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    The Case for Christmas: A Journalist Investigates the Identity of the Child in the Manger
    The Case for Christmas: A Journalist Investigates the Identity of the Child in the Manger
    The Case for Christmas: A Journalist Investigates the Identity of the Child in the Manger
    Audiobook2 hours

    The Case for Christmas: A Journalist Investigates the Identity of the Child in the Manger

    Written by Lee Strobel

    Narrated by Lee Strobel and Dick Fredricks

    4.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Who was in the manger that first Christmas morning? And how can we know for sure? In The Case for Christmas, award-winning legal journalist Lee Strobel tells us that somewhere beyond the traditions of the holiday lies the truth.

    Some say that newborn baby would become a great moral leader. Others, a social critic. Still others view Jesus as a profound philosopher, a rabbi, a feminist, a prophet, and more. Many are convinced he was the divine Son of God. But who was he really?

    Consulting experts on the Bible, archaeology, and messianic prophecy, Strobel searches out the true identity of the child in the manger, analyzing:

    • Eyewitness Evidence--Can the biographies of Jesus be trusted?
    • Scientific Evidence--What does archaeology reveal?
    • Profile Evidence--Did Jesus fulfill the attributes of God?
    • Fingerprint Evidence--Did Jesus uniquely match the identity of the Messiah?

     

    Join Strobel as he invites you to push past the distractions of the holiday season and come into the presence of the baby who was born to change your life and rewrite your eternal destination: the greatest gift of all.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherZondervan
    Release dateSep 20, 2005
    ISBN9780310268918
    Author

    Lee Strobel

    Lee Strobel, former award-winning legal editor of the Chicago Tribune, is a New York Times bestselling author whose books have sold millions of copies worldwide. Lee earned a journalism degree at the University of Missouri and was awarded a Ford Foundation fellowship to study at Yale Law School, where he received a Master of Studies in Law degree. He was a journalist for fourteen years at the Chicago Tribune and other newspapers, winning Illinois’ top honors for investigative reporting (which he shared with a team he led) and public service journalism from United Press International. Lee also taught First Amendment Law at Roosevelt University. A former atheist, he served as a teaching pastor at three of America’s largest churches. Lee and his wife, Leslie, have been married for more than fifty years and live in Texas. Their daughter, Alison, and son, Kyle, are also authors. Website: www.leestrobel.com

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    Reviews for The Case for Christmas

    4.5/5

    34 ratings9 reviews

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    • 2/5
      This little book is excerpted from an earlier 1998 book by Lee Strobel: The Case for Christ. Like others of the series, Strobel’s MO is to interview other believing scholars and present his findings as a sort of scientific approach to uncovering the truth about Jesus.Let me start by saying that I’ve never found much inspiration in Strobel’s “The Case for …” series. It feels to me like he demeans the beauty and mystery of Christianity by trying to bring it down to earth, proving the unprovable. But when I noticed this little book attempting to prove the Christmas story, my curiosity won out. There are many valid arguments against the two conflicting birth stories in the Bible, and nothing whatsoever that I could think of as evidence for treating them literally, so I couldn’t resist.Strobel got on my wrong side right away with a blatant misquote of the Gospel of John:John, who begins his gospel by eloquently affirming the incarnation—that is, “the Word,” or Jesus, “became flesh and made his dwelling among us” on the first Christmas.At least Strobel knew where to drop the quotation marks! But the reference to “the first Christmas” is misleading and untrue to John’s Gospel. John wants nothing to do with the virgin birth, instead pointing out multiple times that Jesus’ father was Joseph. Conservative Christians may read the birth stories in Matthew and Luke, and then read the incarnation story in John, and naturally try to overlay the two, but this would insult John. John’s theology is one of eternal pre-existence, not of a miraculous birth, and John clearly describes the moment of incarnation at the Jordan river … not at birth.Strobel never does provide proof of the virgin birth, but rather attempts an indirect route, disproving the debunkers. Luke tells the story of Jesus’ miraculous birth, so Strobel stokes Luke as a careful historian, pointing out many places where Luke has been proven accurate, and uses that to deflect a major problem in Luke’s report: That governor Quirinius and King Herod seem to serve simultaneously, though Herod died ten years before Quirinius arrived as governor. Strobel’s “proof” that Luke’s account is historical: a coin dated to 11 B.C., bearing Quirinius’s name. Perhaps there were two governor Quiriniuses? But the rumor is absolutely not true; there exists no such coin, and Strobel should have done his homework. Strobel also neglects to mention the obvious: we know precisely who governed Syria in the years surrounding Herod’s death. It was Quintilius.Strobel jumps into the argument over whether Isaiah prophesied a virgin birth or whether the original Hebrew says only that a child will be born to a young woman. It’s a fun argument, but totally irrelevant, because just a few verses later, Isaiah makes it clear that he’s not predicting an event hundreds of years in the future, but in his own lifetime.Strobel’s best attempt is to argue for an early writing of the Gospels and traditional authorship, then deduces that these authors surely would not misrepresent the story so quickly after Jesus lived, because there would be others around to correct them. He manages to uncover one reasonable scholar (Blomberg) who agrees with this dating. The vast majority of Bible scholars do not.Strobel concludes that everything in the scripture about the Messiah has been fulfilled, and this proves Jesus’ identity. I am growing so tired of hearing this. Any knowledgeable Jew would be totally baffled by this claim, because Jesus didn’t fulfill any of the prophecies important to them! He didn’t gather the Jews back to Jerusalem, he didn’t rebuild the Temple, he didn’t reestablish the Jews as God’s favored people, he didn’t bring world peace, he didn’t unite the entire world in worship of one God, the list goes on. Perhaps we believe Jesus will come back and do all these things someday, but can we quit saying Jesus fulfilled the prophecies? He most assuredly did not … not in the political way the Old Testament expected.I’m starting to get argumentative, so this is probably a good place to close. Can we just leave things to faith which belong in the realm of faith?

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      This is a short book written by the journalist Lee Strobel. While his main book, the Case for Christ (which I have not read) no doubt deals with what he has written here more extensively, this is still a very good and well written book outlining Strobel's investigation of who Christ was and the legitimacy of his claims. In fact, after reading this book I have developed a healthy respect for Strobel as it is clear that being a sceptic, he did not simply brush off Christianity but instead chose to investigate it fully to see whether the claims that it made where true. There are many people in the world who form opinions about a subject and simply discount all evidence to the contrary. Somebody who is willing to investigate a claim, and then be willing to change their views on a subject, to me, is a person worthy of respect.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 5/5
      Such a great and thorough book! Ty for writing this book!
    • 5/5
      Excellent insight and fact based narrative. Clearly presented with viable examples.
    • 5/5
      Well reasoned and interesting. Investigative findings interwoven with engaging stories.
    • 5/5
      Very revealing and strengthen your belief and faith in Christ Jesus.
    • 5/5
      Very good and encouraging. I'm a professional archaeologist and medical student with completed degrees in the sciences and classics and I find his arguments very logical although he goes into them in more depth in his "Case for Christ". Yes, there's a little Evangelical focus towards the end but that shouldn't be troublesome and doesn't detract from the overall picture.
    • 1/5
      I found the first half of this book to be especially poor, with sweeping statements and flawed reasoning. The second half - especially regarding the historical evidence was slightly more palatable but (unsurprisingly) descends into evangelical tripe.
    • 5/5
      Although I accept the identity of Jesus Christ on faith, it was interesting to read all the historical evidence of His birth, life, death, and resurrection.