When I was a young Christian seeking answers to questions of faith and struggling with challenges to my beliefs, The Case for Christ was the first recommendation I received that seemed like it might fit the bill. Back cover promises of taking on big issues like the reliability of the New Testament, the historical evidence for Jesus, and the reasons for believing in the resurrection appealed to my sense of curiosity about the confidence one could have in the Christian religion. The tagline of the book as an 'atheist' journalist's investigation into Christianity that resulted in his conversion practically sealed the deal for me. Yet upon finishing my reading, I was left disappointed and disillusioned, because The Case for Christ is investigative writing at its worst.

Lee Strobel is one of the best known names in Christian apologetics, and the author of other bestselling books such as The Case for a Creator, The Case for Faith, and The Case for the Real Jesus. Strobel holds a Law degree from Yale Law School, worked as a journalist for The Chicago Tribune, and served as pastor at Willow Creek Community Church from 1987 to 2000 and at Saddleback Church from 2000 to 2002. The Case for Christ was a breakthrough in success and popularity for Strobel, and it is arguably his most well-known work.

Setting the Stage

Before we begin, a few important matters must be addressed. First, Strobel's pre-Christian persona is suspect, but ultimately irrelevant. Since atheism is merely the rejection of theism, simply being an atheist does not tell us anything about why someone is an atheist. Being a former atheist who converted to Christianity earns Strobel no credibility by itself; his reasons for changing his mind are what should be of interest. Even so, when we look at what's brought to the table in The Case for Christ, it strongly suggests that Strobel was not a very informed atheist. As he says himself in the book, "I had read just enough philosophy and history to find support for my skepticism - a fact here, a scientific theory there, a pithy quote, a clever argument" [1]. It sounds as if he was less concerned with knowing why he didn't believe and more concerned with countering the advances of others who wanted to evangelize to him.

Secondly, Strobel's inspiration to convert may have been less about the evidence and the investigation than he lets on. What did bring him to faith in Christ? It wasn't reading Josephus or talking to bible scholars, it was his wife's own conversion. Although initially scoffing at the decision of his wife, Strobel describes being "pleasantly surprised - even fascinated - by the fundamental changes in her character, her integrity, and her personal confidence" (p. 14). A difference of opinion as radical as that between an atheist and a Christian can be tumultuous in a relationship, but love for a significant other can put great pressure on reconciling that difference, even if conversion seems to be the only viable option. It is certainly not unheard of for a spouse to change his/her religion in accordance with their partner. Did Strobel really want to study Christianity to learn about the shifts in his wife's behavior or did he want to find a reason to stay with the woman he loves?

Finally, we can see these issues reflected in the sincerity and objectivity with which Strobel conducts his investigation. When I say The Case for Christ is investigative writing at its worst, I mean that it presents a terribly one-sided view of the discussion. Of all the scholars, historians, and experts that could have been interviewed, every single one of the thirteen featured in the book is an Evangelical Christian. Strobel hand picks statements from a few skeptics to present to his conservative scholars, but much of the time the opposing view is given by the author himself, who often throws soft balls and sets up strawman arguments. We will see all of this and more as we examine Strobel's case, chapter by chapter.

Introduction

To begin, there are some statements worth noting in the introduction that will be referred to elsewhere in this critique. These statements demonstrate great confidence on the part of the author, who seems to believe firmly in the strength of his case. We are first met with the story of James Dixon. The facts of the case all seem to point toward Dixon being guilty, but when new evidence comes to light, the verdict drastically changes. I find this to be very indicative of a problem most apologists appear to suffer from - one which Strobel and his pals frequently fall into throughout the book. The time to believe a proposition is when the evidence supports it, not before, not even if initial presumptions turn out to be wrong. As Strobel explains, "the key questions were these: Had the collection of evidence really been thorough? And which explanation best fit the totality of the facts?" (p. 12)

