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The Case for Jesus
For well over a hundred years now, many scholars have questioned the historical truth of the Gospels, claiming that they were originally anonymous. Others have even argued that Jesus of Nazareth did not think he was God and never claimed to be divine.
In The Case for Jesus, Dr. Brant Pitre, the bestselling author of Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, goes back to the sources—the biblical and historical evidence for Christ—in order to answer several key questions, including:
• Were the four Gospels really anonymous?
• Are the Gospels folklore? Or are they biographies?
• Were the four Gospels written too late to be reliable?
• What about the so-called “Lost Gospels,” such as “Q” and the Gospel of Thomas?
• Did Jesus claim to be God?
• Is Jesus divine in all four Gospels? Or only in John?
• Did Jesus fulfill the Jewish prophecies of the Messiah?
• Why was Jesus crucified?
• What is the evidence for the Resurrection?
As The Case for Jesus will show, recent discoveries in New Testament scholarship, as well as neglected evidence from ancient manuscripts and the early church fathers, together have the potential to pull the rug out from under a century of skepticism toward the traditional Gospels. Above all, Pitre shows how the divine claims of Jesus of Nazareth can only be understood by putting them in their ancient Jewish context.
In The Case for Jesus, Dr. Brant Pitre, the bestselling author of Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, goes back to the sources—the biblical and historical evidence for Christ—in order to answer several key questions, including:
• Were the four Gospels really anonymous?
• Are the Gospels folklore? Or are they biographies?
• Were the four Gospels written too late to be reliable?
• What about the so-called “Lost Gospels,” such as “Q” and the Gospel of Thomas?
• Did Jesus claim to be God?
• Is Jesus divine in all four Gospels? Or only in John?
• Did Jesus fulfill the Jewish prophecies of the Messiah?
• Why was Jesus crucified?
• What is the evidence for the Resurrection?
As The Case for Jesus will show, recent discoveries in New Testament scholarship, as well as neglected evidence from ancient manuscripts and the early church fathers, together have the potential to pull the rug out from under a century of skepticism toward the traditional Gospels. Above all, Pitre shows how the divine claims of Jesus of Nazareth can only be understood by putting them in their ancient Jewish context.
256 pages, Paperback
First published February 1, 2016
720 people are currently reading
3268 people want to read
About the author
Brant Pitre
43 books438 followersDr. Brant Pitre is Professor of Sacred Scripture at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans, Louisiana. He earned his Ph.D. in Theology from the University of Notre Dame, where he specialized the study of the New Testament and ancient Judaism. He is the author of several articles and the books Jesus, the Tribulation, and the End of the Exile (Baker Academic, 2005); Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist (Image Books, 2011); and Jesus the Bridegroom (Image Books, 2014). Dr. Pitre is an extremely enthusiastic and engaging speaker who lectures regularly across the United States. He has produced dozens of Bible studies on CD, DVD, and MP3, in which he explores the biblical foundations of Catholic faith and theology. He currently lives in Gray, Louisiana, with his wife Elizabeth, and their five children.
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June 26, 2020
When theologians talk about God and general perspectives on reality, I find that you can often fully embrace the subject intellectually, mainly because of St Augustin and St Thomas, and also because the object of the investigation is our life, our reality, our human world, as it can be experienced today just like it was experienced 2000 years ago.
When it comes to arguments about the historic Jesus of Nazareth as the person who is described in the gospels, I feel a little more cautious. I am catholic and I find it a fascinating subject, but I'm convinced that, short of some earth-shattering archeological discovery, or the invention of time travel (which is not to be dismissed) we will never be able to get to a satisfying level of "historic truth" when it comes to the life of Jesus.
The point is, like Joseph Ratzinger says, that is probably not a useful line of inquiry.
I was taught that the Bible is a "polysemic" book, in other words its content has different layers of meaning that overlap and intertwine with each other. There is some literal truth, historic truth, but mainly it's spiritual and theological truth.
Reading the scriptures as if they were all only literal, historic truth is not something that one can do without either: a) avoiding rigorous thinking (see Christian Evangelicals who deny pretty much 50% of scientific discoveries), or b) building a case on flimsy or non-existing evidence, like only a seasoned courtroom attorney would be able to do.
And that's what Pitre does in this book: he builds a case. He does it extremely well, sometimes with very convincing explanations, sometimes not so convincingly, despite the scarcity of evidence.
Like many other religious scholars, he is great as posing clear, direct questions : "So at this point one has to wonder: why on Earth would someone etc. etc. ?". To which the reader thinks: "Yeah, exactly! I'm wondering exactly that, because it doesn't make any sense at all". But when the time for the answer comes, it never properly hits the mark. It's never a direct, clear answer. It tends to be an "attorney" answer that leads you to think something, even though it's never utterly clear and direct.
One example is the question of why, if Jesus was God, as he said he was, he would cry from the cross "My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?". Pitre's explanation draws from his deep and serious research, but I didn't find it very convincing.
In the first part of the book, Pitre discusses the history of the four gospels and he aims to show that they are fairly accurate biographies. It's always been believed John + Matthew were written by eyewitnesses while Mark and Luke by friends of friends. By the beginning of 20th century a new theory was widely embraced: that the 4 gospels were originally anonymous. Still today, many scholars believe we do not know who wrote them. Pitre doesn't agree with that. He builds a very strong case against the anonymity of the gospels:
1). No anonymous manuscript was ever found.
2). Almost all of the most ancient manuscripts and fragments have the same titles saying "The gospel according to Matthew", Mark, Luke or John.
3). Impossible that a series of 4 books would circulate for about a century around the Roman Empire and then all of a sudden have titles consistent with their content.
He then tackles the subject of "Who wrote the gospels":
MATTHEW
He was an eyewitness. Most ancient one or "first gospel". He was a tax collector, called by Jesus to be one of the 12 apostles. Important: he was the only one who was literate. Some scholars say it's impossible the actual apostles would have written the gospels, because they were illiterate (fishermen). Peter and John were illiterate. But it’s very likely that Matthew was not illiterate, as a tax collector. Most common objection to the fact that Mathew gospel was written by the apostle Matthew is that he used Mark's as a source. Mark was not eyewitness, but he was friend with Peter. So Pitre says it s possible that apostle Matthew used Mark's as source, for those events that Matthew did not witness. Not all apostles were witness to everything.
(Joseph Ratzinger says (Dio e il mondo, 2000) that most scholars today agree that this is not true. Matthew’s gospel was written around the end of the 1st century. Initially, there were only Jesus’s sayings, memorized and transmitted verbally).
MARK
No eyewitness. Friend of Peter. We know something about Mark from the Letters of Paul. He traveled with Barnabus and Paul, and he was with Peter when Peter was in Rome. Mark had a fight with Paul and they separated at some point.
LUKE
No eyewitness. He was a doctor. His prologue says why he is writing (and that he is not an eyewitness). Letters of Paul refer to him many times. A gentile, not a Jew. Stayed with Paul while Paul was a prisoner. Mark and Luke knew each other.
Acts of apostles are also probably written by Luke because dedicated to the same mysterious "Theofilus".
JOHN
"The disciple whom Jesus loved"
Controversial whether he was eyewitness apostle or not. Benedict XVI says that he was the actual apostle. In the beginning the writer John declares that he was the actual apostle. Pitre believes he was eyewitness. One of the 3 disciples closest to Jesus, John son of Zebede. He was a fisherman, but he might have written the gospel at the end of his life, and he would have studied after Jesus's death, and would have had at least 40 years before putting pen to paper. Or he could have dictated to a secretary, like Paul dictated some of his letters to secretaries.
Also most scholars think that only John mentions the fact that Jesus called himself divine, while Pitre is convinced that other evangelists present the divinity of Jesus, in more subtle ways.
In the second part of the book, this is what Pitre focuses on: the divinity of Jesus, and how Jesus actually said that he was God, although in a way that a Jewish person in his time would have understood, while today we would not necessarily find it immediately clear.
Overall a good scholarly book that I would recommend to anyone who is interested in this topic.
When it comes to arguments about the historic Jesus of Nazareth as the person who is described in the gospels, I feel a little more cautious. I am catholic and I find it a fascinating subject, but I'm convinced that, short of some earth-shattering archeological discovery, or the invention of time travel (which is not to be dismissed) we will never be able to get to a satisfying level of "historic truth" when it comes to the life of Jesus.
The point is, like Joseph Ratzinger says, that is probably not a useful line of inquiry.
I was taught that the Bible is a "polysemic" book, in other words its content has different layers of meaning that overlap and intertwine with each other. There is some literal truth, historic truth, but mainly it's spiritual and theological truth.
Reading the scriptures as if they were all only literal, historic truth is not something that one can do without either: a) avoiding rigorous thinking (see Christian Evangelicals who deny pretty much 50% of scientific discoveries), or b) building a case on flimsy or non-existing evidence, like only a seasoned courtroom attorney would be able to do.
And that's what Pitre does in this book: he builds a case. He does it extremely well, sometimes with very convincing explanations, sometimes not so convincingly, despite the scarcity of evidence.
Like many other religious scholars, he is great as posing clear, direct questions : "So at this point one has to wonder: why on Earth would someone etc. etc. ?". To which the reader thinks: "Yeah, exactly! I'm wondering exactly that, because it doesn't make any sense at all". But when the time for the answer comes, it never properly hits the mark. It's never a direct, clear answer. It tends to be an "attorney" answer that leads you to think something, even though it's never utterly clear and direct.
One example is the question of why, if Jesus was God, as he said he was, he would cry from the cross "My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?". Pitre's explanation draws from his deep and serious research, but I didn't find it very convincing.
In the first part of the book, Pitre discusses the history of the four gospels and he aims to show that they are fairly accurate biographies. It's always been believed John + Matthew were written by eyewitnesses while Mark and Luke by friends of friends. By the beginning of 20th century a new theory was widely embraced: that the 4 gospels were originally anonymous. Still today, many scholars believe we do not know who wrote them. Pitre doesn't agree with that. He builds a very strong case against the anonymity of the gospels:
1). No anonymous manuscript was ever found.
2). Almost all of the most ancient manuscripts and fragments have the same titles saying "The gospel according to Matthew", Mark, Luke or John.
3). Impossible that a series of 4 books would circulate for about a century around the Roman Empire and then all of a sudden have titles consistent with their content.
He then tackles the subject of "Who wrote the gospels":
MATTHEW
He was an eyewitness. Most ancient one or "first gospel". He was a tax collector, called by Jesus to be one of the 12 apostles. Important: he was the only one who was literate. Some scholars say it's impossible the actual apostles would have written the gospels, because they were illiterate (fishermen). Peter and John were illiterate. But it’s very likely that Matthew was not illiterate, as a tax collector. Most common objection to the fact that Mathew gospel was written by the apostle Matthew is that he used Mark's as a source. Mark was not eyewitness, but he was friend with Peter. So Pitre says it s possible that apostle Matthew used Mark's as source, for those events that Matthew did not witness. Not all apostles were witness to everything.
(Joseph Ratzinger says (Dio e il mondo, 2000) that most scholars today agree that this is not true. Matthew’s gospel was written around the end of the 1st century. Initially, there were only Jesus’s sayings, memorized and transmitted verbally).
MARK
No eyewitness. Friend of Peter. We know something about Mark from the Letters of Paul. He traveled with Barnabus and Paul, and he was with Peter when Peter was in Rome. Mark had a fight with Paul and they separated at some point.
LUKE
No eyewitness. He was a doctor. His prologue says why he is writing (and that he is not an eyewitness). Letters of Paul refer to him many times. A gentile, not a Jew. Stayed with Paul while Paul was a prisoner. Mark and Luke knew each other.
