The Case For Christ - A defence of Lee Strobel's 1998 apologetic book

[T.G.G. Moogly]

Imo, whether the ‘wine story’ in the NT is true, based on something but exaggerated, or is a later fiction, tells us virtually nothing, in any case, about whether Jesus existed or not.

The gospel protagonist's miracle-making snippets are all over the place, no particular theme or modus operandi. That tells me "fiction," even aside from the fact that such feats are impossible and that the tales are all written in third-person omniscient.

It can 'tell you' anything you think it does. It just doesn't help to clear anything up in any objective way.

Maybe he existed, maybe he didn't. No one can tell which. In the end, there's no reliable way to tell the difference between stories that were made up about a Jesus who existed and stories that were made up about a Jesus who didn't.

I say that after having spent far, far too much time looking into it and reading about it and discussing it on the internet.

And I have changed my own opinion on the likelihoods either way a few times.

For the record, I'm currently sitting at 'more likely existed than not'.

That's okay. I'm certain there are honest to real, actual life inspirations for Clark Kent, Paul Bunyan, Spiderman, Luke Skywalker, Bigfoot and Babe the Blue Ox. That's how authors get their material. At it's finest all authorship has to spring from some kind of actual human experience. Fiction and myth therefore spring from experience. Every writer does this.

The issue with the gospel protagonist is no different, it's a case of religious fiction, however, which for millions imparts factual legitimacy. It's not entertainment and learning anymore but rather a license to dominate. I think it's just how human emotion operates in folks like Strobel.

 

[ruby sparks]

...I'm certain there are honest to real, actual life inspirations for Clark Kent, Paul Bunyan, Spiderman, Luke Skywalker, Bigfoot and Babe the Blue Ox. That's how authors get their material. At it's finest all authorship has to spring from some kind of actual human experience. Fiction and myth therefore spring from experience. Every writer does this.

The issue with the gospel protagonist is no different....

You have no way of knowing that, and most likely no way of even making a reliable guess.

 

[Atheos]

It's rational to be certain that the gravity-defying Jesus who could magic away disease and conjure up feasts is a work of fiction. It's rational to infer that if people made up those whoppers about him they likely gave him credit for wisdom that came from other sources to make him sound more profound than he ever was in real life. It's rational to conclude that once all the bones are picked clean there is very little (if any) meat left on this story that is historical. Jesus could be a Moroni for all we know. Completely fabricated from whole cloth.

I personally think there was probably some historical nugget from which the legend sprouted, but nothing about the legend requires an original historical nugget. There is literally not one element of this story that is inconsistent with the whole thing being fictional. No artifacts, no contemporary attestation, nothing. Just fantastic tales about a magic jew who lived long ago in a place far, far away.

 

[Horatio Parker]

No one knows who wrote the first gospel, where or why.

Paul's letters are assumed to be older, but they arguably don't recount a historical Jesus.

Jesus is assumed to be Jewish, but he was from Galilee, which had been conquered by the Jews only a century earlier.

I don't know if there's a historical core to Jesus' existence or not, but the mythicists have the stronger argument IMO.

 

[ruby sparks]

No artifacts, no contemporary attestation, nothing.

Just like almost everyone else who lived in that part of the world at that time.

 

[ruby sparks]

.....the mythicists have the stronger argument IMO.

I have yet to hear one.

They have however, collectively, cast significant doubt. Imo.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

...I'm certain there are honest to real, actual life inspirations for Clark Kent, Paul Bunyan, Spiderman, Luke Skywalker, Bigfoot and Babe the Blue Ox. That's how authors get their material. At it's finest all authorship has to spring from some kind of actual human experience. Fiction and myth therefore spring from experience. Every writer does this.

The issue with the gospel protagonist is no different....

You have no way of knowing that, and most likely no way of even making a reliable guess.

As Atheos has so eloquently explained we can make a reliable and informed "guess" based upon human behavior and the laws of physics, the same thing we do every waking moment of our lives. It's mundane stuff.

That said I'll be the first to admit that humans love their woo, and that the Jesus tales are very popular woo with which humans have a very real physiological connection.

When it comes to reliable guesses everything is inspired within the authors mind by something wholly physical, wholly real. The product of that, however, is fictional in the Jesus tales.