If the collection of evidence was not thorough, Dixon would have been wrongfully convicted. But this is not a reason to believe in spite of evidence, it's merely a reason to be meticulous and diligent in one's investigation - it's a reason to value evidence all the more! Approaching things as thoroughly as possible is the only way to get the totality of facts, and successfully determining the best explanation is more difficult without the complete picture. Strobel has set a good standard with this, which he thinks his case for Christ lives up to. He even charges atheists - under the guise of his former self - with ignoring such standards:

This myth is entirely reliant on Christian dogma, however. There is nothing preventing an atheist from being selfless and moral, nor does being a follower of Jesus mean one is living free from sin. The difference between a Christian working on being a better person and an atheist working on being a better person is that the atheist does it only for their benefit and the benefit of those around them, whereas the Christian also does it as part of an obligation to god. Strobel doesn't tell us what horrible things he did as a non-Christian, but his remark is a common evangelizing practice too, making it hard to buy that he was as devoted to self-serving immorality as he pretends. On the other hand, we see religious devotees ignore the facts quite often when they conflict with cherished beliefs. From faith healers to young earth creationists, 'god's truth' is frequently placed above any naturalistic evidence found disconcerting.

And what of the scholars consulted in The Case for Christ? Do they show an openness to all the facts or an aversion to uncomfortable ones? As already mentioned, all thirteen of them are Evangelical Christians, which provides a very narrow scope to begin with. But what's more is that Strobel assures us they are "leading authorities who have impeccable academic credentials" (p. 14). No attempt to justify this is made, perhaps because these are scholars of one particular denomination among the thousands within Christianity. Strobel tries to give the impression of his book being based on cutting edge information given by the top experts speaking for the majority in biblical and historical scholarship, but don't be fooled. Even if this were true and we were not being given such a biased sliver of opinions, the arguments and evidence are what matter most. With that said, let's see what Strobel and company have to offer.

Chapter 1: The Eyewitness Evidence

Strobel kicks off his investigation by looking at the four gospels, specifically who wrote them, when they were written, and how trustworthy they are. When researching a historical person and trying to get to the core of who they were and what they were about, it seems that we should start at the very beginning, looking at the hard evidence of archaeology and the historical record. Instead, our author saves this approach for chapters four and five, after extensive discussion of the gospels. Why go about it that way? Strobel hopes to persuade his readers of the reliability of the gospels first and foremost, so that by the time history and science come into the picture, they will merely be adding support to a pre-existing conception of Jesus. What we are being given here is not exactly the case for Christ, but the case for the Christ of the gospels. Considering the value of the gospels to Christians and the amount of faith Evangelicals invest in them, this is not so surprising.

Eyewitness testimony is very valuable in investigations, Strobel tells us, and it can even be useful for the issue of "whether Jesus Christ is the unique Son of God" (p. 20). Although eyewitnesses can add some additional information or credibility to a case, their testimony is not nearly as trustworthy as Strobel - who I will remind you is a seasoned journalist and Law school graduate - tries to make it seem. False memories can be introduced by a third party, by language cues, or by even retelling a story, as studies have shown. In a talk given at Stanford Law School, professors Barbara Tversky and George Fisher explain that "when misleading information is given, witness confidence is often higher for the incorrect information than for the correct information" [2]. Bias is a big influence on how we report an event, they also noted, and unfortunately it often "creeps into memory without our knowledge, without our awareness." Thus, even if the gospels are eyewitness accounts, that does not promise any greater sense of reliability, especially with their overt bias.