Acts of apostles are also probably written by Luke because dedicated to the same mysterious "Theofilus".
JOHN
"The disciple whom Jesus loved"
Controversial whether he was eyewitness apostle or not. Benedict XVI says that he was the actual apostle. In the beginning the writer John declares that he was the actual apostle. Pitre believes he was eyewitness. One of the 3 disciples closest to Jesus, John son of Zebede. He was a fisherman, but he might have written the gospel at the end of his life, and he would have studied after Jesus's death, and would have had at least 40 years before putting pen to paper. Or he could have dictated to a secretary, like Paul dictated some of his letters to secretaries.
Also most scholars think that only John mentions the fact that Jesus called himself divine, while Pitre is convinced that other evangelists present the divinity of Jesus, in more subtle ways.
In the second part of the book, this is what Pitre focuses on: the divinity of Jesus, and how Jesus actually said that he was God, although in a way that a Jewish person in his time would have understood, while today we would not necessarily find it immediately clear.
Overall a good scholarly book that I would recommend to anyone who is interested in this topic.
February 3, 2016
About ten years ago, while waiting at the Pittsburgh Airport, I met a young biblical scholar named Dr. Brant Pitre. We were both heading to the same biblical conference so we rode together, and in the car we had a lively discussion about biblical interpretation, especially the reliability of the Gospels.Brant Pitre went ahead and wrote it himself. And a darned good book it is.
Dr. Pitre shared how annoyed he was by the oft-used comparison between the transmission of the story of Jesus and the “Telephone game” where little children whisper a story to one another, around a group, until the end result is completely garbled and nothing like the original story.
I turned around to Dr. Pitre (I was in the front seat and he in the back) and said, “Yes! Someone needs to write a book dedicated to refuting that stupid comparison.”
I've never been subjected to that particular comparison. The one that drives me absolutely nuts is that Jesus didn't ever say he was God.
As we will see, the evidence in the Gospels suggests that Jesus did in fact claim to be God. He did so, however, in a very Jewish way. ... I cannot stress enough: just because Jesus did not go around Galilee shouting, "I am God!" does not mean that he didn't claim to be divine.Thank you!
There are is a lot of confusion out there about Jesus and you've probably come across various claims that "prove" Jesus was not God. These range from the idea the Gospels were anonymous, the existence of "lost" Gospels, the Gospels are folklore instead of biographies, a lack of evidence for the Resurrection, and more.
Just as he did in another of his books that I really liked, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, Pitre painstakingly builds his defense of Jesus. For each skeptical claim, there is a meticulous evidence trail examining Jesus, historical evidence, Jewish understanding, 1st century cultural context, and why we can trust what we've been told. This might sound drawn out or difficult, but I found it flowed easily and was easy to understand.
I myself especially appreciated that Pitre never lets us forget the inherently Jewish nature of Jesus' teachings and his listeners' understanding. The parallels he points out, often in very clear charts, can be stunningly revealing.
Here's a fairly lengthy excerpt from the chapter about the crucifixion. It illustrates how carefully the examples are drawn. Speaking about the temple of Jesus' body, Pitre quotes Josephus who says the number of lambs sacrificed during Passover was 256,500, and then tells us:
According to ancient Jewish tradition, before the Temple was destroyed in AS 70, the blood of the sacrifices used to be poured into a drain that flowed down the altar of sacrifice to merge with a spring of water that flowed out from the side of the mountain on which the Temple was built:Woah! If that doesn't give you a thrill of discovery, what will?At the south-western corner [of the Altar] there were two holes like two narrow nostrils by which the blood that was poured over the western base and the southern base used to run down and mingle in the water-channel and flow out into the brook Kidron. (Mishnah Middoth 3:2)So at the time Jesus lived, if you were approaching the Temple during the feast of Passover from the vantage point of the Kidron Valley, what might you have seen? A stream of blood and water, flowing out of the side of the Temple Mount.
Once you've got this first-century Jewish context in mind, all of a sudden John's emphasis on the blood and water flowing out of the side of Jesus makes sense. This seemingly small detail about his death actually reveals something deeply significant about who Jesus really is. He is not just the messianic son of God; he is the true Temple. In other words, Jesus is the dwelling place of God on earth. For that's what the Temple was to a first-century Jew. As Jesus himself says elsewhere: "He who swears by the Temple, swears by it and by him who dwells in it" (Matthew 23:21).
Definitely highly recommended.
NOTE: I had both a print galley, which was nicely designed, and the audio version, which was as well read as any material like this can be. I can recommend either or both, depending on your preference.
March 8, 2020
A very good read as the author relates his own story regarding skepticism and becoming skeptical about it and what others were teaching him. So he goes back to some of the basics as to what we know. Even if you are familiar with some of the arguments used, I found better insights regarding them and some points I had not considered at all. Exceptional.
May 27, 2016
I'm taking the time to write this review because this is one of the worst books I have ever started reading.
I have read many, many biblical apologists and they all commit glaring historical and logical errors. After reading the reviews for The Case for Jesus, I thought this book might be an exception. I was greatly disappointed. I can only guess that other reviewers haven't read mainstream biblical scholarship or made any attempt to check the information contained in the book.
From the many books I have read, every biblical apologist commits the classic straw man fallacy when dealing with their opponents views. Pitre is no exception. Right off the bat he mischaracterizes mainstream biblical scholarship regarding the authorship of the gospels. I'm not sure why apologists want to intentionally mischaracterize and make serious biblical scholars arguments seem childish. I say "intentionally" mischaracterize because he obviously has read books by Bart Ehrman and others but chooses not to deal with the actual arguments they present.
Chapter 2
I thought Mr. Pitre was going to provide manuscript evidence that no other biblical scholar, mainstream or evangelical had been aware of before. Alas, shockingly, this was not to be the case.
An example for Chapter 2 is a case in point:
"When it comes to the titles of the Gospels, not only the earliest and best manuscripts, but all of the ancient manuscripts—without exception, in every language —attribute the four Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John."
Is Pitre leaving out that the numerous early partial texts that are anonymous or does he mean full, later manuscripts? Does “every language” mean later Aramaic, Coptic, Syriac and Latin?
Later in the chapter the subject is clarified and mentions “important—notice also that the titles are present in the most ancient copies of each Gospel we possess, including the earliest fragments, known as papyri.”
Ummmm, yeahhhh. All these small fragments start out with, “the Gospel Accroding to ...” Someone please, please, oh pretty please with sugar on it, tell me this is all a bad dream.
I read other parts of the book and they contain the same "scholarship" as chapter 2. I’ll give myself a break and, to not bang my head against the wall, go read a scholarly, historical book.
I have read many, many biblical apologists and they all commit glaring historical and logical errors. After reading the reviews for The Case for Jesus, I thought this book might be an exception. I was greatly disappointed. I can only guess that other reviewers haven't read mainstream biblical scholarship or made any attempt to check the information contained in the book.
From the many books I have read, every biblical apologist commits the classic straw man fallacy when dealing with their opponents views. Pitre is no exception. Right off the bat he mischaracterizes mainstream biblical scholarship regarding the authorship of the gospels. I'm not sure why apologists want to intentionally mischaracterize and make serious biblical scholars arguments seem childish. I say "intentionally" mischaracterize because he obviously has read books by Bart Ehrman and others but chooses not to deal with the actual arguments they present.
Chapter 2
I thought Mr. Pitre was going to provide manuscript evidence that no other biblical scholar, mainstream or evangelical had been aware of before. Alas, shockingly, this was not to be the case.
An example for Chapter 2 is a case in point:
"When it comes to the titles of the Gospels, not only the earliest and best manuscripts, but all of the ancient manuscripts—without exception, in every language —attribute the four Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John."
Is Pitre leaving out that the numerous early partial texts that are anonymous or does he mean full, later manuscripts? Does “every language” mean later Aramaic, Coptic, Syriac and Latin?
Later in the chapter the subject is clarified and mentions “important—notice also that the titles are present in the most ancient copies of each Gospel we possess, including the earliest fragments, known as papyri.”
Ummmm, yeahhhh. All these small fragments start out with, “the Gospel Accroding to ...” Someone please, please, oh pretty please with sugar on it, tell me this is all a bad dream.
I read other parts of the book and they contain the same "scholarship" as chapter 2. I’ll give myself a break and, to not bang my head against the wall, go read a scholarly, historical book.
December 2, 2017
A good book which gave me a great moments of happiness. Of course to know about Jesus is always a happy moment. The skeptical attitude towards Jesus was there from his earthly life onward I know it will continue but for those who seek with trust and faith this book is really an answer. The skepticism against Jesus makes the really believers to go away from their faith. This book is really a good one with much reflection about the life of Jesus and the Gospels. The biblical and historical evidence given by Pitre is really helpful for any believers to meditate more about Jesus and make their faith strong in Jesus. I recommend this book to everyone who is in a search of the divinity of Jesus and who is on the level of fall. Before you fall just go through these facts really helpful one.
Thanks Pitre for your dedication and contentment and love for Jesus.
Thanks Pitre for your dedication and contentment and love for Jesus.
September 29, 2016
Briant Pitre begins “A Case for Jesus” by getting right to the point: “This book is about one big question: Did Jesus of Nazareth claim to be God?” He then expressed his shock when in college he learned that that the gospels were written anonymously, the actual authors are unknown. Apparently, he continued through his seminary and graduate education pursuing this concern.
Pitre assumes that being divine is the same as being God. Actually, the synoptic gospels do not claim that Jesus called himself God. He called Himself the Son of Man and the apostle Peter says that he was the Son of the Living God. Only in the Johannine gospel did Jesus call himself God. In the synoptic gospels Jesus is presented as the Son of God; He was divine, but he never called himself God. Pitre appears to be missing this point. It is commonly known among scholars that in the Synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke) Jesus never referred to himself as God. Pitri’s argues that the Lord’s stilling the storm in Psalms 107 is an activity reserved for God alone and therefore Jesus’ stilling the storm in Mark 4, Matthew 8, Luke 8 is evidence that Jesus considered himself to be God. This is a rather weak challenge to established scholarship. He makes a number of other arguments that Jesus performed miracles that the Hebrew scriptures had reserved for God alone. However, Jesus is the divine son of God, the second member of the Godhead. Such miracles are not evidence that Jesus called Himself God – He was the divine son of God.
Pitre makes much of the early Christian fathers’ belief that the gospels were written by the biblical figures, Matthew (Levi) the tax collector, John Mark the scribe, Luke the physician, and John son of Zebedee, while the same early Christian fathers rejected the attributed authorship of the apocryphal gospels (i.e. Thomas, Judas, Peter). Although certain of the early Christian fathers personally knew some of the apostles and others were only a generation away, it must be considered that they did not have the research tools of today’s progressive Christians. In the Galilee, where only 1 in a 1000 could write, it is doubtful that an uneducated fisherman, John, Son of Zebedee, could have written the Johannine gospel. However, Matthew, the tax collector, John Mark, the scribe, and Luke the physician probably would have been able to write. However, is there any evidence that Matthew, the tax collector, John Mark, the scribe, and Luke the physician are the Matthew, Mark, and Luke of the synoptic gospels? Here again, Pitre’s arguments are weak. He presents no direct internal evidence of authorship of the apocryphal gospels. Each time Pitre states evidence the reader can tell that he is reaching for support.
A number of current scholars claim that the titles of the four gospels were added late in the second century. Pitre makes a good point that no early manuscripts without titles have been discovered. I noticed that myself in reviewing the early manuscripts.
