The Case for Easter: A Journalist Investigates Evidence for the Resurrection (Case for ... Series)

This was a great read, but was hard to understand sometimes with the wording it was written in!

The content is great. The book is small (about the size of my hand) and very thin. I paid about $10 for the paperback version. The retail price printed on the back cover is $2.99 so I’m feeling a bit frustrated with myself for way overpaying for this book.

Lee Patrick Strobel (born 1952) has written several popular apologetics books, such as  The Case for Faith: A Journalist Investigates the Toughest Objections to Christianity , The Case For A Creator: A Journalist Investigates Scientific Evidence That Points Toward God (Strobel, Lee) , etc. This book is an excerpt from Strobel's book  The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus .He defends the account of the use of nails in Jesus' crucifixion, as "In 1968 archaeologists in Jerusalem found the remains of about three dozen Jews who had died during the uprising against Rome in 70 AD. One victim... had been crucified. And sure enough, they found a seven-inch nail still driven into his feet..." (Pg. 23)He interviewed William Lane Craig, asking him, "Mark says that the entire Sanhedrin voted to condemn Jesus... If that's true, this means Joseph of Arimathea cast his ballot to kill Jesus. Isn't it highly unlikely that he would have then come to give Jesus an honorable burial?' Craig replied, "Luke may have felt the same discomfort... which would explain why he added one important detail---Joseph of Arimathea wasn't present when the official vote was taken." (Pg. 38)Strobel also asked him about the guards at the tomb in Matt 27:65-28:1-15, and he replied, "Only Matthew reports that guards were placed around the tomb... But in any event, I don't think the guard story is an important facet of the evidence for the resurrection. For one thing, it's too disputed by contemporary scholarship. I find it's prudent to base my arguments on evidence that's most widely accepted by the majority of scholars, so the guard story is better left aside." (Pg. 40-41) Strobel asks, "Why would the Jewish authorities have placed guards at the tomb in the first place? If they were anticipating a resurrection or the disciples faking one, this would mean they had a better understanding of Jesus' predictions about his resurrection than the disciples did!" Craig replied, "maybe they placed the guards there to prevent any sort of tomb robbery or other disturbances from happening during Passover. We don't know. That's a good argument; I grant its full force. But I don't think it's insuperable." (Pg. 42)Concerning the differences in the gospel accounts, Craig stated, "there is a historical core to this story that is reliable and can be depended upon, however conflicting the secondary details might be. So we can have great confidence in the core that is common to the narratives and that would be agreed upon by the majority of New Testament scholars today, even if there are some differences concerning... the number of angels, and so forth. Those kinds of secondary discrepancies wouldn't bother a historian." (Pg. 46)Strobel asked Gary Habermas, "Doesn't it bother you that the earliest gospel [Mark] doesn't even report any post-resurrection appearances?" and he replied, "I don't have a problem with that whatsoever... Even if Mark does end there, which not everyone believes, you still have him reporting that the tomb is empty, and a young man proclaiming, 'He is risen!' and telling the women that there will be appearances." (Pg. 75)Strobel's books are understandably highly popular, and he has a definite skill for posing some "tough" questions. Anyone interested in Christian apologetics will be interested in this book.

