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Strobel has a good, clean writing style, giving the facts, not resorting to unnecessary words- he writes like a journalist should. This helps immea... (show more)
Strobel has a good, clean writing style, giving the facts, not resorting to unnecessary words- he writes like a journalist should. This helps immeasurably in making an easy to understand book, while giving detailed needed information.
Questions are posed and answered. In fact, all the major questions about the authenticity and reliability of the Gospels, the early Church, and Jesus are answered clearly. This is an immensely helpful resource for apologetics, and for the searching mind. Strobel writes without malice and attack, and without being preachy. He simply presents the facts.
Now, definitely, there's bias here. He only interviews people who are on his side. And at times he seems to softball his questions to them. This was confusing because of some of the overall format of the book. He states at the beginning of the book that he became a Christian through his wife, after carefully considering the evidence, and then precedes to share with us his many interviews with experts in different areas- literature, Biblical studies, archeology, medicine, psychology... And throughout these interviews, I'm trying to figure out when this was written. Initially his wife gets converted twenty years ago. Then one interview mentions the Oklahoma City bombing...Surely it can't have been that long between when he first raised the questions and when he got around to interviewing people? Only at the end of the book do we find out that Strobel became a Christian after seeing his wife's life change, and then searching through the answers in *books* on his own. This book that he's written presents numerous interviews that he's done 20 years later, as a Christian, to recapture the work that he did on his own reading through books, authored by his interviewees. But his questioning style seems to be like a skeptic. Things would be more clear if the chronology of his conversion and who he is when interviewing were stated at the beginning of the book.
One of the greatest benefits to this book is the great breadth of research presented. Because he interviews top experts in the field- in the many fields- all in one place we get the complete story of the veracity of these texts, and the life of Jesus. There is a lot of false information on this subject out there- perhaps more on this subject than any other in history. As a former student of the only non-clerical member of the Jesus Seminar, I heard a perspective that the Jesus Seminar had the correct Truth, and they weren't the liberal fringe, but standard scholarship. But outside of the Jesus Seminar, few believe this. It's nice to see that misinformation repeatedly corrected in this text, as different theologians look through the dramatic preconceptions that groups like the Jesus Seminar have.
I particularly enjoyed the thought-provoking questions at the end of the chapter. Strobel doesn't want us to simply read this book, and think, "Yes, well done. Enjoyable read." He wants people's lives to be changed through this, be they Christian or not. The questions he asked at the end of each chapter were certainly not softballs, but hard-hitting, from whatever perspective you come from, and ideally designed for an individual or group who decides to read this book together.
However, this book could have been stronger with some contrary interviews presented, and a chance to hear the arguments of the other side. This is shown by the last chapter, presented as an appendix, the first chapter of his new book, The Case for Faith. There he interviews Templeton, a former preacher and friend of Billy Graham, now a strong agnostic and denier of Christ. In that interview with Templeton, as Templeton was dying, we see a real person, presenting real problems with his life, and the life of Christ. I would have liked to see more of this, and more interplay between the positions within Strobel's book. (show less)
