The Case for Christmas

by

Book Overview

I enjoyed reading through The Case for Christmas.

By focusing on the hows and whys of Christmas, this warm yet journalistic book will help believers reaffirm their faith while guiding seekers as they pursue solid answers about this miraculous occurrence. With material from The Case for Christ as well as new ideas from author Lee Strobel, this book is designed to be a tool to give away to family, friends, neighbors, and others who want to understand what happened at Christmas 2,000 years ago.

Favorite Quotes

  1. Those names carried much more weight than the names of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.  So to answer your question, there would not have been any reason to attribute authorship to these three less respected people if it weren’t true (16).
  2. In AD 385, Pope Julius I declared December 25 as the day for celebrating Christ’s birth.  “He chose that date,” Christian researcher Gretchen Passantino told me, “partly to challenge the pagan celebration of the Roman god Saturnalia, which was characterized by social disorder and immorality” (20).
  3. “If I really do believe in a God who created the universe,” Craig said, smiling, “then for him to create a Y chromosome would be child’s play!” (30).
  4. Most novae explode once, but a few undergo multiple explosions separated by months or years.  This, he said could account for how Matthew says the star appeared, disappeared, and then reappeared and disappeared later (50).
  5. Dr. Ben Witherington III, author of The Christology of Jesus, told me: “Did Jesus believe that he was the Son of God, the anointed of God?  The answer is yes. Did he see himself as the Son of Man?  The answer is yes.  Did he see himself as the final Messiah?  Yes, that’s the way he viewed himself.  Did he believe that anyone less than God could save the world?  No, I don’t believe he did” (63).
  6. “When you interpret Daniel 9:24-26, it foretells that the Messiah would appear a certain length of time after King Artaxerxes I issued a decree for the Jewish people to go from Persia to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem,” Lapides replied…”That puts the anticipate appearance of the Messiah at the exact moment in history when Jesus showed up…certainly that’s nothing he could have prearranged” (84).