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| The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ | 
 enlarge | Author: Lee Strobel
Publisher: Zondervan
Category: Book
List Price: $21.99
Buy New: $11.58
You Save: $10.41 (47%)
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Avg. Customer Rating:  71 reviews
Sales Rank: 8347
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 320
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 8.6 x 5.6 x 1.2
ISBN: 031024210X
Dewey Decimal Number: 232.908
EAN: 9780310242109
ASIN: 031024210X
Publication Date: September 10, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews:
 Very compelling- great book August 14, 2008
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 August 10, 2008
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.
 Some theological training might help July 1, 2008
0 out of 9 found this review helpful
Strobel seems sincere and he has a readable style but his theological training and his understanding of basic biblical facts are woefully short of what is needed for a work like this one.
More on Jesus to refute the skeptics June 17, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is the type of book that infuriates the active skeptics...I've read the blogs. After all, if Jesus is who the Bible makes Him out to be, He is narrow-minded ("I am the way..."), egocentric ("I am" and "I and the Father are one") and sometimes sounds like the class bully ("you are sons of your father, the Devil!"). But, like the exclusivistic version of him or not, it is vital to determine just who this Jesus of Nazareth really is. In yet another "The Case for..." book, Lee Strobel puts on his Doubting Thomas persona to interview some important scholars to determine just who this Man is and determine if Evangelical Christianity is right about its views. And, like his other books, Strobel does an excellent job bringing out information that everyone should consider when making their final opinions. The book is very readable, though the reader does need to pay attention and perhaps even highlight for notes. It is fun to stay with Strobel's thinking style, as his questions are very much on mark for where the typcial skeptic would have to go. If there is any criticism of the book, it's that some of the material is very similar to The Case for Christ, which was the original in the series. But with only six "challenges" in this book, there is much room to go deeper than the original. Overall, I believe every Christian should be able to handle the many issues that arise regarding the authentic Jesus, and after The Case for Christ, I would highly recommend this for the average layperson who wants to own his/her own faith.
Awesome March 28, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
I love that he asks the toughest questions, and really looks for the answers. He isn't just calling it in, he's down in the trenches, and ends up finding answers he originally didn't believe were our there.
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