For his first interview, Strobel talks to Craig Blomberg, a New Testament scholar with an affinity for writing about the gospels. Blomberg admits that, "strictly speaking, the gospels are anonymous," yet he goes on to cite "the testimony of the early church" in defending traditional authorship of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (p. 22). These members of the early church, such as Irenaeus and Papias, wrote their comments 60 to 100 years after the gospels were allegedly written, and more interestingly, they don't actually do much in telling us what gospels were by which authors. As an example, consider Irenaeus' comment, which Strobel also quotes in the book:

All the information Irenaeus really provides is that these four men supposedly each wrote a gospel. How does he know this? Although he doesn't disclose his source, further insight may be gained from another passage where Irenaeus speaks of the gospels. Explaining why there are only four authentic gospels, he states:

Obviously, Irenaeus was prone to inventing explanations to settle the heresies against which he was fighting. Writing in the late 2nd century C.E. against Marcion and others who had created their own canons of 'unacceptable' gospels and scriptures, Irenaeus had to find some way to justify his position. His account of the four gospel authors is the earliest we have, when only 30 years before, Justin Martyr had felt comfortable leaving the gospels in anonymity, referring to them simply as the Memoirs of the Apostles. Other problems also exist in Irenaeus' comment. As Bart Ehrman and other New Testament scholars have pointed out, the gospel of Matthew that we possess today is in Greek, not Hebrew, and there is no evidence that it has been translated from Hebrew [4]. Ehrman additionally states that there is nothing in Mark's gospel to indicate a reliance on Peter. It's even more puzzling to note that Irenaeus suggests that Mark composed his gospel after Matthew composed his, which cannot be the case, since the text of Matthew very clearly borrows elements from Mark.

The two-source hypothesis holds that Matthew and Luke both used Mark as a source in their writings, as well as a lost sayings gospel named Q. Not surprisingly, Blomberg writes off the theory as "nothing more than a hypothesis" and attempts to argue that Matthew used Mark because Mark used Peter as a source (p. 26,27). The two-source hypothesis is strongly supported in an article by New Testament scholar Daniel B. Wallace [5], and it ought to be asked why an alleged eyewitness like Matthew would use Mark even out of deference to Peter, rather than giving his own unique testimony. Blomberg's theory makes far less sense than accepting the anonymity of the gospels and considering other authors aside from the traditional four, yet it's a good example of the mental gymnastics that conservative apologetics are often forced into.

To embark on a brief tangent about Q, Blomberg claims that the hypothetical gospel contains miracle stories, such as Luke 7:18-23 and Matthew 11:2-6 (p. 27). The early circulation of miracle stories for Jesus would not be unusual, but neither would it provide any support to the belief that miracles were actually performed. New Testament scholar Burton Mack has suggested that miracle stories were among the early traditions ascribed to Jesus [6], and an interesting fragment from the Dead Sea Scrolls known as 4Q521 may serve as evidence that some ancient Jews believed the coming messiah would be a miracle worker. What makes it interesting is the similarity in structure to what Jesus says of himself in the Luke and Matthew passages that Blomberg cites. These miracle stories in Q may just be another case of messianic fulfillment attributed to Jesus by the movements that sprang up around him, as Mack argues.

In perhaps the most absurd portion of the chapter, Strobel asks about the uniformity of belief among the early church fathers regarding the authorship of the gospels, to which Blomberg responds that there "are no known competitors." Having seen this touted as an argument for traditional authorship before, I feel the need to emphasize just how ridiculous it is. When we can examine a text and determine if it's a forgery based on the language, style, the subject matter, the author's description of his environment, knowledge of history, and so many other factors, we do NOT need to know the forger's actual name to rest assured that it is a forgery. However, in the case of the anonymous gospels, we're not even talking about forgery, because no names were attached to the documents! But based on the descriptions of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in Christian sources, we can tell just how much or how little the gospels attributed to them resemble their identities. Thus, we need not know any competitors to cast sufficient doubt on traditional authorship.

