Challenging the Verdict: A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ"

Rating:
Summary: Fundamentalism challenged and beaten
Review: This book is one of the the best refutations of evangelical and fundamentalist Christianity that I have ever seen. It is definitely up there with the secular web's Jury project (which responds to Josh McDowell's 'Evidence that Demands a Verdict'). J.P.Holding, who seems to think that every Jesus Mythicist just writes one book and then continues to repeat his arguments in subsequent works (he holds the same-completely unjustified- opinion of G.A.Wells' six books) is flat out wrong. For what its worth, Doherty does not push his Jesus Myth theory in this book... instead, he takes conservative apologists to task. The only part where I felt that he had not done an exceptional job was his cross-examination of J.P.Moreland ... but despite that it's an excellent effort.

Rating:
Summary: An amateurish attempt at historical revisionism
Review: This odd book is an example of how far critics need to take their faith in order to try to rewrite history. The author pretends he's objective while critiquing Lee Strobel's book "A Case for Christ," but his biases are evident from the beginning. He starts with an antisupernatural presupposition and the absurd belief -- rejected by reputable historians -- that Jesus never existed. (Set aside whether Jesus was the Son of God -- this guy refuses to even acknowledge that he ever walked the earth!) From this dubious starting point, the author must then twist himself into knots in order to try to dismiss the New Testament accounts, including the writings of Paul. They must be undermined at all costs in order to support his bizarre thesis. So the author trots out all the worn out, discredited deconstructionism of the Jesus Seminar and others in an attempt to justify his position. This isn't objective historical research -- it's a desperate effort to justify his own prejudices.

The author does this by pretending to "cross-examine" scholars who are labeled "fundamentalists," a pejorative term that hardly fits such respected experts as D.A. Carson, Ben Witherington, William Craig, etc. However, the last time I was in a courtroom, witnesses were actually permitted to respond to questions. Amazingly, in this tedious opus, the author attacks the views of these experts but does not let them answer his misleading and ill-informed rantings. Actually, these encounters with the witnesses never really occurred except in the imagination of the author! He apparently feels more comfortable spouting his strange theories in one-way pretend conversations rather than really engaging scholars personally. This is simply bizarre -- and frustrating for any well-informed reader. I found myself repeatedly shouting back at the book, trying in vain to correct the author's fanciful conspiracy theories, historical mistatements, and corruptions of logic.

This book utterly fails to deliver on its promise to devastate "A Case for Christ." Only "true believers," who themselves rule out the existence of God at the outset, will appreciate this book because it will re-enforce their own preconceptions. Talk about blind faith! What readers may fail to understand is that if anyone were to apply this same kind of faulty historical analysis, with its selective reading of history, they could easily come to the conclusion that Cicero or Alexander the Great never existed! Since the author, who identifies himself as a "New Testament scholar," doesn't tell us whether he actually possesses any academic credentials, we're left to scratch our heads as we ask in bewilderment where he learned such outrageous methodology.

If you're looking for a well-reasoned effort to examine the question of Jesus' identity, look elsewhere. If you want to untangle the author's web of half-truths and suppositions, there are many books that will suffice, such as Gregory Boyd's "Cynic Sage or Son of God?" or one of Witherington's many tomes. This is a weighty subject that deserves substantive scholarly analysis. You won't find that here.

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful Book!
Review: Doherty does a great job of doing a book length review and critique of the arguments that Lee Strobel uses in "The Case for Christ". Doherty effectively shows that Strobel is only speaking for one end of the religous spectrum. Doherty shows that Strobel gives his experts easy questions, avoids follow-ups and that Strobel stacks the deck in his own favor. Doherty points out that Strobel does a poor job of being a "skeptic" by only consulting with experts from the fundamentalist end of the spectrum, rather than asking experts from other traditions. Strobel is even billed as a "journalist" rather than a preacher for a church. While Strobel's "Case for Christ" is a good summary of concervative, evangelical Christianity's apologetic's, Doherty easily shows the short comings of that approach as well a a proper skeptic's approach.

