The Case for Jesus: The Biblical and Historical Evidence for Christ

After reading Bart Ehrman’s book - How Jesus Became God, this led to many doubts/worries, and challenged some core faith beliefs.The Case for Jesus is a thorough, reasoned, complete refutation of most of the points made by Ehrman and other scholars who propose that Jesus never claimed to be God, and was made that way by step-wise changes in thought of his followers after the resurrection.I was depressed after reading Ehrman, and enthusiastically happy with renewed faith after reading The Case for Jesus.I highly recommend this book for all Christians, old and new.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading Brant Pitre’s “The Case for Jesus.” The New Testament scholar’s contribution to Catholic popular literature on the identity of Jesus stands well above much of the plethora of material available to Christian readers today. Pitre (mostly) convincingly builds his case through careful, fact-based argumentation--even if one could draw different conclusions from the same evidence.What case is Pitre trying to make? In effect, he makes several cases leading up to his central point of who Jesus was and is.In the first part of this slim volume, he treats the authorship of the Gospels. In this matter, as in most of the book, his principle foil seems to be Bart Ehrman, a former Fundamentalist Christian-turned-apostate scholar whose popular works attempt to undermine the validity of the Gospels as meaningful historical documents and specifically the claim that Jesus is the Son of God. Contrary to Ehrman, Pitre argues for the traditional authorship of the Gospels. As two significant pieces of evidence, Pitre points out that even the earliest Gospel manuscripts and secondary references to the Gospels include the writers’ names by which we know them. The Gospels, then, were never really “anonymous.” This leads Pitre to challenge the scholarly consensus on the dating of the Gospels, and the more controversial hypothesis that Matthew and Luke were based in part on a hypothetical, now lost (and, as Pitre points out, never referenced) book of Jesus sayings denoted by scholars as the “Q” source.As for the so-called lost or apocryphal gospels, Pitre shows that they were never really lost, that most of them were known by early Christian writers, who regarded them as forgeries. In the case of the apocryphal gospels, then, even though the internal evidence suggests that they were written by the apostles to whom they were ascribed, the attributions were never accepted. Ehrman has argued that the apocryphal gospels were not accepted by mainstream or orthodox Christianity, but were embraced by the communities, such as the Gnostics, for whom they were written. In a way, Pitre and Ehrman aren’t in contradiction here, but they just interpret the data differently. In other words, if you accept that the Church Fathers are espousing the correct version of Christianity, then Pitre’s point stands; if you hold on to the view that the Church Fathers represented one view of Christianity among many, all to be regarded equally, then the criticism of the (orthodox) Church Fathers matters less.Pitre, while not dismissing the validity of literary criticism, argues for the historical value of the Gospels. He wants to treat the Gospels as biographies of Jesus. Their inconsistencies and apparent contradictions stem not, as Ehrman would have it, from a “telephone game”-like process of accretions and alterations over time, or even so much from the requirements of the communities for which they were written, as from the different perspectives and life experiences of their writers. Pitre notes the similarities between the Gospels and ancient Greco-Roman biographies in countering the ideas of Ehrman and before him, Rudolf Bultmann, in thinking of the Gospels as akin to folktales, fairy stories, and myths. Pitre stands for the literal truth of the Gospels as far as they will allow in part because two of the four Gospels tell us that they are true (Lk 1:1-4; Jn 19:35, 21:24-25). There’s a bit of circularity in that argument.The main case for Jesus that Pitre wants to make is for His divinity. The Gospels, as Luke Timothy Johnson and other scholars have explained, try to answer, however obliquely, the question Jesus himself poses to Peter: “But who do you say that I am?” (Mk 8:29). Pitre makes the case that the Gospels--even the synoptic Gospels--speak to Jesus’ being God. Pitre makes a lively, even entertaining, argument, using some passages, e.g., the reference to the sign of Jonah, in ways I certainly hadn’t thought of before. Even though as a Catholic I accept Jesus’ divinity, I am willing to allow that others may look at Pitre’s argument and reasonably come to different conclusions. One train of thinking might be this: Pitre notes that Jesus speaks in parables and riddles, and so His claims to divinity are indirect. Moreover, an outright and indeed blasphemous claim to His divinity might have put an even earlier end to Jesus’ three years of ministry. But the Gospel writers should not have been constrained by either Jesus’ particular application of rhetoric or his need to be circumspect; why did the Gospel writers not forthrightly declare that Jesus was God? I think the proper response to this is that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wanted the person encountering the Gospels to answer for themselves who Jesus was and is. In other words, by transmitting the way Jesus conveyed who He was to His disciples perhaps they, too, would draw in and win over later followers of Christ. It’s much more efficacious to engage the potential convert that way than simply to assert that Jesus is God.Brad Pitre has written a wonderful and engaging book. Even if you don’t agree with all of his conclusions, you will appreciate his logical and engaging discussion. This book is meant for the general reader, although it does have a scholarly apparatus by way of careful notes. An index would have been nice but this is a short book of a couple hundred pages. If you’re on a long flight, this book would be the perfect company.