Next we find Blomberg trying to show that Jesus didn't just make divine claims in John's gospel, but in the synoptic gospels too. The use of "I am" in Mark 6:50, he argues, is Jesus equating himself with god, whose name is "I Am that I Am" in Exodus 3:14 (p. 29). Amusingly, though, the Greek word Jesus uses for "I am" in Mark 6:50, eimi, is elsewhere used by men who Christians would certainly not consider to be making divine claims, such as Paul in Romans 1:14 and even a Roman centurion in Matthew 8:8-9! If those men could make "I am" statements without being found guilty of blasphemy, then maybe eimi was simply common language that wasn't seen as a claim of divinity in itself. In similar fashion, Blomberg contends that "son of man" was a divine title (p. 30), as an allusion to Daniel 7:13-14, yet he conveniently omits the use of the term in Psalm 144:3, Numbers 23:19, Job 25:6, and other passages where mortals are called sons of man.

Mark's gospel may be some 40 years after the supposed death of Jesus, but there is still reason to think it's reliable, according to Blomberg, because "hostile eyewitnesses... would have served as a corrective if false teachings about Jesus were going around" (p. 33). I'm somewhat astonished and dismayed at how common this line of argument is among Christians. As numerous historians have observed, the early Christian movement was not particularly notable in the midst of Judea. To think the small sect that formed around Jesus would have stood out among other messianic figures like Judas of Galilee, Theudas, and Athronges, during the intense upheaval of the first century among Jews and Romans seems to be imaginative thinking. It's like suggesting that Sathya Sai Baba really did all those miracles his followers attributed to him, or else skeptics would've been able to disprove them. In such confined cases, there's just not usually any interest in bothering.

Blomberg makes another fallacious assertion that seems to be common among Christian apologists. He dates the book of Acts to sometime before 62 C.E. on the grounds that it does not mention the death of Paul, and, as he argues, that must mean Acts was composed before Paul's death (p. 33). While the author of Acts may not have specifically described how Paul met his end, there is reason to think he knew about it. In Acts 20:25, Paul tells his followers that "none of you among whom I have gone about preaching the kingdom will ever see me again." The final encounter with Paul is part of the author's plan for the narrative, as New Testament scholar Joseph A. Fitzmyer elaborates:

Since Blomberg uses this presumption about the dating of Acts to try and date the gospels even earlier, his argument crumbles when the presumption is undermined. Nonetheless, he proceeds with three so-called "early creeds" in Paul's writings that support an early tradition of resurrection, he believes (p. 34-35). One of the creeds is from a disputed epistle, Colossians, which features stylistic differences from the authentic letters of Paul, and even theological differences such as the belief that Christians were already "raised with Christ" by baptism (Col. 2:12-13), in contrast to Paul's insistence that believers are not raised until some future event (1 Corin. 15:50-54). Given that some scholars have dated Colossians as late as 80 C.E., it cannot be assumed to be an early creed. The other two creeds cited are Philippians 2:6-11 and 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. While each has its peculiarities (the "emptying" of Jesus in Phil., the 12 in 1 Corin. after Judas died and his replacement had not been named yet), the critical thing to consider is what evidence there is that any of these passages are early creeds. No church fathers or early Christians name these scriptures creeds, and even if they are pre-Pauline in origin, determining exactly when they date from is another matter not likely to be definitively settled.

Chapter 2: Testing the Eyewitness Evidence

Having attempted to establish the traditional authorship of the four gospels, Blomberg moves on to arguing in favor of their historical reliability. Why is Luke to be trusted as a historically accurate picture of events, for example? Well, because Luke says he "carefully investigated everything" (Luke 1:3), and this appears to be enough for Blomberg (p. 39-40). Regarding the other two synoptic gospels, Blomberg uncritically says "it seems reasonable that Luke's historical intent would closely mirror theirs" (p. 40). How can this be a reasonable supposition when Matthew's gospel shows a clear agenda of fitting Jesus to the Old Testament and Mark's gospel presents a perspective that has been called the messianic secret? Each of the four gospels has its own unique bias, but Evangelicals like Blomberg are fond of downplaying these differences and mashing the texts together to argue for agreement among them.

