The Case for the Real Jesus

by Lee Strobel

  24. Tabor, Jesus Dynasty, 25–26.

  25. See www.ingermanson.com/jesus/art/stats.php (April 7, 2007).

  26. Hershel Shanks and Ben Witherington III, The Brother of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003), 11–12, 57–58.

  27. See Acts of Philip 37, 46, 50, 51, 119.

  28. See 1 Corinthians 9:5.

  29. Simcha Jacobovici and Charles Pellegrino, The Jesus Family Tomb (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007), vii.

  30. See www.answers.org/news/article.php?story=20070307145346542 (April 17, 2007).

  31. Audrey Barrick, “Study: Most Non-Born-Again Christians Still Believe Jesus Resurrected,” The Christian Post (April 3, 2007). Interestingly, the random poll of 1,204 Americans showed that 75 percent of those who said they’re not “born-again Christians” believe in Jesus’ bodily resurrection.

  32. Acts 2:32.

  33. Robert M. Price, “By This Time He Stinketh,” in Price and Lowder, Empty Tomb, 423.

  34. Jeffery Jay Lowder, “Historical Evidence and the Empty Tomb Story,” in Price and Lowder, Empty Tomb, 288.

  35. William Lane Craig, Assessing the New Testament Evidence for the Historicity of the Resurrection of Jesus (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1989), 420.

  36. Carrier, “The Spiritual Body of Christ,” in Price and Lowder, Empty Tomb, 195.

  37. Copan and Tacelli, Jesus’ Resurrection, 45.

  38. See Francis S. Collins, The Language of God (New York: Free Press, 2006), especially 11–31 and 213–25.

  CHALLENGE #4: “CHRISTIANITY’S BELIEFS ABOUT JESUS WERE COPIED FROM PAGAN RELIGIONS”

  1. Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Jesus Mysteries (New York: Three Rivers, 1999), 9.

  2. Tom Harpur, The Pagan Christ (New York: Walker & Company, 2004), 10.

  3. See Helen Keller, The Story of My Life, chapter 14, www.afb.org/MyLife/book.asp?ch=P1Ch14 (Jan. 23, 2007).

  4. Law.com defines plagiarism as “Taking the writings or literary concepts (a plot, characters, words) of another and selling and/or publishing them as one’s own product.” See dictionary.law.com.

  5. Brown, Da Vinci Code, 232.

  6. Harpur, Pagan Christ, 51. Harpur acknowledges in his appendix A that he has been influenced by the views of Gerald Massey (1828–1907) and Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880–1963). Said New Testament scholar Craig A. Evans: “The work of these men, especially their reconstructions of ancient history and attempts to draw lines of continuity between Egyptian religion and Christianity, is deeply flawed. No qualified historian takes the theories of these men seriously. Anyone charmed by Harpur’s Pagan Christ should beware. We are talking old, odd stuff here. Personal philosophy and introspection it may be; history by any responsible, recognized sense it is not.” See Evans, 220–21.

  7. Ibid., 85.

  8. Freke and Gandy, Jesus Mysteries, 109.

  9. Tomothy Freke and Peter Gandy, The Laughing Jesus (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2005), 55–56.

  10. Hugh J. Schonfield, Those Incredible Christians (New York: Bantam, 1968), xii.

  11. John H. Randall, Hellenistic Ways of Deliverance and the Making of the Christian Synthesis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970), 154.

  12. See J. P. Holding, “Did the Mithraic Mysteries Influence Christianity?” www.tektonics.org (Jan. 23, 2007).

  13. Freke and Gandy, Laughing Jesus, 61.

  14. Freke and Gandy, Jesus Mysteries, 9.

  15. Harpur, Pagan Christ, 10.

  16. Harpur, Pagan Christ, 38, 39, 53.

  17. Tim Callahan, Secret Origins of the Bible (Altadena, Cal.: Millennium, 2002), 332.

  18. See Challenge challenge.xhtml#n_1" id="n13.

  19. Tryggve N. D. Mettinger, The Riddle of Resurrection (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wicksell, 2001), 221.

  20. Ibid.

  21. Ibid.

  22. John D. Wineland, ed., The Light of Discovery (Eugene, Ore.: Pickwick, 2007), xiii.

  23. Ibid., xi.

  24. Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus, 250.

  25. Wineland, Light of Discovery, xi.

  26. See Strobel, Case for Christ, 73–91.

  27. See Manfred Clauss, The Roman Cult of Mithras (New York: Routledge, 2000), 14–15, 21–22, 28.

  28. See Richard Reitzenstein (trans. John E. Steely), Hellenistic Mystery Religions (Pittsburgh: Pickwick, 1978).

  29. A. Loisy, “The Christian Mystery,” Hibbert Journal (1911–12), 51, quoted in Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Easter—Myth, Hallucination, or History?” Christianity Today (March 15, 1974).