Rating:
Summary: A Demolition of Christian Apologetics
Review: Another resounding triumph of reason over faith is presented in Earl Doherty's excellent book, "Challenging the Verdict". It is a chapter-by-chapter, point-by-point rebuttal of Lee Strobel's popular book, "The Case for Christ". Strobel traveled around the country to interview some highly regarded Christian apologists and put together what I presume is just about the best case that can be made for the credibility of the Christian faith.

Doherty's 14 chapters correspond exactly with those in Strobel's book. Complaints of other reviewers notwithstanding, the format ("cross-examining" Strobel's "witnesses" in a courtroom setting) is perfectly reasonable--and makes for fun reading! Doherty responds to arguments with which he disagrees, cites opinions of those who support him, and as the author, gets in the final word. In other words, he does exactly what Lee Strobel and thousands of others have done.

Please note that "Challenging the Verdict" is designed for open-minded people. You must be honest with yourself to appreciate it. If you are faithful, rather than honest, you won't like it.

Doherty begins in chapter 1 by refuting the incomprehensible claim (by Strobel and Craig Blomberg) that the authors' names attached to the New Testament gospels are reliable. Forging names to give a document authority was common practice in those days, and Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were all EXTREMELY authoritative to the early Christians. No reputable scholar today attaches credibility to these names.

This chapter sets the tone for Strobel's book. If evidence were a life form, he'd be in prison for abusing it.

Strobel, Blomberg and others attempt to show that the NT gospels constitute valid history, a proposition which is insulting to the intelligence. We don't call documents history when they are religious in nature; report events highly improbable in nature; are pushed onto the world by an organization (the Roman Church) which stood to profit immensely by their acceptance as history; and which have hopeless contradictions among themselves. (It's truly saddening to read apologists' attempts to reconcile the birth narratives or resurrection appearances.)

We also see the classic Christian argument that hostile witnesses were around who would have exposed the Christians for telling falsehoods. Doherty notes that the upheaval of the Jewish War limited this possibility, then adds (p. 35): "And it's a bit naive to imagine some kind of network of watchdog groups, keeping a close eye on those mischievous Christians. . . . Or to imagine that such a protest would have been heeded."

Earl Doherty is better known for "The Jesus Puzzle" website and book by the same name, where he demonstrates that Jesus is a fictional character. The complete ignorance of Jesus' earthly life in the entire corpus of NT epistles and so many other early Christian writings means that Jesus, to them, was an entirely divine being, just like all the other gods in all the other religions of the day. Later, the author of the gospel of Mark brought this Jesus down to earth. Matthew, Luke, John and others followed suit, the concept gradually caught on, and the rest is history. Check this out if you haven't already! It's the most enlightening theological reading you'll ever do.

Doherty brings his mythical Jesus thesis to "Challenging the Verdict", but it doesn't dominate the book. He refutes Strobel's arguments both with and without a historical Jesus.

Chapters 6 and 8 are wonderful. Doherty puts into eloquent words what all self-honest people know but can't always concisely convey: it is naive to accept stories with supernatural events as reliable history. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the gospels don't come close to making the grade. Doherty annihilates Gregory Boyd and Gary Collins in these chapters.

Elsewhere in chapter 6, when discussing similarities between Christianity and the competing mystery religions, Boyd suggests the pagans were copying the Christians, when the evidence indicates the opposite was far more likely.

Chapter 10 addresses the notorious Christian tactic of taking Old Testament passages completely out of context and concluding that Jesus fulfilled prophecies.

The later chapters cover the resurrection, where Doherty exposes the fundamental mistake of letting the gospel picture of Jesus dominate people's minds and reading this into the epistles, most of which were written earlier. Thus, the argument that the stories spread too fast to qualify as legends is simply inapplicable.

William Lane Craig refers in chapter 12 to the later apocryphal gospels, which add "flowery narratives" to the basic story. Doherty observes that Matthew, Luke and John do the same, adding fanciful details to Mark's original. A major point he drives home is that the gospels are literary invention. Not history, not biographies, not even biographies embellished with myth. And also not lies, any more than the adventures of Tom Sawyer or Robinson Crusoe are lies. They are myths; stories with teachings and lessons for the community. And they feature the common Jewish theme of what modern critical scholars call "The Suffering and Vindication of the Innocent Righteous One".