And people want certainty and comfort in an uncertain, often threatening universe. Me too. My certainty is no different than anyone else's certainty because that need is evolutionarily cemented into my psyche.

ETA:
Some years ago there was a horrific plane crash near a local airport. It was investigated until the cause was ultimately found to be compromised hydraulics. I remember going into work that afternoon and having a highly charged emotional individual approach me to tell me that the first responders found mangled, limbless, headless pieces of bodies strewn through trees and across the ground, many with their hearts still beating and heads still moaning!

Of course I didn't correct this person as to the impossibility of his account because I understood his emotional connection and his need to express those emotions. What he lacked was rational perspective and the knowledge to have decided that the tale he heard told was impossible. Maybe at some point down the road he actually acquired sufficient knowledge to reflect on his experience.

 

[Keith&Co.]

As Atheos has so eloquently explained we can make a reliable and informed "guess" based upon human behavior and the laws of physics, the same thing we do every waking moment of our lives. It's mundane stuff.

In Sun Tzu's Art of War, or the commentary upon it, there's a tale of a certain king of China. Neighboring kinds offered increasing insults. Give us your special bred horse, give us your daughter as a concubine, etc. The king's advisors always claimed, 'This is intolerable, we should go to war.' But the king was pretty pacifist. "Who can deny a neighbor a horse? A girl? Some fish?" and he'd give in. After several rounds of this a neighbor asked for some land. Wasn't going to pay for it, he just wanted to even out the borders to a more pleasing shape. Half the advisors suggested war, but not emphatically. Half the advisors had adapted to the king's diplomatic strategy. "Who can deny a neighbor an aesthetically pleasing map?"
However, the king felt that land was the basis of the kingdom. His very right to rule was linked to the land. He slew the peace-advocating advisors, leaped upon a horse, and led an invasion into a kingdom that was quite unprepared for an attack from such a push-over, and they were soundly defeated.

Both the advisors and the invaded country had shown standard human adaptation to repeated behaviors.

If the Jesus story was based on anything that really happened, the disciples would have adapted to his miracles. At some point, when Jesus said, "Imma do y'all a phenomenon," SOME of the disciples would have nodded and said, "Yeah i think you will" and "Can't wait, J-Man."

But no. THey always act as if they've never seen magic performed, as if they have no reason to think Jesus can magic up wine, or fish, or heal, or raise the dead... They always protest that he's proposing the impossible. Again. And RIGHT AFTER he does exactly what he said he gonna, they're all pumped up and extoling his divine power. Until the next time he proposes a miracle...

Made me suspicious of the story a long time ago. If nothing else, Judas should have started taking bets with the rubes about whether Jesus was going to pull it off.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

And considering that Jesus not only granted his disciples miraculous powers--including the ability to raise the dead--then it's a genuine wonder why they aren't all still walking around among us and/or that they didn't raise up every single Jew that was ever killed by the Romans before, during and after the attacks on Jerusalem and we aren't all right now literally swimming in a sea of zombie Jews.

ETA: Zombie Juice ^TM.

 

[Lion IRC]

No one knows who wrote the first gospel...

Well if that's true, then no one can say that they aren't firsthand accounts.

Bible skeptics : The Gospels are all hearsay written centuries after the event.
Me : written by who?
Bible skeptics : We don't know who.

Me :

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

No one knows who wrote the first gospel...

Well if that's true, then no one can say that they aren't firsthand accounts.

Yes, we can, because the author writes about things he could not possibly have seen--or heard--first hand as if he did in fact see and hear them first hand.

So that makes him--whoever he was--at the very least a deliberately deceptive and unreliable narrator.

 

[Keith&Co.]

And considering that Jesus not only granted his disciples miraculous powers--including the ability to raise the dead--then it's a genuine wonder why they aren't all still walking around among us and/or that they didn't raise up every single Jew that was ever killed by the Romans before, during and after the attacks on Jerusalem and we aren't all right now literally swimming in a sea of zombie Jews.

ETA: Zombie Juice ^TM.

That really would have made the 'thrown to the lions' arena bouts interesting. Undying christain zombies beating up the exhausted and frustrated lions...

