Jesus Books

The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus

Lee Strobel

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Total reviews: 629 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

The Case for seriers is great. 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

1 July 2008 - Great Book...a friend gave me this book years ago but after reading The Case for a Creator I read it and thought it was amazing. It was the abridged version.

if I could give this book less than one star, I would 1 out of 5 stars.
0 of 2 people found this review helpful.

This book is presented in the guise of addressed serious questions of the Christian faith in an objective, thorough manner; as a lawyer would defend a case. Listen, if Lee Strobel was defending Christ in a court of law, Christ would be in trouble. No offense. This book may work well for the naive, but is doesn't answer any serious questions regarding the validity of Christianity. Also, notice how everyone he interviews is a "Dr." Something. That's to help him prop up his side of the argument. He's hoping that the reader will see the "Dr." and not question the evidence. It's downright insulting. If he had good evidence to answer the questions posed, he would need someone with a "Dr." in front of their name. He could just use the evidence.

Editorial Review:

The Case for Christ records Lee Strobel's attempt to "determine if there's credible evidence that Jesus of Nazareth really is the Son of God." The book consists primarily of interviews between Strobel (a former legal editor at the Chicago Tribune) and biblical scholars such as Bruce Metzger. Each interview is based on a simple question, concerning historical evidence (for example, "Can the Biographies of Jesus Be Trusted?"), scientific evidence, ("Does Archaeology Confirm or Contradict Jesus' Biographies?"), and "psychiatric evidence" ("Was Jesus Crazy When He Claimed to Be the Son of God?"). Together, these interviews compose a case brief defending Jesus' divinity, and urging readers to reach a verdict of their own.

Jesus of Nazareth

Pope Benedict XVI

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Total reviews: 148 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

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“This book is… my personal search ‘for the face of the Lord.’” —Benedict XVI

In this bold, momentous work, the pope—in his first book written as Benedict XVI—seeks to salvage the person of Jesus from recent “popular” depictions and to restore Jesus’ true identity as discovered in the Gospels. Through his brilliance as a theologian and his personal conviction as a believer, the pope shares a rich, compelling, flesh-and-blood portrait of Jesus and incites us to encounter, face-to-face, the central figure of the Christian faith.

From Jesus of Nazareth… “the great question that will be with us throughout this entire book: But what has Jesus really brought, then, if he has not brought world peace, universal prosperity, and a better world? What has he brought? The answer is very simple: God. He has brought God! He has brought the God who once gradually unveiled his countenance first to Abraham, then to Moses and the prophets, and then in the wisdom literature—the God who showed his face only in Israel, even though he was also honored among the pagans in various shadowy guises. It is this God, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, the true God, whom he has brought to the peoples of the earth. He has brought God, and now we know his face, now we can call upon him. Now we know the path that we human beings have to take in this world. Jesus has brought God and with God the truth about where we are going and where we come from: faith, hope, and love.”

Encountering Jesus in the New Testament

Michael Pennock

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 2 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Awsome 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 22 people found this review helpful.

The book is like new, it is in perfect condition. I am relly happy with the service

Excellent 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 16 people found this review helpful.

The book arrived earlier than expected. It was in very good condition & package.

The Apostles

Pope Benedict XVI

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Total reviews: 19 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Through the Apostles, we come to Jesus himself." -- Pope Benedict XVI

In this fascinating and inspirational journey with the chosen disciples of Jesus, Pope Benedict XVI demonstrates a profound, unbreakable continuity -- built upon the foundation of the Apostles and alive in the succession of the Apostles -- by which Christ is present today in His Church.