I will leave it to the reader to judge Pitre’s reasons why each gospel was written, but he totally misses the entire point that: 1) Matthew was written by a Jewish Christian who demonstrated a determination to establish that Jesus was the Jewish messiah by continuously referring to prophesy from the Hebrew scriptures [with mistakes in some references]; 2) Mark and Matthew present a somewhat down and depressed Jesus ("My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?"); and 3) Luke presents a more upbeat Jesus ("Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."). Moreover, Pitre’s argument that Jesus’ saying, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me”, is a fulfilment of scripture (Psalms 22) is quite a reach.
Pitre argues that, while each gospel uses different words and phrases, they all say essentially the same thing. Again, he is reaching. He misses points such as: 1) the two Christmas stories (Matthew and Luke) totally contradict each other: 2) each gospel has a different group of people at the cross during the crucifixion; 3) the synoptic gospels have Jesus being crucified on the Day of Passover, while John has the crucifixion on the day before Passover; and 4) other errors and contradictions.
He makes a reasonable argument that the gospels “could have been” written prior to the late 1st century period that is claimed by most scholars [e.g. If Acts had been written late 1st or early 2nd century, why is there no mention of Paul’s death (64 CE). Accordingly, Acts must have been written before the death of Paul.]. I would like to see a debate between Pitre and one of the current progressive Christian scholars.
Pitre says we have the testimony of both Eusebius of Caesarea (325 CE) and Cyril, bishop of the Church in Jerusalem (around 350 CE), who agreed that there are writings by heretics under the name of the apostles Peter and Thomas. He forgets that following the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) Eusebius of Caesarea himself was declared a heretic.
I suppose it is but a minor point, but in reference to the destruction of the Temple (70 CE), Pitre refers to Emperor Titus. Although Titus led the army that destroyed the Temple, his reign as emperor was much later (r. 79-81 CE).
Overall “A Case for Jesus” was an enjoyable read, but I must question some of Pitre’s arguments. A scholar permits the evidence to lead to a conclusion. Unfortunately, Pitre gives the impression that he stated his conclusion up front and continuously reached for supporting evidence. Still, there is much to learn from the specific historical material he presents.
Pitre assumes that being divine is the same as being God. Actually, the synoptic gospels do not claim that Jesus called himself God. He called Himself the Son of Man and the apostle Peter says that he was the Son of the Living God. Only in the Johannine gospel did Jesus call himself God. In the synoptic gospels Jesus is presented as the Son of God; He was divine, but he never called himself God. Pitre appears to be missing this point. It is commonly known among scholars that in the Synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew, Luke) Jesus never referred to himself as God. Pitri’s argues that the Lord’s stilling the storm in Psalms 107 is an activity reserved for God alone and therefore Jesus’ stilling the storm in Mark 4, Matthew 8, Luke 8 is evidence that Jesus considered himself to be God. This is a rather weak challenge to established scholarship. He makes a number of other arguments that Jesus performed miracles that the Hebrew scriptures had reserved for God alone. However, Jesus is the divine son of God, the second member of the Godhead. Such miracles are not evidence that Jesus called Himself God – He was the divine son of God.
Pitre makes much of the early Christian fathers’ belief that the gospels were written by the biblical figures, Matthew (Levi) the tax collector, John Mark the scribe, Luke the physician, and John son of Zebedee, while the same early Christian fathers rejected the attributed authorship of the apocryphal gospels (i.e. Thomas, Judas, Peter). Although certain of the early Christian fathers personally knew some of the apostles and others were only a generation away, it must be considered that they did not have the research tools of today’s progressive Christians. In the Galilee, where only 1 in a 1000 could write, it is doubtful that an uneducated fisherman, John, Son of Zebedee, could have written the Johannine gospel. However, Matthew, the tax collector, John Mark, the scribe, and Luke the physician probably would have been able to write. However, is there any evidence that Matthew, the tax collector, John Mark, the scribe, and Luke the physician are the Matthew, Mark, and Luke of the synoptic gospels? Here again, Pitre’s arguments are weak. He presents no direct internal evidence of authorship of the apocryphal gospels. Each time Pitre states evidence the reader can tell that he is reaching for support.
A number of current scholars claim that the titles of the four gospels were added late in the second century. Pitre makes a good point that no early manuscripts without titles have been discovered. I noticed that myself in reviewing the early manuscripts.
I will leave it to the reader to judge Pitre’s reasons why each gospel was written, but he totally misses the entire point that: 1) Matthew was written by a Jewish Christian who demonstrated a determination to establish that Jesus was the Jewish messiah by continuously referring to prophesy from the Hebrew scriptures [with mistakes in some references]; 2) Mark and Matthew present a somewhat down and depressed Jesus ("My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?"); and 3) Luke presents a more upbeat Jesus ("Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."). Moreover, Pitre’s argument that Jesus’ saying, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me”, is a fulfilment of scripture (Psalms 22) is quite a reach.
Pitre argues that, while each gospel uses different words and phrases, they all say essentially the same thing. Again, he is reaching. He misses points such as: 1) the two Christmas stories (Matthew and Luke) totally contradict each other: 2) each gospel has a different group of people at the cross during the crucifixion; 3) the synoptic gospels have Jesus being crucified on the Day of Passover, while John has the crucifixion on the day before Passover; and 4) other errors and contradictions.
He makes a reasonable argument that the gospels “could have been” written prior to the late 1st century period that is claimed by most scholars [e.g. If Acts had been written late 1st or early 2nd century, why is there no mention of Paul’s death (64 CE). Accordingly, Acts must have been written before the death of Paul.]. I would like to see a debate between Pitre and one of the current progressive Christian scholars.
Pitre says we have the testimony of both Eusebius of Caesarea (325 CE) and Cyril, bishop of the Church in Jerusalem (around 350 CE), who agreed that there are writings by heretics under the name of the apostles Peter and Thomas. He forgets that following the Council of Nicaea (325 CE) Eusebius of Caesarea himself was declared a heretic.
I suppose it is but a minor point, but in reference to the destruction of the Temple (70 CE), Pitre refers to Emperor Titus. Although Titus led the army that destroyed the Temple, his reign as emperor was much later (r. 79-81 CE).
Overall “A Case for Jesus” was an enjoyable read, but I must question some of Pitre’s arguments. A scholar permits the evidence to lead to a conclusion. Unfortunately, Pitre gives the impression that he stated his conclusion up front and continuously reached for supporting evidence. Still, there is much to learn from the specific historical material he presents.
October 23, 2024
This Christian scholar's analysis of the Gospels can be summarised as follows: "Given the assumption that The Bible is factually and historically accurate: The Bible is factually and historically accurate. QED."
---
I don't normally write long reviews on here, but rarely has a book left me so angry that I feel compelled to offload here, if only for me to read this back at a later date to remind myself of how truly awful and totally one-sided this book is. It's ridiculous in the most literal sense of the word: it's literally worthy of ridicule.
This book provides no exploration of the historical accuracy of The Gospels; their truth is taken as a given from the start and all evidence is chosen selectively to support the clearly predetermined conclusions for each chapter. What's more, the use of, as its primary reference, the Old Testament - a book of known contradictions and dubious authorship (see 'The Bible Unearthed') - to "prove" the truth of The Gospels - a collection of books of known contradictions and dubious authorship - is an irony apparently lost on Pitre. His main argument for the authorship of The Gospels being correct can be summarised as "the authors' names are written on the earliest copies"; the fact that this could easily be a forgery and that anyone can write a name on a document does not get a mention.
If The Bible can be used to prove The Bible, then all books can be used to prove their own truth and all books are true. This is clearly a nonsensical, cyclical argument.
Throughout the book, any biblical or early Christian source is referred to using definites ("this source SHOWS that," and "in the Book of X it IS written that Jesus did...") and any source that is not to Pitre's liking is referred to throughout with indefinites ("academic X CLAIMS that...", and "this SAYS that, but..."), and the external evidence that is brought in is swiftly dismissed using biblical references that "devastate" opposing theories.
As a sceptic, it seems ridiculous to me that Pitre's primary non-biblical sources throughout are the writings of early Christian priests, when these are clearly people who would have had a vested interest in The Bible being true and so their evidence must be taken with a large pinch of salt. It would be like trying to prove the conjecture 'Man Utd are the greatest football team on the planet' by using the chairperson of the Man Utd fan club as your primary source!
Most of the book is actually dedicated to what The Gospels mean and whether Jesus was God, and when Pitre is finally done proselytising, he ends on one last hilarious coup de grâce: he talks about how the fact that minor "details" in The Gospels that don't agree don't actually matter as they don't change the overall message, and he attacks sceptics who disregard certain biblical evidence to make their cases for The Gospels being false. This coming from a man who has written a book about the truth behind The Gospels but fails to mention:
1. ...that Matthew and Luke tell completely conflicting birth stories (Matthew: star, kings, Herod, fleeing to Egypt; Luke: shepherds, angels, going to Nazareth) and neither one mentions any details from the other author
2. ...any non-Christian historical or archaeological evidence, such as the fact that Herod's life and the census that initially led Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem didn't overlap by about 10 years, so the Matthew story is historically inaccurate
3. ...the major differences in Christ's death, such every tomb in Jerusalem opening up and a massive army of the living dead roaming the streets (Matthew) - a "minor detail" that the others forgetfully omitted
4. ...that The Gospels cannot even agree on whether the stone was rolled away when Jesus's tomb was found (it is closed in Matthew and then opened by angels), all four Gospels report different collections of people making the discovery (with the only consistent person being Mary Magdalene), and all four report different things/angelic beings being present and different events happening once Jesus returns, over differing timeframes.
The fact that The Gospels differ on such key things (and many more) is clear evidence that they must be reporting events incorrectly - they can't all be correct - which throws their whole accounts into doubt and means that every claim must be scrutinised; but this is apparently no issue for Pitre. Whether or not the stone was there, an angel or a piece of cloth was in the tomb, a zombie army is roaming the streets or not - these are all "minor details" not worthy of discussion and do not weaken The Gospels stories...
Ridiculous.
He even agonises over the translation ancient Greek and Hebrew words to eek hidden meaning from scripture, such as a reinterpretation of the Jonah story as a reincarnation event so that it serves as a prediction of Christ's death. But how can a scholar seriously present an argument whereby they rigorously scrutinise the translation of one word for half a chapter, but then choose to ignore whole passages of scripture and historical fact that blatantly conflict with one another?
Again: ridiculously selective and biased writing.
This is a book that any Christian reader will welcome and laud over others as proof of the truth of The Gospels, and will send any sceptic reeling over how a book so openly biased can ever be published and presented as any form of real evidence.
---
I don't normally write long reviews on here, but rarely has a book left me so angry that I feel compelled to offload here, if only for me to read this back at a later date to remind myself of how truly awful and totally one-sided this book is. It's ridiculous in the most literal sense of the word: it's literally worthy of ridicule.
This book provides no exploration of the historical accuracy of The Gospels; their truth is taken as a given from the start and all evidence is chosen selectively to support the clearly predetermined conclusions for each chapter. What's more, the use of, as its primary reference, the Old Testament - a book of known contradictions and dubious authorship (see 'The Bible Unearthed') - to "prove" the truth of The Gospels - a collection of books of known contradictions and dubious authorship - is an irony apparently lost on Pitre. His main argument for the authorship of The Gospels being correct can be summarised as "the authors' names are written on the earliest copies"; the fact that this could easily be a forgery and that anyone can write a name on a document does not get a mention.
If The Bible can be used to prove The Bible, then all books can be used to prove their own truth and all books are true. This is clearly a nonsensical, cyclical argument.