THE CASE FOR EASTER is a thin little book printed on cheap paper that seeks to prove three momentous tenets of the Christian faith. First, that Jesus Christ died on the cross; second, that he vacated the tomb in which he had been laid; third, that he afterwards appeared alive before others. The author, Lee Strobel, presents himself as an atheist who interviewed a different theologian on each these points, tested his reasoning and found it convincing. Distinguished as a legal reporter, he asserts that his method is no different from that used when collecting evidence in the case of a murder, a fraud or a missing person.The book is laid out neatly in three parts, one for each question. The first is "The Medical Evidence: Was Jesus' Death a Sham and His Resurrection a Hoax?" Here Alexander Metherell, a medical doctor, engineer and Christian, describes for the author the gruesome physical effects of a Roman flogging and crucifixion followed by a spear through the ribs. He leaves no doubt that anyone who suffered the ordeal of Jesus Christ as described in the Gospels could not have survived to perpetrate a hoax. Nor, if by some amazing happenstance he did manage to survive, would he have been in a condition to get up and go anywhere on his own.The second part is "The Evidence of the Missing Body: Was Jesus' Body Really Absent From His Tomb?" Here the theologian, professor and author William Lane Craig argues that Jesus' body was not thrown in a common grave along with others of the crucified, but taken by Joseph of Arimathea and placed in a separate tomb, just as Scripture says. He describes the way such a tomb would be sealed, explains why some women followers of Christ would have gone to visit the tomb and reconciles discrepancies in the different Gospels regarding their names, their actions and the presence of guards. He seconds the finding of historian Michael Grant that "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." (p.46)Anticipating the supernatural event of part 3, Craig dismisses the idea that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is improbable. What is improbable is the idea that his dead body spontaneously came back to life. "But the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead doesn't contradict science or any known facts of experience. All it requires is that God exists, and I think there are good independent reasons for believing that he does... As long as the existence of God is even possible, it's possible that he acted in history by raising Jesus from the dead." (56)The third part is "The Evidence of Appearances: Was Jesus Seen Alive After His Death on the Cross?" Here the theologian Gary Habermas, who has authored seven books on this question, lists all those witnesses named in Scriptural accounts, relates these accounts to the period immediately following the crucifixion and disputes the contention of naysayers that they could be based on legends or hallucinations. The once-atheistic author is so impressed that he confesses: "Although I tried, I couldn't think of any more thoroughly attested event in ancient history." (74) He concludes the book by avowing his faith in Jesus Christ as his savior from original sin. (87)Needless to say, those who already believe in Scripture will find this exercise rewarding, because it will help them to combat the objections of non-believers and possibly to settle their own doubts. Non-believers will find it rewarding for exactly the opposite reasons. Few readers, I suspect, will be converted one way or the other, because the inquiry is clearly rigged. The attempt of the experts (and the already converted author) is not really to weigh the so-called evidence pro and con as a jury, but rather to plead the case as a defense attorney, producing all the reasons, suppositions and imagined scenarios that could possibly support Scripture. In the process, a huge number of methodological problems arise, nearly one on every page.I shall mention but three. First, Professor Craig allows that the evangelists collected various stories and recast them according to their own lights, so that Matthew with his story of the guards (pp.40-41) and Mark who "loves to emphasize awe and fright and terror" (p.48) need not be taken whole cloth. This allowance removes the "inerrant word of the Holy Spirit" and throws everything in the Gospels up for grabs. It allows not only Craig to pick and choose, but also the skeptics.Second, Craig and Habermas presume that "legendary corruption" of a historical event takes years to form, so that if the original stories of Jesus Christ's resurrection came soon after his crucifixion they must be true. (37, 53, 77-78) This argument denies the reality, which everyone knows, that stories of miracles can spring up overnight, urban legends can spread like wildfire and sightings of ghosts, aliens and missing persons happen all the time. The last Russian tsar, for example, was seen in different cities shortly after his execution in 1919, and his executed daughter Anastasia surfaced a few years after that. Hitler was seen repeatedly after World War II. Elvis is still being seen.Third, Habermas uses twisted reasoning to smuggle in "eyewitness testimony." He accepts that Peter and James saw the arisen Christ, because Paul says so in Corinthians I:15 and he must have learned it from them. (67) He accepts that 500 brethren saw the arisen Christ at one time, because some of them were alive at the time of Paul's writing and could have contradicted him were it not so. (68-71) He accepts St. Luke's versions (in Acts of the Apostles) of speeches by St. Peter and St. Paul, which tell of the revelation, because they must have come from "very early sources." (73-74) The lawyer-author should not have admitted even one of these pieces of evidence: the first is hearsay collected at best three years and written down twenty years after the event; the second is hearsay and does not name any one of the 500; the third is reported and possibly invented speech written down forty to fifty years after the event and probably after both speakers were dead.The worst flaw in the author's investigation is his double standard. He and the experts pretend to apply the same critical standards to the Scriptural accounts as they do to other ancient texts, whereas in fact they accept supernatural events in Scripture and rule them out in everything else. If plausibility is the supreme criterion and the supernatural need not be excluded, as Craig asserts, then every ancient history, myth and religion can be proven if one has the wit and the will.Obviously the supernatural is the stumbling block. Professor Craig's statement that "the hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead doesn't contradict science or any known facts of experience" is simply a bald-faced contradiction of science and all the known facts of experience. The hard truth is that every single organism in the history of the earth has died or will die, and so far none of the dead has returned to life in any verifiable way, but only in memories, dreams, hallucinations, myths, religions and fiction. The hypothesis that God raised Jesus from the dead contradicts everything, absolutely everything. Hence St. Paul, hence the evidence of things not seen, hence the hope in the miracle of Easter.

This book - a distillation from the author's longer The Case for Christ - looks at Jesus's execution, entombment and resurrection, assessing the evidence of modern medical science and the New Testament, combined with logic, reason and historical methodology. The evidence of the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, while contradictory in some respects, is near contemporary and provides more thorough evidence than exists for many other ancient historical events, the essential truth of which are undisputed. Whatever one's views on religion, it is clear that the apostles and many other contemporaries deeply involved in the events of the time sincerely believed that Jesus had died, that he had been resurrected, that they themselves had seen him resurrected, and were therefore prepared to devote their lives to establishing the Christian church. The author and his interviewees find this a convincing line of reasoning and, to be sure, there is much to be said for it, though they are sometimes selective in which sources they choose to emphasise in making a particular point. Ultimately, though, they concede that one faces a choice between accepting this powerful line of argument or accepting the sceptics' notion that it is a fantasy to believe that a man could really rise from the dead. Anyway, interesting food for thought.

It is well worth having a few copies of this little book for friends who may have genuine questions about the validity of the claims of Christianity.The contents of the book have been released before - they are a portion of the well known "Case for Christ" by the same author. However, due to this being a smaller publication (dealing particularly with the death and resurrection of Christ), I feel it is more accessible to those who may have only a passing interest.Another bonus for me was that it clearly presented the Gospel and the responsibility of the individual to believe it without incorporating a 'sinners prayer'. Altogether a worthwhile addition to any evangelistic tool box!

Another brilliant read from Lee Strobel. When you read his accounts of Jesus, you feel the passion he felt when he actually realised that what he set out to dispel as myth, brought him to the understanding of the risen Christ, so deeply, that he converted to Christianity immediately. God works in mysterious ways!!!!!

The book is extremely readable, especially for a Christian. It confirms and supports our belief.The book is well written and extremely well sourced, with more than enough proof that Easter is indeed a celebration of those who believe that Jesus is and was the Son of Man and God who died for humanity. Thank you to Lee Strobel.

I like this book. The uthor gives further descriptions from the book case of christ. As I started reading I could not stop. Convinced evidence about the story of Jesus after the cross.