"At the start of the third millennium, my beloved predecessor John Paul II invited the Church to contemplate the Face of Christ (cf. Novo Millennio Ineunte, n. 16 ff.). Continuing in the same direction, I would like to show in this book how it is precisely the light of that Face that is reflected on the face of the Church (cf. Lumen Gentium, n. 1), notwithstanding the limits and shadows of our fragile and sinful humanity. After Mary, a pure reflection of the light of Christ, it is from the Apostles, through their word and witness, that we receive the truth of Christ. Their mission is not isolated, however, but is situated wthin a mystery of communion that involves the entire People of God and is carried out in stages from the Old to the New Covenant." -- From The Apostles

The Third Jesus: The Christ We Cannot Ignore

Deepak Chopra

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Total reviews: 78 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Who is Jesus Christ?

In The Third Jesus, bestselling author and spiritual leader Deepak Chopra provides an answer to this question that is both a challenge to current systems of belief and a fresh perspective on what Jesus can teach us all, regardless of our religious background. There is not one Jesus, Chopra writes, but three.

First, there is the historical Jesus, the man who lived more than two thousand years ago and whose teachings are the foundation of Christian theology and thought. Next there is Jesus the Son of God, who has come to embody an institutional religion with specific dogma, a priesthood, and devout believers. And finally, there is the third Jesus, the cosmic Christ, the spiritual guide whose teaching embraces all humanity, not just the church built in his name. He speaks to the individual who wants to find God as a personal experience, to attain what some might call grace, or God-consciousness, or enlightenment.

When we take Jesus literally, we are faced with the impossible. How can we truly “love thy neighbor as thyself”? But when we see the exhortations of Jesus as invitations to join him on a higher spiritual plane, his words suddenly make sense.

Ultimately, Chopra argues, Christianity needs to overcome its tendency to be exclusionary and refocus on being a religion of personal insight and spiritual growth. In this way Jesus can be seen for the universal teacher he truly is–someone whose teachings of compassion, tolerance, and understanding can embrace and be embraced by all of us.

Jesus and the Gospels: An Introduction and Survey

Craig L. Blomberg

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

excellent and intelligent conservative Jesus study book! 5 out of 5 stars.
9 of 9 people found this review helpful.

this is a very sane and sober comprehensive dig into a wealth of issues surrounding Jesus studies and the four gospels of the new testament. A tremendous amount of issues are put on the table and you will truly learn alot from this book. Well researched, careful scholarship and a well read author who is indeed conservative, but not a fundamentalist. The only quibble I have with this work is that I wish it dealt a bit more with the greco-roman milieu of miralcles, myths and mystery religions. These subjects are included in this book to be sure, but I think more material would have been helpful. This is only a minor quibble though, after all, one volume can only pack so much into it. I also think that on a few rare occasions His conservative bent may get the better of him, but again, I would say this is rare. It is a bit of a tedious read in some ways, but this is to be expected from a work that is not designed to be a fun narrative story. This is not a devotional read, but rather this work seeks to educate readers on the historical issues of Jesus studies as well as the gospels along with the meaning and understanding thereof. This is sorely needed as too much "bible teaching" today is less than grounded in careful sanity. For a very accurate study of Jesus issues with sanity, don't miss this one! Also see N.T. Wright's, The Original Jesus, and Peter Walker's little book by Intervarsity Press, Jesus in His World. These are top notch intro level books helping one to understand Jesus according to His historical and cultural context.

Editorial Review:

This intensive guide to the Gospels surveys the largest source of eyewitness information about Jesus' life and ministry--the books of the four apostles who watched Him, spoke with Him, and served Him during his years on earth.

The Jesus I Never Knew

Philip Yancey

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Total reviews: 164 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

An old adage says, "God created man in His own image and man has been returning the favor ever since." Philip Yancey realized that despite a lifetime attending Sunday school topped off by a Bible college education, he really had no idea who Jesus was. In fact, he found himself further and further removed from the person of Jesus, distracted instead by flannel-graph figures and intellectual inspection. He determined to use his journalistic talents to approach Jesus, in the context of time, within the framework of history.