  30. Albert Schweitzer, Geschichte der Paulinischen Forschung (Tubingen, 1911), 151; English translation, Paul and His Interpreters (London, 1912), 192, quoted in Bruce Metzger, “Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish, and Christian,” www.frontline-apologetics.com/mystery_religions_early_christianity.htm (Jan. 30, 2007).

  31. “The word Hellenistic was coined early in the nineteenth century as a name for the period of history that began with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and ended with the Roman conquest of the last major vestige of Alexander’s empire, the Egypt of Cleopatra, in 30 BC. Obviously if this were the exclusive use of the term, it would make little sense to talk about ‘Christianity and the Hellenistic world.’ But the fact is that the phrase ‘the Hellenistic world’ is used to refer to the whole culture of the Roman Empire. While Rome achieved military and political supremacy throughout the Mediterranean world, it adopted the culture of the Hellenistic world that preceded its rise to power. Thus, while political control of the Mediterranean world belonged to Rome, the culture continued to be Hellenistic.” Ronald Nash, The Gospel and the Greeks (Phillipsburg, N.J.: P&R, 2003), 10–11.

  32. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 1. Nash notes that in 1956, an essay by the influential H. Riesenfeld of the University of Uppsala in Sweden called the appeal to the mystery religions “outdated.” See H. Riesenfeld, “Mythological Background of the New Testament Christology,” in W. D. Davies and D. Daube, eds., The Background of the New Testament and Its Eschatology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1956), 81–95, esp. 81.

  33. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 3.

  34. Ronald Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?” www.equip.org/free/DB109.htm (Jan. 25, 2007).

  35. See Jonathan David, “The Exclusion of Women in the Mithraic Mysteries: Ancient or Modern?” Numen 47 (2000), 121–41.

  36. See Richard Gordon, “Franz Cumont and the Doctrines of Mithraism,” Mithraic Studies 1:236.

  37. See Edwin Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1996), 510.

  38. E. J. Yarnold, “Two Notes on Mithraic Liturgy,” Mithras: Bulletin of the Society for Mithraic Studies (1974), 1.

  39. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 137.

  40. Manfred Clauss (trans. Richard Gordon), The Roman Cult of Mithras (New York: Routledge, 2000), 7.

  41. L. Patterson, Mithraism and Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921), 94.

  42. Gary Lease, “Mithraism and Christianity: Borrowings and Transformations,” in Wolfgang Haase, ed., Aufstieg und Niedergang der Römischen Welt, vol. II (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1980), 1316.

  43. Ibid., 1329.

  44. See ibid., 1321–22.

  45. See Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible, 520–21.

  46. Richard Gordon, Image and Value in the Greco-Roman World (Aldershot: Variorum, 1996), 96, quoted in Holding, “Did the Mithraic Mysteries Influence Christianity?”

  47. Clauss, Roman Cult of Mithras, 110.

  48. Ibid., 113.

  49. Yarnold, “Two Notes on Mithraic Liturgy.”

  50. Lease, “Mithraism and Christianity,” 1324.

  51. Ibid.

  52. Ibid., 1325.

  53. See Romans 6:3.

  54. See John 3:3.

  55. See John 1:29. Also see Challenge challenge.xhtml#n_1" id="n15.

  56. Günter Wagner, Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries (Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1967
), 266.

  57. Bruce Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies: Pagan, Jewish and Christian (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1968), 11: “Thus, for example, one must doubtless interpret the change in the efficacy attributed to the rite of the taurobolium. In competing with Christianity, which promised eternal life to its adherents, the cult of Cybele officially or unofficially raised the efficacy of the blood bath from twenty years to eternity.”

  58. Stephen Neill and Tom Wright, The Interpretation of the New Testament 1861–1986 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 208.

  59. Yarnold, “Two Notes on Mithraic Liturgy.”

  60. See Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Tammuz and the Bible,” Journal of Biblical Literature 84 (1965), 283–90.

  61. See S. N. Kramer, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 183 (1966), 31.

  62. Samuel N. Kramer said the alleged resurrection of Tammuz was “nothing but inference and surmise, guess and conjecture.” See Samuel N. Kramer, Mythologies of the Ancient World (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), 10.

  63. See P. Lambrechts, “La ‘résurrection’ d’Adonis,” Mélanges Isidore Lévy (1955), 207–40, quoted in Yamauchi, “Easter—Myth, Hallucination, or History?”