Throughout the book, any biblical or early Christian source is referred to using definites ("this source SHOWS that," and "in the Book of X it IS written that Jesus did...") and any source that is not to Pitre's liking is referred to throughout with indefinites ("academic X CLAIMS that...", and "this SAYS that, but..."), and the external evidence that is brought in is swiftly dismissed using biblical references that "devastate" opposing theories.
As a sceptic, it seems ridiculous to me that Pitre's primary non-biblical sources throughout are the writings of early Christian priests, when these are clearly people who would have had a vested interest in The Bible being true and so their evidence must be taken with a large pinch of salt. It would be like trying to prove the conjecture 'Man Utd are the greatest football team on the planet' by using the chairperson of the Man Utd fan club as your primary source!
Most of the book is actually dedicated to what The Gospels mean and whether Jesus was God, and when Pitre is finally done proselytising, he ends on one last hilarious coup de grâce: he talks about how the fact that minor "details" in The Gospels that don't agree don't actually matter as they don't change the overall message, and he attacks sceptics who disregard certain biblical evidence to make their cases for The Gospels being false. This coming from a man who has written a book about the truth behind The Gospels but fails to mention:
1. ...that Matthew and Luke tell completely conflicting birth stories (Matthew: star, kings, Herod, fleeing to Egypt; Luke: shepherds, angels, going to Nazareth) and neither one mentions any details from the other author
2. ...any non-Christian historical or archaeological evidence, such as the fact that Herod's life and the census that initially led Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem didn't overlap by about 10 years, so the Matthew story is historically inaccurate
3. ...the major differences in Christ's death, such every tomb in Jerusalem opening up and a massive army of the living dead roaming the streets (Matthew) - a "minor detail" that the others forgetfully omitted
4. ...that The Gospels cannot even agree on whether the stone was rolled away when Jesus's tomb was found (it is closed in Matthew and then opened by angels), all four Gospels report different collections of people making the discovery (with the only consistent person being Mary Magdalene), and all four report different things/angelic beings being present and different events happening once Jesus returns, over differing timeframes.
The fact that The Gospels differ on such key things (and many more) is clear evidence that they must be reporting events incorrectly - they can't all be correct - which throws their whole accounts into doubt and means that every claim must be scrutinised; but this is apparently no issue for Pitre. Whether or not the stone was there, an angel or a piece of cloth was in the tomb, a zombie army is roaming the streets or not - these are all "minor details" not worthy of discussion and do not weaken The Gospels stories...
Ridiculous.
He even agonises over the translation ancient Greek and Hebrew words to eek hidden meaning from scripture, such as a reinterpretation of the Jonah story as a reincarnation event so that it serves as a prediction of Christ's death. But how can a scholar seriously present an argument whereby they rigorously scrutinise the translation of one word for half a chapter, but then choose to ignore whole passages of scripture and historical fact that blatantly conflict with one another?
Again: ridiculously selective and biased writing.
This is a book that any Christian reader will welcome and laud over others as proof of the truth of The Gospels, and will send any sceptic reeling over how a book so openly biased can ever be published and presented as any form of real evidence.
February 5, 2018
As someone who is no stranger to reading apologetic works like this one [1], I found this book interesting and worthwhile for several reasons, although I must admit I am not as enthusiastic about some of his other books where his Catholic perspective is a bit stronger (like his book on the whore of Babylon, for example). Even so, this was a book that hit a certain sweet spot that makes a book enjoyable to read, and that is a work that presents a thoughtful case for Christ based on the evidence that also takes seriously the Hebrew thought of the early Church of God. Even if this author does not share that perspective, it is worthwhile at least to note that he celebrates and presents that understanding in a way that is appealing to read and which is quite excellent to contrast with the approaches taken by other contemporary Christian apologists, few of whom have a great interest in the perspective of the Hebrew scriptures on such matters as the Messiah and why it was that Jesus Christ was considered guilty of blasphemy.
This book totals about 200 pages, a pretty standard length for an easy-to-read volume of this type, and contains a baker's dozen of chapters that deal with various matters about the historical and biblical case for Jesus Christ. The author begins with a discussion of the quest for the historical Jesus and for the author's own personal quest for belief through the course of his education. After that the author asks the question of whether the Gospels were anonymous, finding no anonymous copies of the Gospels whatsoever, but rather finding that the four Gospels of our scripture are uniformly given the titles that we have them (or abbreviations thereof). The author then turns his attention to the writings of various ante-Nicene church fathers (showing his Catholic perspective in an appealing form here) while looking critically at the so-called Lost Gospels. The author then looks at the genre of the Gospels as biographies, and discusses the dating of the Gospels as being before the destruction of the Temple. It is at this point that the author shows his most interesting line of evidence by looking at Jesus' messianic claims and their Hebrew context, which can be found in all of the Gospels and not only John. After this the author looks at the crucifixion, resurrection, and transfiguration, presenting a solid book that is immensely enjoyable for a believer to read.
Where this book excels the most is in exposing the intellectual bankruptcy of so much of the critical impulse of self-professed scholars when it comes to examining the biblical record. By looking at what the self-professed Christian writers of the early centuries of Christianity said about texts which we can read for ourselves in translation today, we can see that there was no widespread conspiracy against valid forms of Christianity, but rather a strong Christian hostility to pseudonymous works and a high degree of concern for eyewitness testimony as well as high standards of historicity, which one finds in the Gospels as a whole. The author shows himself to be knowledgeable in matters of textual criticism to a high degree, and it is inspirational that he managed to survive as a faithful person in the sort of environment that tends to cause so many others to lose their faith because of corrupt instruction by those who should know better but do not when it comes to God's word and its reliability. For those who are at least somewhat sympathetic to an understanding of the Hebrew scriptures and their viewpoint as well as to a historical look at the church fathers of late antiquity, this book is definitely a worthwhile and enjoyable read.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...
This book totals about 200 pages, a pretty standard length for an easy-to-read volume of this type, and contains a baker's dozen of chapters that deal with various matters about the historical and biblical case for Jesus Christ. The author begins with a discussion of the quest for the historical Jesus and for the author's own personal quest for belief through the course of his education. After that the author asks the question of whether the Gospels were anonymous, finding no anonymous copies of the Gospels whatsoever, but rather finding that the four Gospels of our scripture are uniformly given the titles that we have them (or abbreviations thereof). The author then turns his attention to the writings of various ante-Nicene church fathers (showing his Catholic perspective in an appealing form here) while looking critically at the so-called Lost Gospels. The author then looks at the genre of the Gospels as biographies, and discusses the dating of the Gospels as being before the destruction of the Temple. It is at this point that the author shows his most interesting line of evidence by looking at Jesus' messianic claims and their Hebrew context, which can be found in all of the Gospels and not only John. After this the author looks at the crucifixion, resurrection, and transfiguration, presenting a solid book that is immensely enjoyable for a believer to read.
Where this book excels the most is in exposing the intellectual bankruptcy of so much of the critical impulse of self-professed scholars when it comes to examining the biblical record. By looking at what the self-professed Christian writers of the early centuries of Christianity said about texts which we can read for ourselves in translation today, we can see that there was no widespread conspiracy against valid forms of Christianity, but rather a strong Christian hostility to pseudonymous works and a high degree of concern for eyewitness testimony as well as high standards of historicity, which one finds in the Gospels as a whole. The author shows himself to be knowledgeable in matters of textual criticism to a high degree, and it is inspirational that he managed to survive as a faithful person in the sort of environment that tends to cause so many others to lose their faith because of corrupt instruction by those who should know better but do not when it comes to God's word and its reliability. For those who are at least somewhat sympathetic to an understanding of the Hebrew scriptures and their viewpoint as well as to a historical look at the church fathers of late antiquity, this book is definitely a worthwhile and enjoyable read.
[1] See, for example:
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2017...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2016...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...
https://edgeinducedcohesion.blog/2015...
October 18, 2018
A shallow and tiresome read, poor scholarship. Probably a reaffirming book for believers but a circular display of begging the question for skeptics.
August 13, 2018
I had to stop reading this.
The case for Jesus is actually a case for the Bible as an authentic account of the life of Jesus. The “evidence” for the argument comes largely from ... wait for it ... the Bible! ... plus a few “that’s how they did things back then.” The author uses this technique to reject, for example, the entire body of scholarship that suggests that the four books of the New Testament were written tens to hundreds of years after Jesus died and therefore, might not be accurate accounts of people that interacted with Jesus of Nazareth.
The arguments are not compelling, circular, and hardly scholarly. This book is the equivalent of, “if dogs descended from wolves, then why do wolves still exist?” If you’re looking for a laypersons review of biblical scholarship, look elsewhere.
The case for Jesus is actually a case for the Bible as an authentic account of the life of Jesus. The “evidence” for the argument comes largely from ... wait for it ... the Bible! ... plus a few “that’s how they did things back then.” The author uses this technique to reject, for example, the entire body of scholarship that suggests that the four books of the New Testament were written tens to hundreds of years after Jesus died and therefore, might not be accurate accounts of people that interacted with Jesus of Nazareth.
The arguments are not compelling, circular, and hardly scholarly. This book is the equivalent of, “if dogs descended from wolves, then why do wolves still exist?” If you’re looking for a laypersons review of biblical scholarship, look elsewhere.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
May 7, 2019
This was the Lighthouse Talks (Augustine Institute) CD version of his book as he lectured to a live audience. Quite good. I plan to get the actual book for a greater understanding of his “Case for Jesus “.
November 5, 2025
“Indeed, how does one explain the universality of the Church? I guess you could argue that it was a coincidence. I guess you could claim that the many passages in the Old Testament prophesying that one day the pagan nations of the world would turn and worship the God of Abraham just happened to take place after the death and resurrection of Jesus. I guess you could also claim that these mass conversions among the pagans just happened to coincide with the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, who just happened to live and die at the very time that the book of Daniel said the Messiah would come. And I guess you could believe that after Jesus was crucified, the tomb just happened to be inexplicably empty and hundreds of disciples of Jesus began claiming to have seen him alive again in his body. I guess you could claim all this. I, for one, prefer the simpler explanation. Jesus of Nazareth was right. The Son of Man was crucified. The Son of Man was buried. The Son of Man was raised on the third day. The tomb was empty. It still is. And the Gentiles turn to the God of Israel in droves. Because something greater than Jonah is here.”
THE TOMB IS EMPTY. IT STILL IS. RAHHHH
THE TOMB IS EMPTY. IT STILL IS. RAHHHH
May 28, 2021
In this book, New Testament scholar Brant Pitre addresses some of the most commonly held academic beliefs about the gospels with sound reasoning and passion. It is not a superficial apologetic for Jesus that glosses over things or lacks nuance, but rather an informed rebuttal drawing on the recent work of scholars such as Richard Bauckham, EP Sanders, NT Wright and more.
Pitre briefly relates his own journey into NT scholarship, learning in graduate school the standard conclusions of the day, such as the gospels originally circulated anonymously, the oral traditions about Jesus were added to freely over the course of decades before they were written down, and Jesus never claimed to be God. Though this was discouraging, he continued his graduate work and then went for a doctorate where he really started exploring the evidence. To his surprise, he found that much of the evidence upon which the standard consensus was built was either lacking or non-existent. This is his effort to highlight the arguments and the weaknesses in them.