In The Jesus I Never Knew, Yancey explores the life of Jesus, as he explains, "'from below,' to grasp as best I can what it must have been like to observe in person the extraordinary events unfolding in Galilee and Judea" as Jesus traveled and taught. Yancey examines three fundamental questions: who Jesus was, why he came, and what he left behind. Step by step, scene by scene, Yancey probes the culture into which Jesus was born and grew to adulthood; his character and mission; his teachings and miracles; his legacy--not just as history has told it, but as he himself intended it to be.

Yancey is not alone in his examination of the "real" Jesus. Publishing today is replete with writers committed to setting the story "straight,quot; joining countless others who, over the past 2,000 years, have determined to discover the truth about Jesus. But where others would deconstruct and discount, Yancey disarms and discloses. We become colleagues with him as he examines the accounts of the life of Jesus. And among the things that we discover is that Jesus himself leaves us few options: either he was who he said he was or he was nuts.

Philip Yancey was awarded the Gold Medallion Christian Book of the Year award for this book in 1996 by the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association. It's not the first, nor the last, award Yancey has won for his writing. But the writing is not necessarily the great gift of this book. Yancey allows the reader to discover, along with him, The Jesus I Never Knew. --Patricia Klein

Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions (Relit Theology)

Mark Driscoll, Gerry Breshears

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Total reviews: 24 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Vintage Jesus: Mark Driscoll, technology, and timely questions 4 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

I'm currently reading a book called Vintage Jesus: Timeless Answers to Timely Questions by Mark Driscoll, pastor of a megachurch in Seattle. It's a bit tongue-in-cheek in places, but quite appropriate and provocative. Living in the Bible Belt for the past two years, I've come to realize how much American culture has become inundated with pop Christian iconography. Where I live in Tennessee, everyone is a "Christian." Sometimes, it makes me not want to be one. It brings back memories of living in Seville, Spain, where every street corner and public edifice had a picture or reference to Christ or his mother Mary. Yet, most people I ran into had no idea about the biblical Jesus, the God who came to earth as a man to liberate all of humanity from sin and death. Maybe what America (and Spain) needs is a fresh look at the real Jesus, not how we want him to be, but who he was and is.

To introduce such a Jesus, Driscoll's book begins with a sobering and less-than-conventional Gospel story:

Roughly two thousand years ago, Jesus was born in a dumpy, rural, hick town, not unlike those today where guys change their oil, think pro wrestling is real, find women who chew tobacco sexy, and eat a lot of Hot Pockets with their uncle-daddy. Jesus' mom was a poor, unwed teenage girl who was mocked for claiming she conceived via the Holy Spirit. Most people thought she concocted a crazy story to cover the "fact" that she was knocking boots with some guy in the backseat of the car at the prom. Jesus was adopted by a simple carpenter named Joseph and spent the first thirty years of his life in obscurity, swinging a hammer with his dad. (Vintage Jesus, p. 11)

Just as his book begins unconventionally, Mark Driscoll's career as a minister wasn't your textbook Bible school graduate story. Raised behind a strip club, Driscoll got his start at life by getting into fights, being sexually promiscuous, and joining a social fraternity in college. As a business school undergrad, he became a Christian at age 19. When he was 20, he finally read the Bible cover-to-cover and started questioning what it meant to be part of the mission of Jesus. At age 25, without any formal seminary training, he started his own church with 12 attendees. In 11 years, church attendance has increased to over 6,000.