  64. P. Lambrechts, “Les Fêtes ‘phrygiennes’ de Cybèle et d’Attis,” Bulletin de l’Institut Historique Belge de Rome 27 (1952), 141–70, quoted in Yamauchi, “Easter—Myth, Hallucination, or History?”

  65. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 130.

  66. Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?”

  67. In a quote cited earlier, Freke and Gandy also mention the god Serapis. Said Nash: “During the Isis cult’s later, mystery stage, its male deity is no longer the dying Osiris but Serapis; and Serapis is often thought of as a sun god. It is clear that the Serapis of the post-Ptolemaic, mystery version of the cult was not a dying god. Obviously, then, neither could he be a rising god.” See Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 128.

  68. Bruce M. Metzger, “Methodology in the Study of the Mystery Religions and Early Christianity,” in Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies, 21.

  69. Roland de Vaux, The Bible and the Ancient Near East (New York: Doubleday, 1971), 236, quoted in Yamauchi, “Easter—Myth, Hallucination, or History?”

  70. Wagner, Pauline Baptism and the Pagan Mysteries, 261.

  71. See Luke 1:1–4.

  72. Robert J. Miller, Born Divine (Santa Rosa, Calif.: Polestar, 1993), 246.

  73. Ibid., 208.

  74. Walter E. Bundy, Jesus and the First Three Gospels (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1955), 11.

  75. Tom Flynn, “Matthew vs. Luke: Whoever Wins, Coherence Loses,” available at www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=flynn_25_ 1 (January 29, 2007).

  76. For a discussion of the Isaiah 7:14 prophecy, see Challenge challenge.xhtml#n_1" id="n15.

  77. Robert Gromacki, The Virgin Birth (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Kregel, second edition, 2002), 213.

  78. See Barry B. Powell, Classical Myth (Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall, third ed., 2001), 250. To examine artwork of the birth of Dionysus on an Italian vase, circa 380 BC, showing him emerging from Zeus’s thigh, see 251. According to J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace, any reference to a “virgin birth” for Dionysus comes in post-Christian sources. See Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus, 242–43.

  79. See Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Anthropomorphism in Ancient Religions,” Bibliotheca Sacra 125 (1968): 99.

  80. J. Gresham Machen, The Virgin Birth of Christ (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1965, reprint of Harper & Row edition, 1930), 338.

  81. Machen, Virgin Birth of Christ, 330, 336.

  82. Ibid., 326.

  83. Peter Green, Alexander of Macedon (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 37.

  84. Buddha lived about five hundred years before Christ. As Machen notes: “In the introduction to the Jâtaka book, which dates from the fifth century after Christ, we have the well-known story of the white elephant that entered into the body of Mâyâ, Buddha’s mother, at the time when her child was conceived; and the white elephant story seems to be shown by inscriptional evidence to have been current as early as the reign of Asoka in the third century before Christ. In its earliest form, the story appears as the narration of a dream; Mâyâ dreamed that a marvelous white elephant entered into her side…. In later Buddhist sources, what had originally been regarded as a dream of Mâyâ came to be regarded as an actual happening…. It would be difficult to imagine anything more unlike the New Testament story of the virgin birth of Christ.” See Machen, Virgin Birth of Christ, 339–41 (emphasis in original).

  85. See Edwin M. Yamauchi, “Historical Notes on the (In)comparable Christ,” Christianity Today (Oct. 22, 1971).

  86. See “Story of Lord Krishna’s Birth,” Sanatan Sanstha: Sanatan Society for Scientific Spirituality, www.sanatan.org/en/campaigns/KJ/birth.htm (Jan. 28, 2007).

  87. Raymond E. Brown, The Virginal Conception and Bodily Resurrection of Jesus (New York: Paulist, 1973), 62; cited in Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus, 247.

  88. Ibid., 65.

  89. Thomas Boslooper, The Virgin Birth (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1962), 135, quoted in Gromacki, Virgin Birth, 211.

  90. Quoted in Tom Snyder, Myth Conceptions (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1995), 194.

  91. See Joseph Klausner, From Jesus to Paul (New York: Macmillan, 1943), 104. Retorted Nash: “The fate of Osiris’s coffin in the Nile is about as relevant to baptism as the sinking of Atlantis.” See Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 128.

  92. Russell D. Moore, “Ronald Nash, RIP,” available at: merecomments.typepad.com/merecomments/2006/03/ronald_nash_rip.html (Jan. 29, 2007).

  93. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 116, 117, 254.

  94. Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?”

