiction. But the issues go much deeper.

  For many people, their first exposure to a different Jesus came with extensive news coverage of the Jesus Seminar, a group of highly skeptical professors who captivated the media’s attention in the 1990s by using colored beads to vote on what Jesus really said. The group’s conclusion: fewer than one in five sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels actually came from him. In the Lord’s Prayer, the Seminar was confident o
nly of the words “Our Father.” There were similar results when the participants considered which deeds of Jesus were authentic.

  What made the Jesus Seminar unique was that it bypassed the usual academic channels and instead enthusiastically took its findings directly to the public. “These scholars have suddenly become concerned—to the point of being almost evangelistic—with shaping public opinion about Jesus with their research,” said one New Testament expert.9

  They found a ready audience in many Americans who were receptive to a new Jesus. With the public’s appetite whetted, publishers began pumping out scores of popular books touting various revisionist theories about the “real” Christ. At the same time, the Internet spawned a proliferation of websites and blogs that offer out-of-the-box speculation about the Nazarene. An equal-opportunity phenomenon, the World Wide Web doesn’t discriminate between sober-minded scholars and delusional crackpots, leaving visitors without a reliable filter to determine what’s trustworthy and what’s not.

  Meanwhile, college classrooms, increasingly dominated by liberal faculty members who grew up in the religiously suspicious 1960s, provided a fertile field for avant-garde beliefs about Jesus and Christianity. According to a landmark 2006 study by professors from Harvard and George Mason universities, the percentage of atheists and agnostics teaching at U.S. colleges is three times greater than in the population as a whole. More than half of college professors believe the Bible is “an ancient book of fables, legends, history, and moral precepts,” compared to less than one-fifth of the general population.10

  In recent years, six major challenges to the traditional view of Jesus have emerged out of this milieu. They are among the most powerful and prevalent objections to creedal Christianity that are currently circulating in popular culture. These issues have left many Christians scratching their heads, unsure how to respond, and have confused countless spiritual seekers about who Jesus is—or whether they can come to any solid conclusions about him at all.