In a stunning display of nonsense, Blomberg claims that if one is to be "convinced enough to believe, the theology has to flow from accurate history" (p. 40). Beliefs defy the evidence of history all the time, however, and some groups like the Mormons seem to have no trouble being convinced to the point of believing in theology that is rooted in significant historical errors. Contrasting his statement to the gospels, Blomberg asserts that the gospels do not have the "outlandish flourishes and blatant mythologizing" of other ancient writings (p. 40). What about the virgin birth, the star over Bethlehem, the miracles performed by Jesus, the opening of the graves at his crucifixion, the resurrection of Jesus, the angels at his tomb, and the postmortem appearances where he suddenly materialized in locked rooms, just to name a few? It's not as if these aren't common mythological devices, either. Blomberg's statement is clearly special pleading.

Blomberg doesn't seem to have any problem with accepting that the gospels came from earlier oral traditions, but he's not so inclined to accept the errors that naturally come from such a format of transmission. If the Jews could commit to memorizing the Torah, he ponders, then maybe the early Christians did the same with their stories. Ancient practices of memorization allowed for 10-40% variation, Blomberg states, and this is about the same variation that the synoptic gospels have between each other (p. 43-44). No sources are provided for either of these statistics, but it's worth noting that Blomberg is admitting to faulty memories accounting for the inconsistencies in the synoptics, even if he does regard this is as the result of standard memorization practices in the ancient world. 10-40% variation is not an insignificant range of differences either, yet the strength of the two-source hypothesis really makes memorization a superfluous notion without good evidence.

The telephone game is very often used as an analogy against the reliability of passing on information by word of mouth. It is perhaps the most effective way to emphasize the errors and mistakes that can be made, typically through no intentional deception. But in his quest to vindicate the conservative view of the gospels, Blomberg is forced to fight the telephone game. "The [Christian] community would constantly be monitoring what was said and intervening to make corrections along the way," he states (p. 44). This response presumes that there was one unified community of believers all with the same goal of reporting and preserving the historically accurate occurrence of events in Jesus' life and ministry. However, in the earliest documents we have from those 'in the community,' like Paul, we see tensions and factions coming into conflict with one another. Paul intervenes with his 'corrections,' James intervenes with his (Gal. 2:12), and through the reprimands of Paul we find other Christians passing on other ideas, like spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 14), the timing of Christ's return (1 Thessalonians), the need for circumcision (Galatians 5), and more. There is no reason to think the early Christians had unified enough to lay down any system of checks and balances like Blomberg believes they had.

Blomberg bases the above statement on Christ's calling for his followers to be of good integrity, as well as "ten of the eleven remaining disciples being put to grisly deaths, which shows great character." Jesus' calling to the disciples is totally irrelevant, since instruction is not always followed, even by disciples of an esteemed leader. I have written about the martyrdom of the disciples in a separate article, Did the Disciples Die For a Lie?, and I am amused and puzzled by where this "ten of the eleven" figure comes from (of course, Blomberg doesn't bother to cite his source), when the earliest sources on the deaths of the disciples report that four of them died of natural causes. Even so, dying a grisly death, or a martyr's death, does not show character or integrity by default. It only shows conviction, which can be either praiseworthy or condemnable.

Moving on to address some of the alleged contradictions in the bible, Strobel begins by tossing a couple of ridiculously weak examples at Blomberg which I have yet to see on skeptic's lists (p. 46-47). For the third and final example, Strobel brings up the conflicting genealogies of Jesus in Matthew and Luke. Our 'expert' scholar attempts to dismiss the contradiction with the tired old proposal that one genealogy traces Jesus' lineage through Mary and the other traces it through Joseph. But Mary is mentioned nowhere in Luke's gospel and only incidentally in Matthew's, as the wife of Joseph. Luke specifically says, "Jacob the father of Joseph" and Matthew says, "Joseph, the son of Heli". Additionally, Numbers 1:18 explains that genealogies were assembled, "by ancestry in their families, by their fathers' households," and there is no genealogy traced through the mother anywhere in the entire bible. The Mary lineage explanation just doesn't fly.

