The Case For Christ
The Case for Christ records Lee Strobel's attempt to "determine if there's credible evidence that Jesus of Nazareth really is the Son of God." The book consists primarily of interviews between Strobel (a former legal editor at the Chicago Tribune) and biblical scholars such as Bruce Metzger. Each interview is based on a simple question, concerning historical evidence (for example, "Can the Biographies of Jesus Be Trusted?"), scientific evidence, ("Does Archaeology Confirm or Contradict Jesus' Biographies?"), and "psychiatric evidence" ("Was Jesus Crazy When He Claimed to Be the Son of God?"). Together, these interviews compose a case brief defending Jesus' divinity, and urging readers to reach a verdict of their own.
The Case for Christ records Lee Strobel's attempt to "determine if there's credible evidence that Jesus of Nazareth really is the Son of God." The book consists primarily of interviews between Strobel (a former legal editor at the Chicago Tribune) and biblical scholars such as Bruce Metzger. Each interview is based on a simple question, concerning historical evidence (for example, "Can the Biographies of Jesus Be Trusted?"), scientific evidence, ("Does Archaeology Confirm or Contradict Jesus' Biographies?"), and "psychiatric evidence" ("Was Jesus Crazy When He Claimed to Be the Son of God?"). Together, these interviews compose a case brief defending Jesus' divinity, and urging readers to reach a verdict of their own.
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However, Dr. Gary Habermas, has written about a historian named<br />
Thallus who in A.D. 52 wrote a history of the eastern<br />
Mediterranean world since the Trojan War. Although Thallus's work<br />
has been lost, it was quoted by Julius Africanus in about A.D.<br />
221-and it made reference to the darkness that the gospels had<br />
written about!<br />
"Could this," I asked, "be independent corroboration of this<br />
biblical claim?"<br />
Explained Yamauchi, "In this passage Julius Africanus says,<br />
'Thallus, in the third book of his histories, explains away the<br />
darkness as an eclipse of the sun-unreasonably, as it seems to<br />
me.'<br />
"So Thallus apparently was saying yes, there had been darkness at<br />
the time of the Crucifixion, and he speculated it had been caused<br />
by an eclipse. Africanus then argues that it couldn't have been<br />
an eclipse, given when the Crucifixion occurred."<br />
Yamauchi reached over to his desk to retrieve a piece of paper.<br />
"Let me quote what scholar Paul Maier said about the darkness in<br />
a footnote in his 1968 book Pontius Pilate," he said, reading<br />
these words:<br />
This phenomenon, evidently, was visible in Rome, Athens, and<br />
other Mediterranean cities. According to Tertullian ... it was a<br />
"cosmic" or "world event." Phlegon, a Greek author from<br />
Caria writing a chronology soon after 137 A.D., reported that in<br />
the fourth year of the 202nd Olympiad (i.e., 33 A.D.) there was<br />
"the greatest eclipse of the sun" and that "it became night in<br />
the sixth hour of the day [i.e., noon] so that stars even<br />
appeared in the heavens. <strong>The</strong>re was a great earthquake in<br />
Bithynia, and many things were overturned in Nicaea."<br />
Yamauchi concluded, "So there is, as Paul Maier points out,<br />
nonbiblical attestation of the darkness that occurred at the<br />
time of Jesus' crucifixion. Apparently, some found the need to<br />
try to give it a natural explanation by saying it was an<br />
eclipse."<br />
A PORTRAIT OF PILATE<br />
Yamauchi's mentioning of Pilate reminded me of how some critics<br />
have questioned the accuracy of the gospels because of the way<br />
they portray this Roman leader. While the New Testament paints<br />
him as being vacillating and willing to yield to the pressures of
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