The Work
The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus was first published in September 1998 by Zondervan (Grand Rapids, Michigan). It is approximately 350 pages, organized into three parts - 'Examining the Record,' 'Analyzing Jesus,' and 'Researching the Resurrection' - with a total of fourteen chapters, each presenting an interview with a different scholar. The book became an immediate bestseller, reaching the New York Times bestseller list within weeks of publication, and has sold over fourteen million copies to date. An updated edition (2016) added new material and a twentieth-anniversary edition (2018) included a new foreword by Craig Evans. A feature film adaptation, directed by Jon Gunn, was released in April 2017.
Biblical Engagement
The book's primary biblical focus is the reliability of the New Testament documents, particularly the four Gospels and Paul's letters. The organizing biblical text is 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, Paul's early creedal statement about the resurrection: 'For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures: And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once...' Strobel and his interview subjects argue that this text, almost universally dated by scholars to within five years of the crucifixion, provides the earliest attestation of the resurrection tradition and is too early to be legendary.
The Gospel accounts - particularly Luke 1:1-4 (Luke's claim to careful historical investigation), John 20:30-31 (John's stated purpose), and Acts 1:1-3 (the continuation of Luke's historical narrative) - are examined as primary source documents. The interviews address questions of authorship, dating, the manuscript tradition, archaeological corroboration, and the criteria for historical authenticity used by New Testament scholars.
Luke 24:36-43 and John 20:24-29 (the post-resurrection appearance accounts) are central to the book's climactic section on the resurrection. Strobel interviews scholars including Gary Habermas, Michael Licona, J.P. Moreland, and Alexander Metherell on questions of the medical facts of crucifixion, the nature of the resurrection appearances, the empty tomb tradition (mentioned across all four Gospels and in 1 Corinthians 15), and the psychology of the disciples' transformation from frightened fugitives to bold witnesses.
The book also engages with the biblical question of Jesus's self-understanding. John 10:30 ('I and the Father are one'), John 8:58 ('Before Abraham was, I am'), Matthew 16:15-17 (Peter's confession at Caesarea Philippi), and the Son of Man sayings (drawing on Daniel 7:13-14) are examined in the interview on Jesus's identity. The argument follows the same trilemma logic as C.S. Lewis's Mere Christianity - that Jesus' claims foreclose the option of regarding him as merely a good teacher - but with more historical-critical scaffolding.
Author & Context
Lee Strobel was born in 1952 and educated at the University of Missouri School of Journalism and Yale Law School. He joined the Chicago Tribune in 1974, rising to the position of legal affairs editor. By his own account, he was a committed atheist when his wife Leslie became a Christian in 1979. Strobel was initially hostile to her conversion but eventually began investigating the claims of Christianity with the tools of his journalistic training. He became a Christian in 1981 after approximately two years of investigation. He joined the staff of Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois, under Bill Hybels and later became the teaching pastor at Saddleback Church under Rick Warren.
The Case for Christ was published seventeen years after Strobel's conversion, drawn from his original investigative work in the late 1970s-early 1980s (considerably reconstructed and expanded) and from subsequent interviews conducted specifically for the book. The scholarly interviews were not conducted in the sequence presented in the book; rather, Strobel assembled the best available scholars on each question and presented the interviews as if they were part of a single ongoing investigation.
The intellectual context of the book was the historical Jesus debates of the 1980s and 1990s. The Jesus Seminar, founded by Robert Funk in 1985, had achieved considerable media attention by publishing voting results on which sayings and deeds of Jesus the participating scholars considered historically authentic. The Seminar's conclusions - that only about 18% of the sayings attributed to Jesus in the Gospels were authentically his - generated significant popular confusion about the historical reliability of the New Testament. Strobel's book was explicitly intended as a counter-narrative, demonstrating that mainstream critical scholarship supported a much more conservative estimate of the Gospels' historical value.
Structure and Method
The book is structured as a legal case: Strobel, the former legal-affairs editor, presents himself as the prosecuting attorney examining witnesses on behalf of the skeptical reader. Each chapter is an 'interview' with an academic expert on a specific question:
Part 1 addresses the documentary evidence: Did the Gospel writers have the ability and intention to record reliable history? Were the Gospels passed on accurately (textual criticism)? Is there archaeological or non-biblical corroboration for the Gospels? The interview subjects include Craig Blomberg (reliability of the Gospels), Bruce Metzger (textual criticism), Edwin Yamauchi (the extrabiblical evidence), and John McRay (New Testament archaeology).
