The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus

Rating:
Summary: A Catastrohpic Success!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Review: On page 26 of the paperback: "It's important to acknowledge that strictly speaking, the gospels are anonymous. But the uniform testimony of the early church was that Matthew ... was the author of the first gospel of the New Testament; that John Mark ... was the author of the gospel of Mark; that Luke ... wrote the gospel of Luke...." In other words, the gospels are anonymous, but because the early church fathers said they were written by Matthew, Mark, and Luke, then they must have been. BRILLIANT!!! Everyone should read this book to see HOW LAME CHRISTIAN APOLOGECTICS REALLY IS. The rest of this book beyond page 26 is a stinking corpse. Breathe deeply if you dare.

Rating:
Summary: One of the best overviews of the topic you can get!
Review: If you are looking for an exploration to bolster your skepticism, this is not the book to read. Most of the critics of the text comment that it is restrictive because it doesn't take into account the view of more liberal opponents. This is not the case. In fact, the book itself is, in most repects, an attempt to answer the huge tide of liberal "scholars" who find no greater pleasure in life than to discredit the foundational principles of the Christian church. These people are "open minded" about everthing OTHER than the points raised by the PhDs interviewed in this book, but they don't see it that way. Sad. These people don't generally accept that there is any such thing as "right" or "wrong", but spend all their energy attempting to convince conservatives that their "antiquated" views are WRONG regardless of the historical and textual basis for them! That makes sense, doesn't it?

I would agree that this book is, in fact, a more "conservative" overview, but the liberal view is presented as a basis for discussion--otherwise the book would not function. It is titled the way it is for this reason. It examines why liberal scholars think the way they do about Jesus. Simple as it sounds, it is by no means a simplistic gloss over these objections, it is a fairly deep springboard to further study. Get more books on the "Jesus Seminar" if you want (they are here at amazon) to and compare them with the work of those interviewed here and the points they discuss. You might be surprised at the lack of historical and textual evidence for the "Jesus Seminar" and similar revisionist histories which are, essentially, an attempt to explain away or mythologize the person of Jesus Christ and the historical relevance of the Church itself.

Rating:
Summary: Heavily biased.
Review: I found this book to be heavily biased toward the orthodox or fundamentalist point of view. He only interviews conservative scholars. He doesn't speak to or interview scholars who offer an opposing point of view. Though this writer bills himself as an investigative journalist I don't believe he truly does a thorough investigation of all points of view. He seems to ignore or gloss over evidence that would give an opposing point of view. If you want to see both sides of the argument I would read this in conjunction with Earl Doherty's "Challenging The Verdict" which is a rebuttal to "Case For Christ".