  95. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 161–62; quoting André Boulanger, Orphée: Rapports de l’orphisme et du christianisme (Paris, 1925), 102. Emphasis added.

  96. Nash, “Was the New Testament Influenced by Pagan Religions?” Condensed but preserving much of Nash’s wording.

  97. Colossians 2:8: “See to it that no one takes you captive through hollow and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition and the basic principles of this world rather than on Christ.”

  98. Metzger said: “It must not be uncritically assumed that the Mysteries always influenced Christianity, for it is not only possible but probable that in certain cases, the influence moved in the opposite direction.” See Metzger, Historical and Literary Studies, 11.

  99. Nash, Gospel and the Greeks, 162.

  100. 2 Peter 1:16.

  CHALLENGE #5: “JESUS WAS AN IMPOSTER WHO FAILED TO FULFILL THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES”

  1. Associated Press, “Comedian Jackie Mason Drops Lawsuit against Jews for Jesus Missionary Group,” International Herald Tribune (Dec. 4, 2006).

  2. Feinberg is a professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. See “Did Jesus Fulfill Prophecies in Ways in Which the Jews at the Time Were Expecting?” www.whoisthisjesus.tv/qa.htmchallenge.xhtml#n_1" id="n1scholars (Dec. 27, 2006).

  3. Brickner quotations are from: Sarah Pulliam, “‘Volcanic’ Response: Jews for Jesus Takes to New York City Streets,” Christianity Today (Sept. 2006).

  4. Michael Luo, “Jews for Jesus Hit Town and Find a Tough Crowd,” New York Times (July 4, 2006).

  5. “I Won’t Fall Prey to Jews for Jesus,” New York Daily News (July 12, 2006).

  6. Pulliam, “‘Volcanic’ Response.”

  7. Associated Press, “Comedian Jackie Mason Drops Lawsuit against Jews for Jesus Missionary Group.” Mason discontinued litigation after receiving an apology from Jews for Jesus.

  8. “I Won’t Fall Prey to Jews for Jesus,” New York Daily News (July 12, 2006).

  9. Gal Beckerman, “Jews for Jesus Campaign Targets NY Jews,” Jerusalem Post (July 9, 2006).

  10. Joshua Waxman, �
��The Limits of Identity,” in “The Virtual Talmud,” www.beliefnet.com/blogs/virtualtalmud (Aug. 30, 2006).

  11. Aryeh Kaplan, The Real Messiah? (Toronto: Jews for Judaism, 2004), 14.

  12. Quoted in Pinchas Stolper, “Was Jesus the Messiah?” in Kaplan, Real Messiah? 32.

  13. Stephen Prothero, Religious Literacy (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007), 183.

  14. Ibid., 150.

  15. See J. Barton Payne, Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy (New York: Harper & Row, 1973).

  16. Walter C. Kaiser Jr., The Messiah in the Old Testament (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1995), 29. Kaiser cites the source as Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, 2 vols. (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1953), 2:710–41 (appendix 9).

  17. Lee Strobel, The Case for Faith (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 2000), 131.

  18. See John 4:25–26.

  19. The number of messianic Jews is difficult to ascertain. Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz said in The Jewish Response to Missionaries: “According to a 1990 Council of Jewish Federations population study, over 600,000 Jews in North America alone identify with some type of Christianity. Over the past 25 years, more than 275,000 Jews worldwide have been converted.” See www.jewsforjudaism.com/web/handbook/s_toc.html (Dec. 28, 2006). Estimates by organizations of messianic Jews are generally lower. In my interview, Michael L. Brown put the number at about one percent of the worldwide Jewish population; this would mean there are 120,000 to 140,000 messianic Jews.

  20. Quoted in Kaiser, The Messiah in the Old Testament, 19; citing E. Sehmsdorf, Die Prophetenauslegung bei J. G. Eichhorn (Göttingen: Vandenhoef, 1971), 153–54; noted in Ronald E. Clements, “Messianic Prophecy or Messianic History?” Horizons in Biblical Theology 1 (1979), 87.

  21. Kaiser, Messiah in the Old Testament, 14.

  22. Kaplan, Real Messiah? 27.

  23. Missionary Impossible, published by Jews for Judaism, www.jewsforjudaism.com/web/byg/pdf/J4J_CMSGW16.pdf (Dec. 29, 2006).

  24. Ibid., 4.

  25. Ibid., 16.

  26. “Do All Scholars Believe Jesus Fulfilled Messianic Prophecies?” www.whois thisjesus.tv/qa.htmchallenge.xhtml#n_1" id="n1scholars (Dec. 28, 2006).

  27. Ibid.