Next, Blomberg issues a whopper of a comment, explaining that if we've reconciled contradictions in the vast majority of a text, "we can give [it] the benefit of a doubt when we're not sure on some of the other details" (p. 48). The overwhelming amount of Christian reconciliations of contradictions involve possibilities and speculation. It could be that Mary's lineage is one of the genealogies. Maybe Luke 7:3 says the centurion sent the elders because it was common to attribute actions to subordinates in those days. Perhaps Gerasa was a town in the province of Gadara (all these 'solutions' are proposed by Blomberg in p. 46-47). If we could trust a text based on speculative reconciliations like these, we could make up excuses to consider any document as historically reliable. The other problem with this comment lies in presuming the accuracy of OTHER details based on the ability to reconcile some separate contradictions. This is poor scholarship. Each individual claim needs to be examined on its own merits. An apparent resolution of one contradiction cannot be expanded to blind trust in the rest of the text.

Strobel asks Blomberg if the gospel authors "included any material that might be embarrassing" or if they covered it up "to make themselves look good" (p. 49). With such an obvious leading question, one wonders how Strobel got his law degree. Embarrassment is relative - what you find embarrassing, I may not, and vice versa. This means that Blomberg's answers will certainly boil down to speculation once more, and he comes up with three grand ones: (i) the hard, ethically challenging sayings of Jesus; (ii) apparent limitations on Jesus' power; and (iii) the depiction of the disciples as dim-wits. For (i), we need only point out the same in Buddhism, Judaism, and other religions that value piety. In fact, piety seems a common element of concern for nearly every religion, as it is generally a part of the sacred. Living up to high moral standards was probably neither unusual nor embarrassing to first century people. (ii) can be better understood with the context of each gospel author's unique agenda, i.e. Jesus crying out Psalm 22:1 suits Mark's recurring theme of tragic irony. If authors used these 'limitations' to fit their agendas, they obviously were not embarrassed by them. The same goes for (iii), in addition to the fact that the role of the disciples depends on which gospel is read (Mark portrays them as more aloof than in John).

Although not stated in the book, this appears to be a reference to a passage in the Jewish Talmud. I cover this in my article, Did Jesus Really Exist?, and while my conclusion on the historicity of Jesus has changed, the argument against the Talmud as a source for Jesus Christ has not. The information provided is vague, mentioning a man named Yeshu who was stoned to death and then hung from a tree for the crimes of witchcraft and idolatry. In the Talmud alone, there are numerous references to men named Yeshu, each quite different from the others. Blomberg's suggestion that condemning a man for sorcery acknowledges that he works miracles is also premature. The central concern in the Talmud appears to be with Yeshu enticing Israel to idolatry, and "practicing witchcraft" does not imply that someone was successfully working miracles, only that they were trying. Regardless, the passage notes that Yeshu was "close to the government," which sounds very unlike the Jesus of the gospels.

Throughout the first two chapters, Blomberg makes frequent appeals to the hostile witness argument - that the enemies of Christianity could have easily exposed the religion as a lie if it was in fact a lie. I've already pointed out that Christianity was a fairly small sect in its early days and it was often fighting battles against itself with the various opinions circulating in Paul's time. But it's also important to realize the lateness of the Christian mission, which Blomberg doesn't seem to appreciate. As we find in Acts 2, the disciples did not begin preaching the risen Christ until seven weeks after his ascension. At such a late point, digging up and producing a body to dispel a fledgling religion would have been fruitless. Even the earliest writings of the Christian movement come 20-25 years after the death of Jesus. There is just no reason to think the Romans or Jews would have had the motive to hound Christians over something with which they were not exactly forthcoming in the first place.