Throughout most of the book, Bart Ehrman serves as Pitre's foil. In fact, the idea for the book was sparked with the notion that Ehrman has popularized, namely that the development of the oral traditions surrounding Jesus is analogous to the children's game of Telephone. Pitre rejects this analogy, citing recent scholarship studying oral cultures and other reasoning. He examines the evidence for the authorship and dating of the gospels, addressing the evidence for why the consensus among scholars is to date them late and doubt their eyewitness quality. He then draws on his own background and work (with others) to show that the synoptic gospels do indeed present Jesus as claiming to be God. The reason why so many scholars have missed this is that Jesus does it in a very Jewish way. If you don't know the Jewish context, you will not understand Jesus' words. In the end, he briefly touches on the resurrection and the spread of Christianity.
I think this book is great, especially if you are familiar with the claims of modern critical scholars (Bart Ehrman in particular). Pitre does an excellent job of bringing the evidence to bear to ask whether this consensus is actually aligned with the historical evidence that we have, or if it is driven by other motives. I especially appreciate that Pitre's arguments are academically informed, not a cheap apologetic that simply ignores the evidence that might make us uncomfortable. Rather, Pitre appeals to the evidence to build his case.
If you have questions about the origins and authenticity of the gospels, especially in light of critical scholarship, I highly recommend this book. The only thing I didn't love about the book is his propensity to quote the pope on occasion to back up his point. But that is because Pitre is Catholic and I have my own protestant bias. It is only a very minor criticism, and he doesn't rely on papal authority to establish his case in any way. Overall, it's a great book.
Pitre briefly relates his own journey into NT scholarship, learning in graduate school the standard conclusions of the day, such as the gospels originally circulated anonymously, the oral traditions about Jesus were added to freely over the course of decades before they were written down, and Jesus never claimed to be God. Though this was discouraging, he continued his graduate work and then went for a doctorate where he really started exploring the evidence. To his surprise, he found that much of the evidence upon which the standard consensus was built was either lacking or non-existent. This is his effort to highlight the arguments and the weaknesses in them.
Throughout most of the book, Bart Ehrman serves as Pitre's foil. In fact, the idea for the book was sparked with the notion that Ehrman has popularized, namely that the development of the oral traditions surrounding Jesus is analogous to the children's game of Telephone. Pitre rejects this analogy, citing recent scholarship studying oral cultures and other reasoning. He examines the evidence for the authorship and dating of the gospels, addressing the evidence for why the consensus among scholars is to date them late and doubt their eyewitness quality. He then draws on his own background and work (with others) to show that the synoptic gospels do indeed present Jesus as claiming to be God. The reason why so many scholars have missed this is that Jesus does it in a very Jewish way. If you don't know the Jewish context, you will not understand Jesus' words. In the end, he briefly touches on the resurrection and the spread of Christianity.
I think this book is great, especially if you are familiar with the claims of modern critical scholars (Bart Ehrman in particular). Pitre does an excellent job of bringing the evidence to bear to ask whether this consensus is actually aligned with the historical evidence that we have, or if it is driven by other motives. I especially appreciate that Pitre's arguments are academically informed, not a cheap apologetic that simply ignores the evidence that might make us uncomfortable. Rather, Pitre appeals to the evidence to build his case.
If you have questions about the origins and authenticity of the gospels, especially in light of critical scholarship, I highly recommend this book. The only thing I didn't love about the book is his propensity to quote the pope on occasion to back up his point. But that is because Pitre is Catholic and I have my own protestant bias. It is only a very minor criticism, and he doesn't rely on papal authority to establish his case in any way. Overall, it's a great book.
March 8, 2016
It's one thing to accept Jesus as he is portrayed by the Gospel writers - Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's something else entirely to accept that they actually wrote the truth about him. But in "The Case for Jesus," Brant Pitre takes it upon himself not only to clarify what Jesus says about himself in the Gospels, but to demonstrate that they are, in fact, historical documents worthy of anyone's consideration.
To begin, Pitre addresses the allegation that the Gospel documents were compiled anonymously long after Jesus' death and bear no more authority than an ancient game of "Telephone." He shows compellingly that by any standard, both the internal and external evidence of their authenticity is overwhelming. They were written by exactly who they claim to be written by - eyewitnesses of Jesus and their companions.
He goes on to show how all of the supposed "lost gospels" fail at this point. Furthermore, he demonstrates that the Gospels contain all the marks of an ancient biographies (in contrast to "legend," "myth," or "fairy tale") and that they were written well within the lifetimes of the eyewitnesses.
This forms the first half of the book. In the second half, Pitre shows how Jesus actually claimed to be God, especially in a unique Jewish way often overlooked by modern scholars. He does this, not only in his teachings but at his crucifixion and in his resurrection.
Ultimately, Pitre seeks to bring us back to C. S. Lewis's famous "trilemma:" Jesus is a liar, a lunatic, or Lord of all. Critics argue that the trilemma assumes that Gospel reports are accurate and that Jesus actually claimed to be God. Pitre shows that they are and that he did.
This book is written on a lay level and easily accessible to even the least initiated. Occasionally, the author slips into a style that feels a little too informal, and he uses a somewhat minority interpretation of one key passage. These are the reasons I give the book 4 stars instead of 5, but they should not detract from my strong recommendation.
To begin, Pitre addresses the allegation that the Gospel documents were compiled anonymously long after Jesus' death and bear no more authority than an ancient game of "Telephone." He shows compellingly that by any standard, both the internal and external evidence of their authenticity is overwhelming. They were written by exactly who they claim to be written by - eyewitnesses of Jesus and their companions.
He goes on to show how all of the supposed "lost gospels" fail at this point. Furthermore, he demonstrates that the Gospels contain all the marks of an ancient biographies (in contrast to "legend," "myth," or "fairy tale") and that they were written well within the lifetimes of the eyewitnesses.
This forms the first half of the book. In the second half, Pitre shows how Jesus actually claimed to be God, especially in a unique Jewish way often overlooked by modern scholars. He does this, not only in his teachings but at his crucifixion and in his resurrection.
Ultimately, Pitre seeks to bring us back to C. S. Lewis's famous "trilemma:" Jesus is a liar, a lunatic, or Lord of all. Critics argue that the trilemma assumes that Gospel reports are accurate and that Jesus actually claimed to be God. Pitre shows that they are and that he did.
This book is written on a lay level and easily accessible to even the least initiated. Occasionally, the author slips into a style that feels a little too informal, and he uses a somewhat minority interpretation of one key passage. These are the reasons I give the book 4 stars instead of 5, but they should not detract from my strong recommendation.
September 13, 2018
5 stars. I really loved this. The listening experience was great, but I definitely want to reread this. Review to come.
November 28, 2020
Dishonest, unscientific, for the feeble minded.
February 3, 2016
NOTE: I think this book listing was entered into the system before publication and the subtitle has been changed since then.
I've never been subjected to that particular comparison. The one that drives me absolutely nuts is that Jesus didn't ever say he was God.
There are is a lot of confusion out there about Jesus and you've probably come across various claims that "prove" Jesus was not God. These range from the idea the Gospels were anonymous, the existence of "lost" Gospels, the Gospels are folklore instead of biographies, a lack of evidence for the Resurrection, and more.
Just as he did in another of his books that I really liked, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, Pitre painstakingly builds his defense of Jesus. For each skeptical claim, there is a meticulous evidence trail examining Jesus, historical evidence, Jewish understanding, 1st century cultural context, and why we can trust what we've been told. This might sound drawn out or difficult, but I found it flowed easily and was easy to understand.
I myself especially appreciated that Pitre never lets us forget the inherently Jewish nature of Jesus' teachings and his listeners' understanding. The parallels he points out, often in very clear charts, can be stunningly revealing.
Here's a fairly lengthy excerpt from the chapter about the crucifixion. It illustrates how carefully the examples are drawn. Speaking about the temple of Jesus' body, Pitre quotes Josephus who says the number of lambs sacrificed during Passover was 256,500, and then tells us:
Definitely highly recommended.
NOTE: I had both a print galley, which was nicely designed, and the audio version, which was as well read as any material like this can be. I can recommend either or both, depending on your preference.
About ten years ago, while waiting at the Pittsburgh Airport, I met a young biblical scholar named Dr. Brant Pitre. We were both heading to the same biblical conference so we rode together, and in the car we had a lively discussion about biblical interpretation, especially the reliability of the Gospels.Brant Pitre went ahead and wrote it himself. And a darned good book it is.
Dr. Pitre shared how annoyed he was by the oft-used comparison between the transmission of the story of Jesus and the “Telephone game” where little children whisper a story to one another, around a group, until the end result is completely garbled and nothing like the original story.
I turned around to Dr. Pitre (I was in the front seat and he in the back) and said, “Yes! Someone needs to write a book dedicated to refuting that stupid comparison.”
I've never been subjected to that particular comparison. The one that drives me absolutely nuts is that Jesus didn't ever say he was God.
As we will see, the evidence in the Gospels suggests that Jesus did in fact claim to be God. He did so, however, in a very Jewish way. ... I cannot stress enough: just because Jesus did not go around Galilee shouting, "I am God!" does not mean that he didn't claim to be divine.Thank you!
There are is a lot of confusion out there about Jesus and you've probably come across various claims that "prove" Jesus was not God. These range from the idea the Gospels were anonymous, the existence of "lost" Gospels, the Gospels are folklore instead of biographies, a lack of evidence for the Resurrection, and more.
Just as he did in another of his books that I really liked, Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist, Pitre painstakingly builds his defense of Jesus. For each skeptical claim, there is a meticulous evidence trail examining Jesus, historical evidence, Jewish understanding, 1st century cultural context, and why we can trust what we've been told. This might sound drawn out or difficult, but I found it flowed easily and was easy to understand.
I myself especially appreciated that Pitre never lets us forget the inherently Jewish nature of Jesus' teachings and his listeners' understanding. The parallels he points out, often in very clear charts, can be stunningly revealing.
Here's a fairly lengthy excerpt from the chapter about the crucifixion. It illustrates how carefully the examples are drawn. Speaking about the temple of Jesus' body, Pitre quotes Josephus who says the number of lambs sacrificed during Passover was 256,500, and then tells us:
According to ancient Jewish tradition, before the Temple was destroyed in AS 70, the blood of the sacrifices used to be poured into a drain that flowed down the altar of sacrifice to merge with a spring of water that flowed out from the side of the mountain on which the Temple was built:Woah! If that doesn't give you a thrill of discovery, what will?At the south-western corner [of the Altar] there were two holes like two narrow nostrils by which the blood that was poured over the western base and the southern base used to run down and mingle in the water-channel and flow out into the brook Kidron. (Mishnah Middoth 3:2)So at the time Jesus lived, if you were approaching the Temple during the feast of Passover from the vantage point of the Kidron Valley, what might you have seen? A stream of blood and water, flowing out of the side of the Temple Mount.
Once you've got this first-century Jewish context in mind, all of a sudden John's emphasis on the blood and water flowing out of the side of Jesus makes sense. This seemingly small detail about his death actually reveals something deeply significant about who Jesus really is. He is not just the messianic son of God; he is the true Temple. In other words, Jesus is the dwelling place of God on earth. For that's what the Temple was to a first-century Jew. As Jesus himself says elsewhere: "He who swears by the Temple, swears by it and by him who dwells in it" (Matthew 23:21).
Definitely highly recommended.
NOTE: I had both a print galley, which was nicely designed, and the audio version, which was as well read as any material like this can be. I can recommend either or both, depending on your preference.
December 16, 2021
I found myself saying “that’s a good point” quite a bit while reading this. Occasionally “that’s a great point.” A couple of times “why have I never thought of that before?”. And every once in a while, just “wow.”