If you are looking for a dry academic tome that spends page after page delving into the minutiae of little known biblical passages, you need to look someplace else. If, however you are looking for a fresh, dynamic and eye opening book tackling the big questions about who Jesus claimed to be, the reliability and authorship of the Gospels, and other questions surrounding the life and ministry of Jesus, then this is the book for you.Written by a well respected academic but for a non-specialist readership, Dr. Pitre's writing is engaging while not being breezy. He uses footnotes to back up his assertions but not so many as to overwhelm the reader. Don't get me wrong, I like a weighty academic tome as well as the next nerd. I would strongly recommend one of Dr. Joshua R. Brotherton's books.But nerds aren't Dr. Pitre's only intended audience. It's all of us who have been bombarded with claims that the gospels are unreliable and anonymous, written well after the lifetime of the Apostles. That Jesus never claimed to be divine or that the resurrection is nothing more than myth. It addresses these and other issues in a way that makes you resolve to buy copies of his book for family and friends even before you're halfway through the book. I know I did and I bet you will to.

I Have to say, that this book really deals with the issue of the anonymity of gospels. Simple language, easy to read. Packed with both internal and external evidences. This book suggests that Bart Ehrman is fully not honest when it comes to showing all the evidences. Dr Pitre did an amazing job in putting all necessary information that a general reader needs to see for himself and conclude about the claims of Dr Ehrman about the gospels.👍 Go for it.

The autor makes powerful arguments about the consistency of the gospel and the Jesus’ claim of being God. For any Christian is a great way to grow in knowledge to support our faith

Sencillamente una obra maestra. La facilidad con que un erudito como el señor Pitre va desmontando cada una de las recientes objeciones acerca de la fiabilidad de las escrituras es sencillamente mágica. Su inconmensurable entendimiento de la historia y ambiente de la palestina del primer siglo le permite mejor que ningún otro escritor realizar una conexión incontestable entre el entorno judaico y sus profecías con la huella en el mundo que finalmente ha dejado Jesús. Todo cristiano debería leer este libro y de este modo, profundizar sobre las raíces de su fe. Del mismo modo, los escépticos no harían mal en echar un vistazo al libro para ponderar su posición. Un aplauso mayúsculo a Brant Pitre por tan fabulosa obra.

Every Christian - and those seeking the One True God - should read this.Brant Pitre delivers wonderfully and draws us closer to Jesus, true God and true Man, as always.

Born in a christian family, I never question the validity of the gospel until my children started to do so. As a result, I had a crisis of faith which didn't allow me to just believe what I've been taught in religious class and adult seminary anymore. This book helped me to start in a new basis and analyse the gospels in a completely different way by encompassing the jewish context in the narrative. Really worth reading! Thanks to the author.