Closing his lengthy interview with Blomberg, Strobel asks him whether his years of research have helped or hindered his faith. This concluding question is posed to all of Strobel's interviewees, reinforcing the idea that people will believe if they only know the evidence. Predictably, Blomberg says his faith has been strengthened, and he goes on to say that there are "plenty of stories" of non-believing bible scholars converting through the course of their studies (p. 53), though he doesn't name a single one. Of what use is this little comment, other than misleading people into thinking that the evidence is so convincing as to compell conversion? With other scholars losing their faith through study of the bible, like Bart Ehrman, Robert M. Price, Michael Goulder, and John W. Loftus, Blomberg's implication here is devoid of any real substance.

Chapter 3: The Documentary Evidence

For chapter three, Strobel interviews Bruce Metzger, a renowned New Testament scholar from Princeton Theological Seminary. Strobel's purpose here is to establish the textual reliability of the gospels, or show that the text of the gospels has not been corrupted. As both men admit, copies of copies of copies are all that we currently have of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Have these copies been altered or are they still as accurate as the originals? Even the more conservative bible translations like the NIV now recognize that certain familiar stories like Jesus forgiving the adulteress in John and the miraculous ending of Mark's gospel (16:9-20) are not in the earliest manuscripts. There have been changes to the bible, but what Strobel and his fan club are wanting to know is how significant these changes have been.

One of the most popular ways to endorse the textual reliability of the New Testament seems to be by simply citing the number of manuscripts in existence. Josh McDowell has done this in too many apologetic propaganda pieces to count, and Metzger lays out the same information in The Case for Christ, noting that there are around 24,000 manuscripts of the New Testament. To his credit, though (and unlike McDowell), Metzger illuminates the fact that the majority of these come from later times. Uncial manuscripts, of which we have 306, date to the 3rd century C.E. and later (p. 62-63). Minuscule manuscripts, of which there are 2,856, came into use around 800 C.E., Metzger states. Then there are 2,403 lectionaries, which started to emerge by the 8th century, and 8,000-10,000 Latin manuscripts, and 8,000 more in Ethiopic, Slavic, and Armenian, all of which originated from the medieval era and later. Although not mentioned in the book, there are 127 New Testament papyri, the oldest dating to 125 C.E. [8]. Altogether, these account for the 24,000 manuscripts Metzger refers to. This provides a very different picture, for if we want to keep things within the first three or four centuries of Christianity, we are left with a mere 433 manuscripts at the most.

With this new number, it's not so impressive to stack up the New Testament next to The Iliad's 650 Greek manuscripts. By the time of Constantine, canons of scripture were being commissioned, and with the expanse of Christianity through the world, an increased demand for copies of the bible meant more manuscripts would be produced in the medieval era than any other period of Christian history before. Perhaps why the bible's overall count of manuscripts drowns out most other texts is simply because it carried an ideology with it that grew by conquest, as opposed to other literary works of the ancient world that had no such ideology attached to them. This has devastating implications for a quote Strobel gives of Norman Geisler:

It is arguably misleading to contrast the New Testament to other works of antiquity that did not experience the high demand for copies and fell out of production until the modern era. One should also bear in mind that certain pagan texts deemed heretical would possibly even have been prohibited from production in the Middle Ages (Odysseus is found in the eighth circle of hell in Dante's Inferno). The circumstances surrounding the creation of manuscripts for the New Testament are vastly incomparable to those surrounding most other ancient texts. As for the "99.5" purity, it's not clear what constitutes purity of the text in this case, but Daniel B. Wallace has taken on Geisler's downplaying of the New Testament variations in an article where he reveals a difference of 200,000 versus 8 million variants [9].

However, the textual reliability of the New Testament adds nothing to the case for Christ in the first place. I might even agree with Frederic Kenyon that "the scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written" (p. 63). But all that this proves is that the text of the New Testament has not changed much since it was originally written - it does not vouch for the historicity or truth of the content, only for the mode of its transmission. The authors of the Christian canon could have written false information into the original writings, and all the copies and internal consistency in the world wouldn't make a difference.