The academic approaches to Jesus scholarship—which strangely all seem to begin with atheism—have some very serious flaws. Most works of Jesus apologetics talk past the scholars, using arguments that believers would agree with but that don’t stand up to critical scrutiny. Pitre does something impressive by being conversant with current scholarship while punching back. His emphasis is on the Jewish roots and context of gospel accounts, which is often neglected in both academia and among believers. But his real knack is for sifting through a tremendous amount of information to get at the core idea and spell it out succinctly. It makes this book a real treasure.
Highlights: pushing back on the notion that the gospels are legendary accretions written by anonymous Christians centuries downwind, collapsing critical dating of the gospels solely based on the destruction of Jerusalem, the several-sided proof that Jesus claimed to be God (and was crucified for doing so), and an odd reinterpretation of Jonah’s story to prove the resurrection.
I’m not sure this is a book for a new believer, since it may be overwhelming to deal with so many esoteric debates early on, but for anyone who has encountered the critical perspective, highly recommended.
The academic approaches to Jesus scholarship—which strangely all seem to begin with atheism—have some very serious flaws. Most works of Jesus apologetics talk past the scholars, using arguments that believers would agree with but that don’t stand up to critical scrutiny. Pitre does something impressive by being conversant with current scholarship while punching back. His emphasis is on the Jewish roots and context of gospel accounts, which is often neglected in both academia and among believers. But his real knack is for sifting through a tremendous amount of information to get at the core idea and spell it out succinctly. It makes this book a real treasure.
Highlights: pushing back on the notion that the gospels are legendary accretions written by anonymous Christians centuries downwind, collapsing critical dating of the gospels solely based on the destruction of Jerusalem, the several-sided proof that Jesus claimed to be God (and was crucified for doing so), and an odd reinterpretation of Jonah’s story to prove the resurrection.
I’m not sure this is a book for a new believer, since it may be overwhelming to deal with so many esoteric debates early on, but for anyone who has encountered the critical perspective, highly recommended.
May 3, 2023
A very timely read for me. This book answers many of the common questions of the difficulty of faith with modern man—who I’m convinced is dumber than we were 200 years ago. Lewis’s Trilemma has been under attack in the last 100 years, adding a fourth option: Legend. Was Jesus even real? Are the Gospels fairy tales written by people who never knew Jesus after a 100 year long game of telephone? This book begs the question: Who is Jesus Christ? The flow of this book is crystal clear. How Pitre constructs his argument is logically satisfying. He drives each chapter with a question, expounds the background in the chapter, answers the question, and then allows the reader to form the natural next question in their mind. Then after the reader has formed this question he asks the question when they turn the page. I will be reading more of Pitre in the future—he makes scholarship enjoyable and even exciting! A book that was commonly cited is “Jesus of Nazareth” by Pope Benedict XVI, it will be added to my reading list.
No matter what you believe, please read this book.
“And Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
No matter what you believe, please read this book.
“And Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
January 21, 2020
It is very clear that this author has a poor grasp of the field of scholarship that he is commentating on. His personal story aside his argument fails to uphold his conclusion. He is railing against a very small minority of biblical “scholarship” that most biblical scholars don’t recognize as authoritative. Why is he so upset? I imagine because of his own internal confusion. The book reads like a 14 year old attempting to have an adult conversation in which they clearly don’t understand the linear progression of these ideas over history, and how the ideas he is railing against aren’t useful and haven’t been for over a century. I am terrified that Brant Pitre is an educator and has students under his tutelage. This book in and of itself highlights his shortcomings as an educator and his own education. I dislike being so forward but it is shocking to me how someone who is so clearly inept in this field has become so popular. I cannot recommend this book in the least.
November 11, 2020
Probably the best biblical book I've read so far. Bursts some scholarly bubbles while retaining scholarly style itself. Yes, scholarly, but also accessible. Bringing together some fine insights within 200 pages. Nicely written.
March 21, 2018
There is a big part of the topic of apologetics that doesn’t apply to me. Maybe I am dimwitted, gullible, and shallow. I don’t deny those things. I believe the Bible. I believe the words of Jesus. I believe the historic and creedal teachings of the Church (in the broadest universal sense). I have no more problem believing in the virgin birth of Christ than in the non-virgin birth of myself, my children, and others. I believe Christ rose from the dead. I am a creationist and pretty much in line with fundamentalists, except that I am not premillennial.
In matters where I have doubts, I simply shrug them off as a personal failing. Like the people of Pennsylvania that former President Barack Obama, I simply cling to guns and religion. Well, actually, I cling to coffee, books, and religion, but I basically fit alongside of those political Neanderthals as depicted by the Enlightened One.
Nevertheless, I have long loved and studied and read on Christian apologetics. I have loved that area of study since I first discovered it many years ago. I love it too much to take sides. By that I mean that I love Van Til and Gordon Clark. I love the approach by Greg Bahnsen and that of R. C. Sproul. I love Classical Apologetics, Theistic Proofs, Evidentialists, and simple home-grown personal testimonies. Correcting my words above, I actually do take sides: I do favor the views of the presuppositionalists, but will still employ examples form Evidence That Demands a Verdict.
Back in December, I started a book titled The Case for Christ: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ by Brant Pitre. I was reading it as a spiritual prop to all of the non-spiritual pressures of the Christmas season. It filled that need, but it did much more. The reading of the book was a heart and mind exalting experience.
On the one hand, I was convinced of nothing I didn’t already believe. But I was strengthened, confirmed, and made incredibly joyful of the “faith once delivered for all the saints” (Jude 3). But the field of apologetics, as defenders of the faith would say, is not primarily to convince the unbeliever, but to comfort and strengthen the believer.
My initial attraction to this book was that it had an afterword written by Bishop Robert Barron. I had read and reviewed a book featuring Barron titled To Light a Fire on the Earth. My review can be found here.
Wanting to learn more of Barron, I was interested in this book primarily for that reason. Dr. Pitre lives in my neighboring state of Louisiana and is a professor of Sacred Scripture at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. Besides being an academic professor, he is a best selling author.
This book begins with a central issue: Did Jesus of Nazareth claim to be God? Again, I never lay awake at night wondering about that. But it is a stumbling block for many. And it is a contention that is raised by folks in the liberal wings of the Christian umbrella. Granted, I have long since embraced J. Gresham Machen’s teachings in Christianity and Liberalism and have dismissed the theological liberals as being outside the pale. But the broader religious community, which includes all varieties of Christian-adjective groups, teach, write, suggest, imply, and slip in doubts and questions about this.
Heresies are a great blessing to believers. For by them, Christians are forced to wake up, drink stronger coffee, and pull the Bibles down from the shelves and start digging. The result is not capitulation, defensive retreats, or fear. Rather, the result of battling a heresy is clarification of the truth.
Bart Ehrman is the prime target of this book. Ehrman, who is–sad to say–a Wheaton graduate, is a popular writer whose claim to fame is debunking the faith he once embraced (sort of). He is a good writer. I read a book titled The Gospel According to Judas. The fragment that is attributed to Judas is ridiculous, but it is a valuable piece of ancient Gnostic material. Bart Ehrman’s essay on the Judas fragment was outstanding. Eherman’s labors, however, are usually aimed at undermining the confidence of believers.
His books, along with contentions of professors of religion, created a crisis for Pitre when he was a student. But there is a valuable lesson for any Christian who is troubled by “the latest discovery regarding Christianity.” It is this: There are no new arguments against Christianity under the sun. For this reason, Pitre ably assembles the teachings of Church Fathers and others from 2000 plus years of whipping heretics to pin Ehrman and others in quick knock-out matches.
A good and Christ-centered stroll among the Church Fathers is almost always a blessing. This is especially true if you have a guide who knows the Fathers and knows the best quotes and references. But that is not the greatest strength of this book.
We Protestants are a folk who love the Solas of the Reformation. It all begins and even ends on Sola Scriptura. Praise God for Church Fathers of all 2000 years of winning arguments. But our first, primary, and actually only defense is found in Scripture. It is here that Brant’s work was so helpful to me. By going straight from one Bible verse, story, or teaching to another, Brant emphasizes, teaches, reinforces, and shouts aloud that Jesus Christ is God, that Jesus Christ claimed to be God, and that Scripture teaches that message clearly and forcefully.
Don’t wait until the Advent season to read this book. For those who like spiritual reading during Lent, there is still time to delve into this work. But best of all, it might be just the book to read on Easter and the days following when we celebrate that Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man, Very God of Very God, rose from the dead and lives and rules forever.
Post Script: I am obliged to confess that I received this book as a review book and am not obligated to praise it to the hilt. The high regard is the result of my being unable to restrain myself.
In matters where I have doubts, I simply shrug them off as a personal failing. Like the people of Pennsylvania that former President Barack Obama, I simply cling to guns and religion. Well, actually, I cling to coffee, books, and religion, but I basically fit alongside of those political Neanderthals as depicted by the Enlightened One.
Nevertheless, I have long loved and studied and read on Christian apologetics. I have loved that area of study since I first discovered it many years ago. I love it too much to take sides. By that I mean that I love Van Til and Gordon Clark. I love the approach by Greg Bahnsen and that of R. C. Sproul. I love Classical Apologetics, Theistic Proofs, Evidentialists, and simple home-grown personal testimonies. Correcting my words above, I actually do take sides: I do favor the views of the presuppositionalists, but will still employ examples form Evidence That Demands a Verdict.
Back in December, I started a book titled The Case for Christ: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ by Brant Pitre. I was reading it as a spiritual prop to all of the non-spiritual pressures of the Christmas season. It filled that need, but it did much more. The reading of the book was a heart and mind exalting experience.
On the one hand, I was convinced of nothing I didn’t already believe. But I was strengthened, confirmed, and made incredibly joyful of the “faith once delivered for all the saints” (Jude 3). But the field of apologetics, as defenders of the faith would say, is not primarily to convince the unbeliever, but to comfort and strengthen the believer.
My initial attraction to this book was that it had an afterword written by Bishop Robert Barron. I had read and reviewed a book featuring Barron titled To Light a Fire on the Earth. My review can be found here.
Wanting to learn more of Barron, I was interested in this book primarily for that reason. Dr. Pitre lives in my neighboring state of Louisiana and is a professor of Sacred Scripture at Notre Dame Seminary in New Orleans. Besides being an academic professor, he is a best selling author.
This book begins with a central issue: Did Jesus of Nazareth claim to be God? Again, I never lay awake at night wondering about that. But it is a stumbling block for many. And it is a contention that is raised by folks in the liberal wings of the Christian umbrella. Granted, I have long since embraced J. Gresham Machen’s teachings in Christianity and Liberalism and have dismissed the theological liberals as being outside the pale. But the broader religious community, which includes all varieties of Christian-adjective groups, teach, write, suggest, imply, and slip in doubts and questions about this.
Heresies are a great blessing to believers. For by them, Christians are forced to wake up, drink stronger coffee, and pull the Bibles down from the shelves and start digging. The result is not capitulation, defensive retreats, or fear. Rather, the result of battling a heresy is clarification of the truth.
Bart Ehrman is the prime target of this book. Ehrman, who is–sad to say–a Wheaton graduate, is a popular writer whose claim to fame is debunking the faith he once embraced (sort of). He is a good writer. I read a book titled The Gospel According to Judas. The fragment that is attributed to Judas is ridiculous, but it is a valuable piece of ancient Gnostic material. Bart Ehrman’s essay on the Judas fragment was outstanding. Eherman’s labors, however, are usually aimed at undermining the confidence of believers.
His books, along with contentions of professors of religion, created a crisis for Pitre when he was a student. But there is a valuable lesson for any Christian who is troubled by “the latest discovery regarding Christianity.” It is this: There are no new arguments against Christianity under the sun. For this reason, Pitre ably assembles the teachings of Church Fathers and others from 2000 plus years of whipping heretics to pin Ehrman and others in quick knock-out matches.