At Mars Hill Church in Seattle, WA, which is reported to be the least-churched city in America, Driscoll tackles taboo topics that many mainline preachers are wary to approach. Having his beginnings with the likes of Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt, he was initially an advocate for the "Emerging Church" movement in the 90s. He has since distanced himself from those who adopt more of a "progressive theology" stance on doctrine. He often criticizes liberal Christians and "their Emergent offspring," saying that he wants more than the "Jesus in a pink dress" or a God that he can beat up. (In Jesus for President, another book pointing to the cultural success of Jesus as a pop icon, authors Shane Claiborne and Chris Haw actually criticize Driscoll's treatment of Jesus as being unbiblical. Someone is always reacting to someone else, it seems.) Mark explains his reasoning for disassociating himself from McLaren, Pagitt, and others, despite their common desire to see Christianity represented in a culturally relevant and "seeker-sensible" manner:

"In the mid-1990s I was part of what is now known as the Emerging Church and spent some time traveling the country to speak on the emerging church in the emerging culture on a team put together by Leadership Network called the Young Leader Network. But, I eventually had to distance myself from the Emergent stream of the network because friends like Brian McLaren and Doug Pagitt began pushing a theological agenda that greatly troubled me. Examples include referring to God as a chick, questioning God's sovereignty over and knowledge of the future, denial of the substitutionary atonement at the cross, a low view of Scripture, and denial of hell which is one hell of a mistake." (Wikipedia)

Driscoll is open, authentic, and brutally honest. He is known to regularly shout out not-oft-mentioned sins from the pulpit (such as oral sex outside of wedlock) followed by a call to genuine repentance and to life in Christ. He does not walk on eggshells in his preaching nor in his writing, and this authenticity is what makes him so particularly appealing. With Vintage Jesus, he takes what might be considered dry theological vignettes and makes them extremely relevant by providing real-life examples and injecting pieces of pop culture into each chapter.

By quoting the likes of Hugh Heffner, Ghandi, and Bart Simpson, while juxtaposing that with biblical doctrine, Mark can make you laugh and squirm in your seat at the same time. He pulls no punches, but also preaches a message of hope and salvation based on grace alone.

In his preaching ministry, he uses technology to connect with a younger audience. Whether it's addressing his 3900 friends on Facebook or utilizing text messaging (within the walls of a church!) to answer difficult life questions about anything from making crude jokes to hating religion, he is passionate about connecting a younger generation with theological truth and a practical Christian worldview. Because of these and other non-traditional methods of incarnating Christ, Driscoll's church has quickly become the eighth most influential in America. It continues to grow exponentially.

In the spirit of openness, Driscoll encourages his congregants--and the world--to "Ask Anything" of him. He continues this practice in Vintage Jesus by pairing up with theologian Gerry Breshears to answer simple questions about Christian orthodoxy at the end of each chapter .

Mark often marries his passion for the Bible with technology. He recently prepared for a sermon series entitled "Religion Saves and Nine Other Misconceptions" by soliciting questions on his website (www.marshillchurch.org). The results were more than 900 questions, 550,000 comments and 343,000 votes that determined the top nine questions Driscoll would be answering in the series.

This pastor's rise to success can be traced back to people's increasing fascination with a preacher who is curiously liberal in cultural propriety (he is an avid viewer of TV sitcom The Office and calls those who aren't fans to "repent"), while theologically conservative (he claims John Calvin and C.H. Spurgeon among his personal heroes). To say the least, Driscoll is an anomaly in the church, but one who is welcomed with a sigh of religious relief and maybe a scratch on the head. Every Sunday, he preaches to urban twenty-somethings and young families, many sporting mohawks and tattoos. On each side of the stage are bouncers who wear fitted black T-shirts reading "SECURITY". Apparently, he has needed them ever since he started receiving numerous death threats and was charged while preaching on-stage by a man with a knife in 2006.

As a preacher and writer, Pastor Mark is indeed provocative, to say the least. Yet, his provocation (although sometimes met with a knife mid-service) is also welcomed by many. His sermon podcast is ranked Number 1 in the "Religion and Spirituality" section on iTunes. Perhaps, no one has yet done such a fine job of combining complex theological truths with cultural relevance and technology, but who knows what Driscoll's methodologies will provoke. His new book will do probably what his preaching has already done - anger many, while calling others to life-changing repentance. Most likely, that was the author's intention - to leave no gray areas, but to present readers with a clear decision to accept or deny this Jesus presented.