Earl Doherty is a fine writer--very polite and professional. He makes a few weak arguments on minor points, but on every substantial matter, he demolishes Strobel and his interviewees. Probably the weakest aspect of the book is that he sometimes UNDERstates his case!

(...).

Lee Strobel loves to cite academic degrees and published writings of those he interviews, and uncritical people will find these "credentials" impressive. These men are knowledgeable, but all are prone to letting faith interfere with the search for the truth. In the only credential that matters--making well-reasoned arguments from the evidence available--all of these men combined are no match for Earl Doherty.

Rating:
Summary: Funnier Than a Three Stooges Video!
Review: As President of Tekton Apologetics Ministries I've had a lot of practice taking Earl to task, and he prefers to respond with harrumphs and grunts and arguments that dig him even deeper in his hole. All of the arguments in this book are derived from his earlier book, The Jesus Puzzle, so if you already have that you won't miss anything. Doherty's attempt to refute Strobel is no more than a case of Doherty trying to milk the cash cow that Strobel's works have become.

Doherty fancies himself an expert, but has bitten off way more than he can chew. He is behind the eight-ball of scholarly consensus on every point -- and I speak here of secular as well as religious scholarship.

Me? I read it for amusement.

Rating:
Summary: Sitting in the Jury Box
Review: This is the most effective debunking exercise I've seen in a long time. Want to get rid of superstition in your life? Want to free yourself from 2000 year old fantasies about a man walking out of his tomb, about being God and the only avenue to salvation, while everyone who doesn't believe in him gets to go to some eternal punishment you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy? These are only some of the ideas defended by Strobel and his scholars which Doherty puts in his sights and demolishes, as he dismantles the reliability of the Gospels and their dogmas.

I only wish we could _really_ have a courtroom hearing of this nature, invite the world's media, and put all these doctrines on the stand before a judge and jury. I never fully realized just how deficient and antiquated they truly are. Doherty points out all the holes in the arguments, all the contradictions, all the irrationalities, and gives us much more reasonable alternatives about how Christianity came to believe what it does. And it doesn't have to depend on there being no historical Jesus, which Doherty argued very convincingly in his first book, The Jesus Puzzle. In this one, he shows how none of it is reliable even if there was such a man.

Someone claimed that the "tektonics organization" has already refuted Doherty "point by point". That's like saying papal officials refuted Galileo's telescope observations by pointing to passages in their holy book. Doherty's telescope is just as revealing.

Rating:
Summary: Defending Rationality on the Gospels
Review: This book scores on two counts. It contains solid arguments that discredit the shallow, selective, misleading and self-serving presentation of Lee Strobel and his very conservative scholarly witnesses. And it's an entertaining read, mostly because of the format Doherty has adopted: addressing Strobel's arguments as though he is cross-examining them in a courtroom.

There are those who complain that this approach is somehow dishonest, or unfair to Strobel and his witnesses, but this is a red herring. If Doherty had not adopted such a format, but simply offered an academic piece in which he itemized the arguments for Gospel reliability found in Strobel's book, and then gave his counter arguments against them, no one would have any grounds for complaint. That's just what Challenging the Verdict does, it offers that opposing view and backs it up with detailed scholarly arguments and references. The courtroom setting is simply something that gives added color and vitality to those counter arguments. No matter what the format, the author could hardly have given Strobel's scholars some kind of rebuttal opportunity.

In fact, one of the complaints against Strobel himself is that he gives no voice to anything but his own confessional point of view, since he did not interview New Testament scholars who were more liberal and critical than the conservative and evangelical line-up he offers. At least Doherty has that conservative side on view in his book. He lays it out, and he counters it with the more liberal viewpoint.

While Doherty does offer arguments in support of his theory that no Jesus existed, he also argues from a position as if there was such a man, leaving it to the reader to choose, or not, from either vantage point. The no-Jesus theory, by the way, is very well argued in his previous book, The Jesus Puzzle, and is being championed by more and more people today.