Part 2 addresses the identity of Jesus: Is the Jesus of the Gospels the same as the historical Jesus? Did Jesus consider himself divine? Does psychology explain away his claims? Strobel interviews Gary Collins (a clinical psychologist), D.A. Carson, and Ben Witherington III.
Part 3 addresses the resurrection: Did Jesus die? Was the tomb empty? Are the resurrection appearances evidence of hallucination or genuine encounters? What explains the origin of the early church's resurrection proclamation? The interview subjects include Alexander Metherell (the medical evidence for death by crucifixion), William Lane Craig, and Gary Habermas.
Critical Reception
The book achieved its stated popular-apologetics goal with remarkable effectiveness, reaching millions of readers who would never engage with academic New Testament scholarship directly. Evangelical scholars generally praised it as accessible and well-researched. D.A. Carson, Craig Blomberg, and other scholars interviewed in the book provided positive endorsements.
Critical responses came from several directions. Liberal New Testament scholars questioned whether the scholars Strobel interviewed represent the mainstream of the guild - they skew toward evangelical and conservative positions - and argued that Strobel's 'journalist investigation' is more a presentation of one side of a scholarly debate than a genuine investigation. Robert Price and Bart Ehrman offered critical responses arguing that the book presents the resurrection hypothesis as more scholarly compelling than the evidence warrants.
Methodological critics noted that the interview format, while accessible, allows Strobel to guide the conversation in a predetermined direction rather than engaging seriously with contrary evidence. The book does not interview any skeptical scholars or present the strongest counter-arguments before refuting them, which weakens its apologetic force with philosophically sophisticated readers.
Nevertheless, the book's influence on popular evangelical apologetics has been enormous. Lee Strobel became, after C.S. Lewis and Josh McDowell, the most widely read popular apologist in American evangelicalism. His subsequent books - The Case for Faith (1998), The Case for a Creator (2004), The Case for the Real Jesus (2007), and The Case for Heaven (2021) - extended the same format to other apologetic questions.
Theological Significance
The book's significance is primarily cultural rather than academic. It demonstrated that rigorous-seeming engagement with scholarly evidence could be packaged in an accessible popular format and reach a mass audience, and it made the arguments of conservative New Testament scholarship available to readers who had encountered primarily the skeptical conclusions of figures like the Jesus Seminar. In this sense, it performed for apologetics what the rise of New Urbanism performed for urban planning: it made a specialist conversation available to a general audience.
Theologically, the book's insistence on the historical grounding of Christian faith - its conviction that Christianity stands or falls with the historical resurrection of Jesus, following the logic of 1 Corinthians 15:14 ('if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain') - represents a legitimate strand of Christian apologetic tradition from the early church apologists through Anselm, Calvin, and the evidentialist tradition.
Legacy
The book's influence on evangelical apologetics has been transformative. It popularized the 'minimal facts' approach to resurrection apologetics developed by Gary Habermas, the archaeological arguments for biblical reliability, and the manuscript evidence arguments for New Testament textual integrity. It trained a generation of lay apologists in the arguments for Christianity's historical claims. Josh McDowell's Evidence That Demands a Verdict (1972) was its predecessor; The Case for Christ became its twenty-first-century successor as the standard lay apologetics resource.
The 2017 film dramatization, which recounts Strobel's original investigation from his wife's perspective, reached a new audience and revived interest in the book in its twentieth anniversary year.
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study 1 Corinthians 15:1-20 (Paul's earliest resurrection testimony), Luke 1:1-4 (historical methodology in the Gospel tradition), John 20-21 (the resurrection appearance narratives), Acts 2:14-36 (Peter's Pentecost sermon on the resurrection), and Matthew 28:1-20 (the resurrection narrative and Great Commission).
Further Reading
- N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (2003) - the most comprehensive scholarly defense of the bodily resurrection, by a leading New Testament historian. - Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus (2004) - the most detailed scholarly elaboration of the 'minimal facts' argument that the Strobel interviews introduce. - Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (2005) - the principal counter-argument to Strobel's textual reliability claims, engaging the same scholars from a skeptical perspective.