Although it is still too early to tell, Driscoll's Vintage Jesus may do for this generation of young seekers what Lewis' Mere Christianity and McDowell's More than a Carpenter did for theirs... with the addition of quotes by Marilyn Manson and the described-in-detail bodily functions of baby Jesus.

Editorial Review:

Some two thousand years after he walked the earth, Jesus Christ is still a hot topic. And for all the ridiculous, twisted, Da Vinci Code-esque conspiracy theories and lies about Jesus that have permeated popular culture and even the academy over the years, the truth about his character, nature, and work has not changed. So what exactly is the truth about Jesus Christ?
That's the question the authors of Vintage Jesus seek to answer by breaking it down into a number of sub-questions about Jesus, including Is Jesus the only God? Why did Jesus come to earth? Did Jesus rise from death? Why should we worship Jesus? and others.

More Than a Carpenter

Josh McDowell

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Total reviews: 168 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Since its release, More Than a Carpenter has been challenging readers to ask the question, "Who is Jesus?" Author and renowned speaker Josh McDowell acknowledges that while the topic of God is widely accepted, the name of Jesus often causes irritation. "Why don't the names of Buddha, Mohammed, Confucius offend people? The reason is that these others didn't claim to be God, but Jesus did." By addressing questions about scientific and historical evidence, the validity of the Bible, and proofs of the resurrection, McDowell helps the reader come to an informed and intelligent decision about whether Jesus was a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. This short, 128-page gem does not employ fancy theological words, forsaking the layman, but reads more like an intimate research document laying out the facts with veracious accuracy, from reliable sources ranging from secular scientists to conservative seminarians. A skeptic himself for many years, McDowell always believed that Christians were "out of their minds" but now insists that "never has an individual been called upon to commit intellectual suicide in trusting Christ as Savior and Lord." McDowell adeptly articulates fundamental answers to poignant questions that cause the skeptic to consider whether Jesus was a liar causing countless martyrs to die in his wake, a lunatic deserving death, or actually the Lord of the universe. --Jill Heatherly

Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings, and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary

Marcus J. Borg

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Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Jesus the Radical Hippie 3 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Marcus Borg has done it again. He has painted Jesus in the kitschy clothes of a communist radical. There are many interpretations of what Jesus was up to in first century Palestine and Borg, like most of the Jesus Seminarians, seems to think Jesus was trying to start a new movement of radical inclusiveness and self-acceptance instead of being the fulcrum of history which I believe he is.

There is an author named N.T. Wright that Borg coauthored a book with called "The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions." When I read the book I was firmly rooted in Borg's brand of Christianity. I glanced at Wright's work and remember that it was very dense.

Fast forward to this year, I've been reading a lot of Wright and he puts more flesh onto Jesus bones than Borg does.

Borg paints with broad strokes a five point sketch that he's written of in other works. It is interesting but he also considers Jesus an illiterate Jewish peasant when the bible actually speaks of Jesus reading a scroll from the Hebrew Bible.

This current book makes Jesus into a preacher of the social gospel. Which is all well and good but it doesn't address the calling Jesus felt or what he really believed.

I recommend N.T. Wright's "The Challenge of Jesus" for a good counterpoint to this work.

Editorial Review:

From top Jesus expert Marcus Borg, a completely updated and revised version of his vision of Jesus—as charismatic healer, sage, and prophet, a man living in the power of the spirit and dedicated to radical social change.

Fully revised and updated, this is Borg's major book on the historial Jesus. He shows how the Gospel portraits of Jesus, historically seen, make sense. Borg takes into account all the recent developments in historical Jesus scholarship, as well as new theories on who Jesus was and how the Gospels reflect that.

The original version of this book was published well before popular fascination with the historical Jesus. Now this new version takes advantage of all the research that has gone on since the 80s. The revisions establish it as Borg's big but popular book on Jesus.