I am a fan of Lee Strobel and have read several of his prior books including The Case for Christ, the Case for a Creator, and the Case for Faith. I have multiple copies of some of these on my bookshelf and give them to clients whose faith journeys can be advanced by Mr. Strobel's books. I give this background because, in my opinion, this is his weakest book. If I were his professor, I would give him a "B-" grade, and tell him to make a few important revisions before submitting it for publication.
The most important weakness is based on the notion that this is the definitive text to answer the question, "What is the truth about Jesus?". This is the question presented in large type in the banner across the top of the back cover. Marketing of the text in this way sets the bar so high that it cannot be met, thus leading to the book's shortfalls, which are of two types.
The first shortfall has to do with the selection of the individual examples of the "intellectual onslaught" that he intends to address, and the second shortfall has to do with the rigor with which each of the examples is addressed.
The author presents six challenges that he has selected, apparently significantly influenced by the Jesus Seminar, which he seems to denigrate. On page 14, he describes the milieu out of which the challenges that he will address as "college classrooms, increasingly dominated by liberal faculty members who grew up in the religiously suspicious 1960s...". As such a person, I am concerned that he gives us too little credit for fully investigating claims by entities such as the Jesus Seminar and sets academics as a collective straw man, while arguing that the book has been written "for the sake of my own intellectual integrity..." (p. 15). While I agree that academia has proportionally fewer Christians than the society as a whole, I insist that it is crucially important that the academic method of scholarship be respected, especially with questions of faith. I believe that we are making great progress as a nation towards spiritual maturity that will eventuate in much greater acceptance of Jesus as who He said He was by engaging people who are atheists and agnostics in well-supported and well-reasoned debates, which requires the support of Christian academics, whose work can be encouraged by authors such as Strobel. If Strobel has such concerns about the work of the Jesus Seminar wouldn't it be reasonable "for the sake of my own intellectual integrity" to interview members of the Jesus Seminar? At least for the credentialing of the six challenges that he presents, interviews with key "liberal faculty members" who are Christians might have substantiated and broadened the challenges.
The second shortfall of the book stems from the first. Generally, the author has sought out and interviewed well established scholarly resources. The problem arises when he is not as thorough as he has been in previous books in pushing back against the information provided by these resources and upholding the Socratic method. His questioning is too friendly and not sufficiently energetic to convince the reader that the expert has been thoroughly pressed.
Another nagging concern that may be only of interest to academics and scholars has to do with the inclusion of quite a bit of work from Michael Licona, a person whose academic and scholarly credentials are not yet well-established. Approximately 20% of the book involves Licona as a resource. Although I can certainly accept that a person who is not yet a fully-qualified scholar can assist in the development of a scholarly work, the appropriate way to handle his offerings (that are often useful and interesting) would be to go back to the original sources. The author's background in journalism and law certainly establishes an expectation that he would do so. Perhaps I am over-educated and have spent too many years in academia, but this particular issue causes me to be reluctant to recommend the book for academically trained intellectuals. This says nothing at all about Michael Licona as an interesting and enthusiastic Christian; this is a critical comment focused on Mr. Strobel's strategy for including Michael's information, which could have been used as the theses in arguments submitted to scholars with well-established reputations. That would have been a preferred method and would have strengthened the book overall.
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The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ Books In Print, Audio Books.