I was also struck by the extra-biblical comments Doherty sprinkles throughout the book, espousing rationalist views. His comments on the whole blood sacrifice basis of Christian salvation, the section on hell (which ought to discredit any belief in that horrific doctrine), and his little homily at the end of the Final Summation are some of the most insightful things I've read in support of rationality, something Strobel's book is very short on. I particularly liked his debunking of the whole prophecy of Jesus business in the Old Testament.

It's to be expected that some reviews of this book are going to be critical, especially those that are obviously reacting from a position of faith, but it would be nice if they would all have the integrity to identify themselves. Doherty certainly has.

Rating:
Summary: The obvious verdict: this book is lame!
Review: If this book is the best defense of the idea Jesus never lived, then this bizarre contention ought to be given the proper burial it deserves. For me, I cannot conjure up enough faith to believe his inane conclusions -- especially with the entire book being based on a "trial" in which witnesses are not allowed to answer the author's questions!! It's easy to "prove" your point when you never allow anyone to challenge it, which is what the author does. His historical analysis is shallow and misleading. For example, his claim that Paul didn't care about the historical Jesus is contradicted by Paul's laser-beam focus on the resurrection of Jesus, as evidenced by First Corinthians 15 and other passages. I'd be interested in what qualifies the author as a "classical and New Testament scholar," since his own biography doesn't even mention whether he has any degree in the relevant area and, if he does, where he got it. Perhaps he was trying to save the school from embarrassment. As for his handling of the empty tomb issue, a much better exploration of this matter can be found in the debate between Gerd Ludemann (a highly qualified and credentialed scholar) and W. L. Craig -- a debate which any unprejudiced observer would have to say was won by Craig, who defended well the vacancy of Jesus' grave. This is a rehash of old Jesus objections written in a tedious and unenlightening format.

Rating:
Summary: A poor execution of a flawed premise
Review: This is an insipid, poorly executed book that's built on a silly premise: let's "cross-examine" highly regarded scholars without even giving them even a single opportunity to respond! It's made even worse by the author's self-promotional attempt to hype it as "riveting" reading. It gets tedious very quickly to read the author's "challenges" without knowing how the scholars would answer him. It's like putting a witness on a witness stand, gagging his mouth, then grilling him with misleading questions and saying, "Aha! See! I'm obviously right because he has no answer." Give me a break! These scholars would roast him. Check out the author's bio; his credentials pale in comparison to the doctorates earned by those he cynically seeks to discredit.

As far as I can tell, this is essentially a self-published reprint of material from the author's web site, although thankfully he did clean up the most obvious error in the original, where he repeatedly misattributed the quotations of a physician. The author's credibility is already suspect because of his previous book in which he claimed Jesus never even existed -- a position so extreme that few atheists even endorse it.

It's possible to have an intelligent discussion or debate on issues involving Jesus. Reputable scholars have been doing so for centuries. But this book is an embarrassment because it sets up a blatantly unfair format and then taunts notable scholars without giving them a chance to set the record straight. Readers are merely left with the author's dubious assertions and no way to responsibly evaluate them. I'm glad that the tektonics organization has already exposed this book's faulty reasoning point by point on its site.

The reason I gave this book two stars instead of one was that I do have to acknowledge the audacity of the author to think he can blind-side some of the leading apologists of our day. I have to respect his entrepreneurial drive. At the same time, I'd caution potential readers that if they want cogent, meaningful, intelligent dialogue on historical issues involving Jesus, there are plenty of books -- from both atheists and theists -- that are very illuminating. But this isn't one of them.

Rating:
Summary: Not much evidence for his arguement
Review: The author does not seem to have solid evidence for his claims. He only creatively conjures up opinions of how the writers of early epistles "should have been thinking and writing". Because the early writers did not describe Jesus as Doherty would have liked them to describe Him, Doherty makes up some argument against Jesus being the Christ. What Doherty doesn't understand is the Jesus Christ, a.k.a. Jesus of Nazareth, did not come to earth to lay out the "Law", and condemn, but to SAVE! Doherty pulls out little bits of the big picture of Jesus and examines them as an individual piece. He came so that people would not perish in the eternity of Hell, yet have eternal life with God. Doherty, say a prayer to God to open your heart, and read it again. Blessings to all who read this review.