 

[Horatio Parker]

.....the mythicists have the stronger argument IMO.

I have yet to hear one.

They have however, collectively, cast significant doubt. Imo.

What argument(s) for HJ do you consider strong?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

There is literally not one element of this story that is inconsistent with the whole thing being fictional. No artifacts, no contemporary attestation, nothing. Just fantastic tales about a magic jew who lived long ago in a place far, far away.

That isn't true.

[YOUTUBE]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OclYAJhyNY0[/YOUTUBE]

 

[bilby]

No artifacts, no contemporary attestation, nothing.

Just like almost everyone else who lived in that part of the world at that time.

Yup. Only the important and influential people got recorded. The people who made a difference, good or bad, in the world. Roman governors and emperors, top generals, kings, princes and other significant leaders. So this Jesus character, if he existed, simply didn't make the impact that 'important' contemporaries made.

 

[bilby]

No one knows who wrote the first gospel...

Well if that's true, then no one can say that they aren't firsthand accounts.

Bible skeptics : The Gospels are all hearsay written centuries after the event.
Me : written by who?
Bible skeptics : We don't know who.

Me :

Logic fail.

If a story recounts the impossible, then it's not a first hand account of actual events, no matter who wrote it. If it contradicts itself, that goes double. If it describes events that the author himself admits were private to one of the characters who is not the author, then it's instantly shown to be bullshit.

 

[Atheos]

No artifacts, no contemporary attestation, nothing.

Just like almost everyone else who lived in that part of the world at that time.

Yup. Only the important and influential people got recorded. The people who made a difference, good or bad, in the world. Roman governors and emperors, top generals, kings, princes and other significant leaders. So this Jesus character, if he existed, simply didn't make the impact that 'important' contemporaries made.

Josephus even mentions John the Baptist and (unlike the Testimonium Flavianum) it does not appear to be forged. It stretches the bounds of credulity far past the breaking point to imagine that Jesus would have done so much greater works than JtB as are claimed in the various gospels, yet not one contemporary historian caught wind of these incredible tales and bothered to make note of them. Somehow, in spite of the fact that pious Jews and historians made yearly pilgrimages to Jerusalem for Passover and Pentecost; that these visitors would go back to their home lands and tell of the hot news from the holy city; that not one mentioning of this incredible worker of miracles and confounder of the wisest temple leaders got made by anyone capable of putting quill to parchment. Somehow not a single one made note of the many zombies who rose from their graves during the crucifixion in spite of the claim that they went into the city and were seen by many. Or of the 3 hours of darkness. Or of the extraordinary rending of the temple veil.

It takes a lot of eye-glazing to pretend these obvious gaps in the historical record do not speak volumes about the veracity of these claims that suddenly surfaced out of thin air in Rome decades removed from gainsay.

 

[Rhea]

It can 'tell you' anything you think it does. It just doesn't help to clear anything up in any objective way.

Maybe he existed, maybe he didn't. No one can tell which. In the end, there's no reliable way to tell the difference between stories that were made up about a Jesus who existed and stories that were made up about a Jesus who didn't.

From my perspective, the fact that you can’t even really tell one way or the other is so antithetical to the powers of a god that it demonstrates NON existence.

 

[Rhea]

...I'm certain there are honest to real, actual life inspirations for Clark Kent, Paul Bunyan, Spiderman, Luke Skywalker, Bigfoot and Babe the Blue Ox. That's how authors get their material. At it's finest all authorship has to spring from some kind of actual human experience. Fiction and myth therefore spring from experience. Every writer does this.

The issue with the gospel protagonist is no different....

You have no way of knowing that, and most likely no way of even making a reliable guess.

If there was ***A***GUY*** but all the sayings, the “miracles,” the actions and the resurrection are false, is it really an “historical Jesus”? Or is it a fiction with a protagonist’s name that matches **A**GUY**.

 

[Koyaanisqatsi]

I know to a 100% degree of certainty that there were many men named "Jesus" (or whatever it was supposed to be) that have walked the Earth just as I know to a 100% degree of certainty that not a one of them was an omnicapable being that created the entire universe in order to trifurcate into "flesh" at point X in order to kill himself as a necessary sacrifice to himself to stop himself from punishing all of us for something none of us ever did.