A good and Christ-centered stroll among the Church Fathers is almost always a blessing. This is especially true if you have a guide who knows the Fathers and knows the best quotes and references. But that is not the greatest strength of this book.
We Protestants are a folk who love the Solas of the Reformation. It all begins and even ends on Sola Scriptura. Praise God for Church Fathers of all 2000 years of winning arguments. But our first, primary, and actually only defense is found in Scripture. It is here that Brant’s work was so helpful to me. By going straight from one Bible verse, story, or teaching to another, Brant emphasizes, teaches, reinforces, and shouts aloud that Jesus Christ is God, that Jesus Christ claimed to be God, and that Scripture teaches that message clearly and forcefully.
Don’t wait until the Advent season to read this book. For those who like spiritual reading during Lent, there is still time to delve into this work. But best of all, it might be just the book to read on Easter and the days following when we celebrate that Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man, Very God of Very God, rose from the dead and lives and rules forever.
Post Script: I am obliged to confess that I received this book as a review book and am not obligated to praise it to the hilt. The high regard is the result of my being unable to restrain myself.
March 2, 2024
This book is extremely accessible, and it gets to the heart of questions about the historicity of Christ’s life, identity claims, and miracles. I haven’t especially enjoyed Pitre’s other works in the past, thinking that his writing style was too casual for the subject matter. But here it really clicked for me; this book addresses those questions that anyone who has encountered Christianity has considered, whether they be believers or skeptics. Pitre compellingly dispels contemporary theories about Jesus, by showing that the Gospels are reliable attempts at biography, how Jesus claims divinity in the Synoptic Gospels as well as that of John, and how His Resurrection fulfills the scriptures. Recommended as a great introductory work, if you want to know why to believe the True Myth of Christianity rather than any other religion’s stories.
Read
August 16, 2025This is an easily digestible book like others of Brant Pitre. Best known for “Jesus and the Jewish Roots of the Eucharist” Pitre makes good theological commentators that aren’t too dense or academic. This used to actually piss me off because I couldn’t cite him as a source for my papers in college.
Anyways, this book talks about Jesus shocker. The main focus on the book is the first couple of chapters talk about the historicity of the Gospels, their authorship, other gospels and why they are not cannon, etc.
The second part of the book focuses on Jesus’ claim of divinity. Did Jesus claim to be divine and if he did how so? (Spoiler alert: he did)
So in conclusion Brant’s answers: 1. How can the Gospels be reliable sources, 2. Is Jesus divine? Did he even claim to be God and how do we know.
A good theology read digestible for readers at every level. Yay yay yay.
Anyways, this book talks about Jesus shocker. The main focus on the book is the first couple of chapters talk about the historicity of the Gospels, their authorship, other gospels and why they are not cannon, etc.
The second part of the book focuses on Jesus’ claim of divinity. Did Jesus claim to be divine and if he did how so? (Spoiler alert: he did)
So in conclusion Brant’s answers: 1. How can the Gospels be reliable sources, 2. Is Jesus divine? Did he even claim to be God and how do we know.
A good theology read digestible for readers at every level. Yay yay yay.
May 29, 2021
As a Christian we always get pegged a certain way and are always getting told this is a slave religion or Jesus didn’t exist. It feels like we are always on trial in having to prove why we believe or why we love him or if he existed. that conversation is null and void to me at this point. If you believe you believe, if you dont thats cool and your business too. The life Jesus lived wasnt about anything that the mainstream church, slavery, or evil people have turned it into. Jesus life was about loving people, helping people, and he dropped some of the hardest lines ever spoken so thats the reason I picked up this book. I admit I don’t know the bible as well as I should, but I often read things like this to understand more and get clarity. The author speaks about going to college and a lot he has known being challenged. I felt this because I went to a Christian college and had the same experience. The part that really struck me in this book was how he used the book of Daniel to show how it prophesied the coming of the messiah and how Jesus life would have fulfilled it. He focused on the gospels a lot due to those being the life of Christ, etc. Good read if you are just trying to supplement some of the things you know and just add to your knowledge base.
July 18, 2019
The Case for Jesus by Brant Pitre
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
Scholar Brant Pitre has a way of bringing a new perspective to old issues. In this case, Pitre tackles the claims of those who question Jesus's self-understanding of Himself as divine. It has become a bit of conventional wisdom that outside of the Gospel of John, none of the other Gospels reflect Jesus as as declaring Himself as God. Pitre re-orients the reader to the first century worldview and demonstrates that the self-understanding is revealed throughout the Gospels.
Pitre initially tackles the claim that the Gospels were "anonymous." This is a disingenuous claim on the part of scholars like Bart Ehrman who are going for shock value by misrepresenting the meaning of "anonymous." In fact, the two of the Gospels - Luke and John - identify their authors, and all of the Gospels were circulated as explicitly linked to the names of specific Gospel writers. Pitre points to the difficulties of the anonymous thesis in explaining that everyone everywhere ascribed the same gospels to the same authors without variance. In addition, the authors of the actual gospels were ascribed to minor figures, unlike the the subsequent "fake" gospels that used the names of major figures to give the fakes more credibility.
Pitre also effectively argues for an early dating of the synoptic gospels on the grounds that none of them mention the destruction of the Temple except as a future prophecy. There is also the anomaly that Luke doesn't end with the death of Peter or Paul, suggesting that the text was written before these events. Finally, Pitre reveals something that was news to me, namely, that there is not a scholarly consensus about whether Q existed or how Q solves the synoptic problem. Based on this, it might be a good idea to move the "two source theory" back into the theoretical area.
With the brush cleared away, Pitre tackles the central issue. Pitre points out the Son of Man and Kingdom of God sayings of Jesus which ties directly into the Book of Daniel and are based on the messianic, divine figure of the Son of Man. Significantly, the Book of Daniel's prophecies indicated that the Messiah would come in the first century, which put the Jewish population at a fever pitch of anticipation.
Pitre also points out the parallelism between Jesus' miracles and the descriptions of God's actions in the Psalms, such as Jesus's stilling the waters and Psalm 107.
Another example is the Transfiguration, which Pitre nuances in a way that is startling and obvious:
"Notice that both theophanies occur on the same mountain, Mount Sinai, the mountain of divine revelation. Notice also that neither Moses nor Elijah could look at God. They can hear him and see manifestations of his power, but they cannot see his face. What does all of this have to do with the Transfiguration? The answer is simple but profound. On the mountain of the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah are finally allowed to see what they could not see during their earthly lives: the unveiled face of God. How is this possible? Because the God who appeared to them on Mount Sinai has now become man. In Jesus of Nazareth, the one God now has a human face. In other words, whereas the face of Moses shone with light after coming down the mountain because he reflected the light of the LORD (Exodus 34:29-35), Jesus, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, now “shines from within; he does not simply receive light, but he himself is light from light.”34 And just as God descends upon Mount Sinai in a “thick cloud” and speaks to Moses and the people (Exodus 19:16), so now “a cloud” overshadows Jesus on the mountain of the Transfiguration and a voice speaks: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him” (Mark 9:7). By means of these words, Jesus’s true identity is being revealed."
Pitre goes on with a discussion of why Jesus' was charged with blasphemy, why he forgave sins, and a litany of other examples that make sense only if Jesus was basing His ministry on His divinity.
At the end of the discussion, the reader can't help but feel that the divinity of Jesus is everywhere in the synoptic gospels.
I cannot leave this review without sharing this surprising insight into Jesus's "sign of Jonah" prophecy:
"True confession: for years, when I read this passage, I went away somewhat underwhelmed. With all due respect to Jesus, I always felt like the comparison between Jonah being in the belly of the whale for three days and the Son of Man being in the “heart of the earth” for three days was, well, somewhat forced. Don’t get me wrong—I got the parallel: three days and three nights. But this didn’t seem to me to be the most impressive prophecy of the resurrection you could come up with. Moreover, lots of readers find the story in the book of Jonah to be so unbelievable. How could anyone actually stay alive for “three days and three nights” in the belly of a whale, or a fish, or whatever it was? And then one day I went back and actually read the book of Jonah, carefully, and in its original Hebrew. And do you know what I found? I found that the problem wasn’t with Jesus; it was with me. (I’m learning that this is usually the case.) For if you read the book of Jonah carefully, you will discover something interesting: the author of the book never claims that Jonah remained alive for three days and three nights in the fish. Sure, that’s what all the children’s Bibles and movies and sermons say, but not the text itself. In fact, it pretty explicitly says that Jonah died and went to the realm of the dead. Don’t take my word for it; go back and look for yourself, without skipping Jonah’s prayer (like I used to do)...."
It is not uncommon for me when reading Pitre to have these moments when it is revealed that the truth was hiding in plain sight.
This is a wonderfully interesting book and wonderfully useful for apologetics.
Please give my Amazon review a helpful vote - https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-re...
Scholar Brant Pitre has a way of bringing a new perspective to old issues. In this case, Pitre tackles the claims of those who question Jesus's self-understanding of Himself as divine. It has become a bit of conventional wisdom that outside of the Gospel of John, none of the other Gospels reflect Jesus as as declaring Himself as God. Pitre re-orients the reader to the first century worldview and demonstrates that the self-understanding is revealed throughout the Gospels.
Pitre initially tackles the claim that the Gospels were "anonymous." This is a disingenuous claim on the part of scholars like Bart Ehrman who are going for shock value by misrepresenting the meaning of "anonymous." In fact, the two of the Gospels - Luke and John - identify their authors, and all of the Gospels were circulated as explicitly linked to the names of specific Gospel writers. Pitre points to the difficulties of the anonymous thesis in explaining that everyone everywhere ascribed the same gospels to the same authors without variance. In addition, the authors of the actual gospels were ascribed to minor figures, unlike the the subsequent "fake" gospels that used the names of major figures to give the fakes more credibility.
Pitre also effectively argues for an early dating of the synoptic gospels on the grounds that none of them mention the destruction of the Temple except as a future prophecy. There is also the anomaly that Luke doesn't end with the death of Peter or Paul, suggesting that the text was written before these events. Finally, Pitre reveals something that was news to me, namely, that there is not a scholarly consensus about whether Q existed or how Q solves the synoptic problem. Based on this, it might be a good idea to move the "two source theory" back into the theoretical area.
With the brush cleared away, Pitre tackles the central issue. Pitre points out the Son of Man and Kingdom of God sayings of Jesus which ties directly into the Book of Daniel and are based on the messianic, divine figure of the Son of Man. Significantly, the Book of Daniel's prophecies indicated that the Messiah would come in the first century, which put the Jewish population at a fever pitch of anticipation.
Pitre also points out the parallelism between Jesus' miracles and the descriptions of God's actions in the Psalms, such as Jesus's stilling the waters and Psalm 107.
Another example is the Transfiguration, which Pitre nuances in a way that is startling and obvious:
"Notice that both theophanies occur on the same mountain, Mount Sinai, the mountain of divine revelation. Notice also that neither Moses nor Elijah could look at God. They can hear him and see manifestations of his power, but they cannot see his face. What does all of this have to do with the Transfiguration? The answer is simple but profound. On the mountain of the Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah are finally allowed to see what they could not see during their earthly lives: the unveiled face of God. How is this possible? Because the God who appeared to them on Mount Sinai has now become man. In Jesus of Nazareth, the one God now has a human face. In other words, whereas the face of Moses shone with light after coming down the mountain because he reflected the light of the LORD (Exodus 34:29-35), Jesus, in the words of Pope Benedict XVI, now “shines from within; he does not simply receive light, but he himself is light from light.”34 And just as God descends upon Mount Sinai in a “thick cloud” and speaks to Moses and the people (Exodus 19:16), so now “a cloud” overshadows Jesus on the mountain of the Transfiguration and a voice speaks: “This is my beloved Son; listen to him” (Mark 9:7). By means of these words, Jesus’s true identity is being revealed."