When I was first introduced to apologetics, the criteria used in constructing the canon was of great interest to me. Why did the church exclude certain texts but allow others? Was the process fair or had the Christian council "squelched equally legitimate documents because they didn't like the picture of Jesus they portrayed," as Strobel puts it (p. 65)? Metzger offers three criteria by which the texts that made it into the canon were evaluated: (i) it had to be written by an apostle or the follower of an apostle; (ii) it had to be congruent with what the church and Christians believed; (iii) and it had to have had continuous acceptance and usage by the church at large. There should be little doubt that these criteria did indeed squelch unwelcome documents, regardless of their legitimacy. (i) filters out non-apostolic and non-Christian testimony by default; (ii) excludes texts that are not supported by the majority opinion; and (iii) rules out all but the books that were popular and approved by the church. The New Testament seems more like a greatest hits compilation than the divinely-inspired 'word of god.'

Strobel proceeds to ask Metzger about the Gospel of Thomas, which Metzger dates to 140 C.E. (p. 68). The primary reason for giving it a later dating is its incompatibility with the canonical gospels, but this seems to be a biased kind of filtering, given that John's gospel so differs from the other three that Mark, Matthew, and Luke earned the synoptic title to distinguish them. For an alternate opinion supporting an earlier dating, Stephen J. Patterson writes:

Metzger's argument for a late dating of Thomas really isn't an argument so much as it's religiously-based intuition. "[The Christian believers] could hear the voice of the Good Shepherd in the gospel of John," he says, "they could hear it only in a muffled and distorted way in the Gospel of Thomas" (p. 69). This is not the critique of a thoughtful scholar - at best it's stating the obvious: the early Christians didn't feel that Thomas was inspired. Of course, that's one reason why it didn't become part of the canon. Metzger may be a renowned bible scholar, but his contributions to The Case for Christ are mundane and disappointing, especially his remark that Syrian churches "impoverish themselves" by not accepting the intensely paranoid and violent book of Revelation as canonical scripture (p. 69)!

In closing chapter three, Strobel comments on the pseudepigrapha, or falsely attributed writings that were not included in the canon, such as the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Gospel of Bartholomew, and others. Having accepted Metzger's 'challenge' to read them, he dismisses the texts over their "mythical qualities" that "disqualify them from being historically credible" (p. 70). But why is a talking cross mythical and disqualified from historical credibility, while a talking snake is just fine? Why is it mythical for Jesus to talk figuratively about making Mary into a male in the Gospel of Thomas, and yet it's natural for Jesus to talk figuratively about eating his body and drinking his blood in the canonical gospels?

Go to page 2 - Chapter 4: The Corroborating Evidence

1. Strobel, L. (1998) The Case for Christ. p. 13. Zondervan: Grand Rapids.
2. Fisher, G. & Barbara Tversky. (1999) The Problem with Eyewitness Testimony. The Stanford Journal of Legal Studies.
3. Irenaeus. Against Heresies. 3.1.1.
4. Ehrman, B. (2011) Forged: Writing in the Name of God. p. 227. HarperCollins: New York.
5. Wallace, D. The Synoptic Problem. Bible.org. Retrieved May 29, 2011.
6. Mack, B. (1995) Who Wrote the New Testament? p. 64. HarperCollins: New York.
7. Fitzmyer, J. (1998) The Acts of the Apostles. p. 791-792. Doubleday: New York.
8. List of New Testament papyri. Wikipedia.org. Retrieved June 1, 2011.
9. Wallace, D. The Number of Textual Variants: An Evangelical Miscalculation. Retrieved June 1, 2011.
10. Patterson, S. (1994) The Gospel of Thomas and Jesus. p. 120. Polebridge Press.