At some point, I'll do a more specific review of this book . . .

Review for Amazon.com

A quick summary of the review: this is not an exhaustive book on the evidence for Jesus as the Messiah (i.e., the Christ), but rather an overview of the possibilities. I'm not even sure it's meant to be, in itself, completely convicting (i.e., readers put the book down convinced of Christianity's truth claims and become believers themselves), but rather, convince the reader that there is a reasonable possibility that the historical claims of Christianity are in fact based on true fact. In that sense, he succeeded with me. Sure, he pulled his punches, and he certainly didn't think of all the objections to Christianity I have.

However, that's not even the point. The final section of the book, within its conclusion, is titled, "Reaching your own verdict." It includes passages that should be quoted directly:

Perhaps I didn't address the objection that's uppermost in your mind. Fair enough. No single book can deal with every nuance. However, I trust that the amount of information reported in these pages will at least have convinced you that it's reasonable — in fact, imperative — to continue your investigation.

Pinpoint where you think the evidence needs to be bolstered and then seek out additional answers from well-respected scholars.

So Strobel was not even suggesting that he wrote the be-all, end-all apologetics work. He was just, as Jim Morrison said about real poetry, "ticking off the possibilities."

The content: While Strobel never comes out and says it, this book tends to be one long exploration of the "Lord, Lunatic, or Liar" argument. The argument is this: Jesus claimed to be God. Either he was indeed God (Lord), or he was a lunatic, or he was a liar. Critics point out that there are other alternatives, among them: that perhaps Jesus never claimed to be God, that perhaps his disciples misrepresented him. Strobel indeed attempts to deal with those criticisms, and that's where he starts, for the criticism that Jesus never claimed this is a criticism of the accuracy of the New Testament texts (i.e., that their authors misrepresented Jesus' words, deliberately or otherwise).

Part one is entitled "Examining the Record" and deals almost exclusively with questions of the New Testament's reliability, transmission, and canonization. None of the six chapters in this section go into tremendous detail, but rather offer an overview of textual criticism.

Part two deals with the character of Jesus as presented in the New Testament, particularly the four canonical gospels. It deals with whether Jesus actually claimed and understood himself to be God (as opposed to some liberal interpretations of the gospels), whether Jesus was mentally stable, and whether Jesus had the attributes of the expected Jewish Messiah.

Part three: the resurrection. Could Jesus have survived it and thereby faked his resurrection? Is there reason to believe Jesus' body was not in the tomb? Was Jesus really seen after his crucifixion?

Strobel doesn't spend much time on each issue, presumably because he didn't want to have a bloated book. He does provide short bibliographies at the end of each chapter, as well as a comprehensive bibliography at the end of the book.

Now for some specific criticisms of the content: First, much of the argument relies on reasoning that runs like this: "It's reasonable that x would have happened, so we can trust the account," or its mirror, "It's not reasonable that the opposite of what the gospel claims would have happened, so we can trust the account." Reasonable speculation, in other words. This is particularly evident in the chapters on whether or not Jesus' body was in the tomb (Who could have removed it? What would have been their motivation? That's about the best the argument gets.) and Jesus' post-crucifixion appearances.

Another problem I have with the book is with the issue of legend. One thing Strobel returns to is the question of whether or not there was enough time between Jesus' life and the writing of the gospels for legend to take hold and exaggerate some of the story. The argument that Strobel's experts continually offer is there was not enough time for legend to affect this, because there were people still living who'd witnessed it and could say that the gospels had it all wrong. But this assumes a couple of things:

• That there would have been people in a position to check up on the gospel writers. Most early Christians were not part of the Roman aristocracy who could wander over the Middle East to check out the facts.
• That the gospels would have been widely known within the original witnesses' lifetimes. As we know from the history of canonization, many of the epistles were suspect because they were only locally known. (I believe The Second Epistle of Peter suffered from this suspicion.)

Strobel, who's supposed to be pulling no punches and asking tough questions, never seems to consider these possibilities, let alone bring them up.

Lastly, much has been made if this book's one-sidedness. This doesn't bother me much, for it's clear from the title that such will be the situation. This is not The Case of Christ or The Trial of Christ or Atheism versus Christ but rather, The Case FOR Christ. There's a big difference there. Strobel is not try to present both sides of the issue. Indeed, how could he? There are other books that do that (Strobel mentions some of them in his bibliography, in fact), but they tend be written by two people: a believer and a non-believer. Imagine that.