Pitre goes on with a discussion of why Jesus' was charged with blasphemy, why he forgave sins, and a litany of other examples that make sense only if Jesus was basing His ministry on His divinity.
At the end of the discussion, the reader can't help but feel that the divinity of Jesus is everywhere in the synoptic gospels.
I cannot leave this review without sharing this surprising insight into Jesus's "sign of Jonah" prophecy:
"True confession: for years, when I read this passage, I went away somewhat underwhelmed. With all due respect to Jesus, I always felt like the comparison between Jonah being in the belly of the whale for three days and the Son of Man being in the “heart of the earth” for three days was, well, somewhat forced. Don’t get me wrong—I got the parallel: three days and three nights. But this didn’t seem to me to be the most impressive prophecy of the resurrection you could come up with. Moreover, lots of readers find the story in the book of Jonah to be so unbelievable. How could anyone actually stay alive for “three days and three nights” in the belly of a whale, or a fish, or whatever it was? And then one day I went back and actually read the book of Jonah, carefully, and in its original Hebrew. And do you know what I found? I found that the problem wasn’t with Jesus; it was with me. (I’m learning that this is usually the case.) For if you read the book of Jonah carefully, you will discover something interesting: the author of the book never claims that Jonah remained alive for three days and three nights in the fish. Sure, that’s what all the children’s Bibles and movies and sermons say, but not the text itself. In fact, it pretty explicitly says that Jonah died and went to the realm of the dead. Don’t take my word for it; go back and look for yourself, without skipping Jonah’s prayer (like I used to do)...."
It is not uncommon for me when reading Pitre to have these moments when it is revealed that the truth was hiding in plain sight.
This is a wonderfully interesting book and wonderfully useful for apologetics.
January 16, 2017
Very fine. I'll come back to this one a few times over. Really appreciated the firm conviction and clarity. Christians, if you want to reinforce your faith, this is excellent. If you're not a Christian, this one raises challenges. No logical fallacies here but sound historical argumentation.
The other thing is that there is enough interesting points and good gritty grappling with the writer's own struggles to keep this an interesting read all the way through.
The other thing is that there is enough interesting points and good gritty grappling with the writer's own struggles to keep this an interesting read all the way through.
July 19, 2019
The Case for Jesus by Brant Pitre is a short introduction to historical apologetics. Written at a lay level, Pitre discusses a number of common historical objections to the Christian faith, and demonstrates why the Christian story as found in the four Gospels is trustworthy. In so doing, he introduces the readers to some of the hot topics that are often discussed in Historical Jesus studies today, and explains the positions of the various scholars in that field.
The book is divided into thirteen chapters. Chapter 1, “The Quest for Jesus,” introduces the basic problems that Pitre encountered as he was studying the New Testament during his university years, which are the same problems Christians continue to face in institutions of higher education today. Chapter 2, “The Titles of the Gospels,” refutes the claim that the Gospels were all circulated anonymously through three arguments 1) the presence of the Gospel writers in every ancient NT manuscript, 2) the unanimity in attribution of those Gospels to the same writers, and 3) the fact that the attributions are not the logical choices for would-be forgers. Chapter 3, “The Titles of the Gospels,” expands on this argument further, provides biographies of the four evangelists and explains why their testimonies are reliable. Chapter 4, “The Early Church Fathers,” present the patristic evidence showing that the attribution of the four Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John was held by everyone in the earliest days of the Church. Chapter 5, “The Lost Gospels,” compares the canonical Gospels with the apocryphal Gospels, and shows how qualitatively different the canonical Gospels are in terms of both content and dating.
Chapter 6, “Are The Gospels Biographies?,” delves into the genre of the Gospels and concludes that they are meant to be historical biographies. Chapter 7, “The Dating of the Gospels,” challenges the claim that the Gospels were composed late in the 1st century, and concludes that the Synoptics were likely all composed by AD 62. Chapter 8, “Jesus and the Jewish Messiah,” introduces the concept of messianic prophecy, and shows how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament picture of the Messiah. Chapter 9, “Did Jesus Think He Was God?,” counters the claim that the deity of Christ was a late invention, by pointing to things Jesus said and did in the Synoptics that pointed towards his divinity.
Chapter 10, “The Secret of Jesus’ Divinity,” provides further evidence for Jesus’ divinity, and explains the so-called “Messianic Secret” in the Gospels. Chapter 11, “The Crucifixion,” makes the argument that Jesus was condemned to death for blasphemy precisely because of his claim to be God, and explains the theological significance behind his crucifixion. Chapter 12, “The Resurrection,” explains why the Resurrection is the most plausible explanation for the events surrounding the aftermath of Jesus’ death. Finally, chapter 13, “At Caesarea Philippi,” ends with an exposition of Matthew 16, and concludes with a challenge to the reader to decide whether or not they will believe in the claims of Jesus Christ for themselves.
Pitre’s book is short, clear, and easy to follow. Most of the content found in the book are distillations of more detailed historical arguments found in longer works such as Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham. The arguments tend to be quite general, and cover such issues as the authorship of the Gospels, the divinity of Jesus, and the Resurrection. Pitre also interacts extensively with popular skeptical authors such as Bart Ehrman, which is useful for those who may be encountering his works in classroom or other similar context.
In addition, Pitre makes note of many little things that are perhaps overlooked in a lot of biblical studies. For example, in addressing the claim that the disciples were illiterate and could not have been able to write the Gospels, Pitre notes that Matthew, as a tax collector, would definitely have had the requisite literacy to write a Gospel. He also notes how the prayer of Jonah implies that Jonah had actually died in the belly of the fish, and that God raised him after he was spat out by the fish. This strengthens the parallel between Jonah and Jesus, who used Jonah as a sign for what was to happen to him (Matthew 12:39-41).
Perhaps the only critique I have of The Case for Jesus is that it is a little too brief. There are certain other topics that could potentially come up in a discussion of the reliability of the Gospels that aren’t discussed here. For example, one of the most glaring omissions is the lack of any discussion of NT textual criticism (a common issue brought up by those who’ve read Ehrman). The book might also have benefitted from a discussion of the various “Pagan Christ” theories which pop up from time to on the internet and in sensationalist books. For this reason, someone wanting a more rounded knowledge of the reliability of the Gospels might want to pair this with other works such as “The Heresy of Orthodoxy” by Andreas J. Köstenberger and Michael J. Kruger, “The Gospel and the Greeks” by Ronald Nash, and “The Historical Reliability of the New Testament” by Craig Blomberg.
That being said, I recommend this book to everyone who is interested in the topic of the historical reliability of the Bible, and especially to those who are new to the topic, and are looking for a suitable introductory text.
The book is divided into thirteen chapters. Chapter 1, “The Quest for Jesus,” introduces the basic problems that Pitre encountered as he was studying the New Testament during his university years, which are the same problems Christians continue to face in institutions of higher education today. Chapter 2, “The Titles of the Gospels,” refutes the claim that the Gospels were all circulated anonymously through three arguments 1) the presence of the Gospel writers in every ancient NT manuscript, 2) the unanimity in attribution of those Gospels to the same writers, and 3) the fact that the attributions are not the logical choices for would-be forgers. Chapter 3, “The Titles of the Gospels,” expands on this argument further, provides biographies of the four evangelists and explains why their testimonies are reliable. Chapter 4, “The Early Church Fathers,” present the patristic evidence showing that the attribution of the four Gospels to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John was held by everyone in the earliest days of the Church. Chapter 5, “The Lost Gospels,” compares the canonical Gospels with the apocryphal Gospels, and shows how qualitatively different the canonical Gospels are in terms of both content and dating.
Chapter 6, “Are The Gospels Biographies?,” delves into the genre of the Gospels and concludes that they are meant to be historical biographies. Chapter 7, “The Dating of the Gospels,” challenges the claim that the Gospels were composed late in the 1st century, and concludes that the Synoptics were likely all composed by AD 62. Chapter 8, “Jesus and the Jewish Messiah,” introduces the concept of messianic prophecy, and shows how Jesus fulfilled the Old Testament picture of the Messiah. Chapter 9, “Did Jesus Think He Was God?,” counters the claim that the deity of Christ was a late invention, by pointing to things Jesus said and did in the Synoptics that pointed towards his divinity.
Chapter 10, “The Secret of Jesus’ Divinity,” provides further evidence for Jesus’ divinity, and explains the so-called “Messianic Secret” in the Gospels. Chapter 11, “The Crucifixion,” makes the argument that Jesus was condemned to death for blasphemy precisely because of his claim to be God, and explains the theological significance behind his crucifixion. Chapter 12, “The Resurrection,” explains why the Resurrection is the most plausible explanation for the events surrounding the aftermath of Jesus’ death. Finally, chapter 13, “At Caesarea Philippi,” ends with an exposition of Matthew 16, and concludes with a challenge to the reader to decide whether or not they will believe in the claims of Jesus Christ for themselves.
Pitre’s book is short, clear, and easy to follow. Most of the content found in the book are distillations of more detailed historical arguments found in longer works such as Jesus and the Eyewitnesses by Richard Bauckham. The arguments tend to be quite general, and cover such issues as the authorship of the Gospels, the divinity of Jesus, and the Resurrection. Pitre also interacts extensively with popular skeptical authors such as Bart Ehrman, which is useful for those who may be encountering his works in classroom or other similar context.
In addition, Pitre makes note of many little things that are perhaps overlooked in a lot of biblical studies. For example, in addressing the claim that the disciples were illiterate and could not have been able to write the Gospels, Pitre notes that Matthew, as a tax collector, would definitely have had the requisite literacy to write a Gospel. He also notes how the prayer of Jonah implies that Jonah had actually died in the belly of the fish, and that God raised him after he was spat out by the fish. This strengthens the parallel between Jonah and Jesus, who used Jonah as a sign for what was to happen to him (Matthew 12:39-41).
Perhaps the only critique I have of The Case for Jesus is that it is a little too brief. There are certain other topics that could potentially come up in a discussion of the reliability of the Gospels that aren’t discussed here. For example, one of the most glaring omissions is the lack of any discussion of NT textual criticism (a common issue brought up by those who’ve read Ehrman). The book might also have benefitted from a discussion of the various “Pagan Christ” theories which pop up from time to on the internet and in sensationalist books. For this reason, someone wanting a more rounded knowledge of the reliability of the Gospels might want to pair this with other works such as “The Heresy of Orthodoxy” by Andreas J. Köstenberger and Michael J. Kruger, “The Gospel and the Greeks” by Ronald Nash, and “The Historical Reliability of the New Testament” by Craig Blomberg.
That being said, I recommend this book to everyone who is interested in the topic of the historical reliability of the Bible, and especially to those who are new to the topic, and are looking for a suitable introductory text.
February 3, 2019
What a great, accessible, easy-to-read yet scholarly book! I would recommend this to any Christian or non-Christian seeking a well written book on Jesus Christ and his life. It does a great job of addressing various areas of scepticism with answers from scripture, 1st century historians, early Church fathers and information on Jewish culture/history.
December 15, 2020
Not really the points I expected to be made... I felt like he spent a lot of time just proving the dates/order/themes of the Gospels rather than actually the life of Jesus. I found the arguments also mostly non-convincing; trying to prove the existence of miracles and phenomena by citing texts from centuries later, especially after the Council of Nicea.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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