In the face of modern critical scholarship, which is steadily eroding the historical reliability of the Gospels and their presentation of Jesus, conservative writers have been making valiant attempts to reestablish confidence in the Christian record and doctrine. The most prominent of these, in popular exposure and commercial success, has been Lee Strobel, in his 1998 book The Case for Christ. 
In that book, Lee Strobel, an ex-court journalist, conducts a series of 14 interviews with well-known conservative and evangelical scholars of the New Testament, such as Craig Blomberg, William Lane Craig and Gary Habermas, in an attempt to establish the reliability of the Gospel account and the truth of the Resurrection. Within the context of a scholarly critique, Earl Doherty, author of The Jesus Puzzle (also available on Amazon) takes quotations from those interviews and sets up his own dialogue with them, as though cross-examining Strobel and his witnesses in a courtroom before judge and jury. 
This makes for gripping reading, a strong atmosphere and an effective way to present the case in favor of a more rational and coherent view of the Christian record and the origins of Christianity. Challenging the Verdict exposes the deficiencies, the fallacies, the selective and misleading use of evidence inherent in The Case for Christ, and offers more reasonable alternatives. 
Challenging the Verdict is written in simple, clear, conversational language, with elements of humor and insight into logic and history. The book addresses all aspects of the Christian record: Gospels, epistles, non-canonical documents. Occasionally, it steps beyond the scope of New Testament interpretation and discusses religion and rationality in general. 
Challenging the Verdict provides an ideal response for those who have had Lee Strobel's book urged upon them by friends, family members and their local clergy. Now you can offer something in return that will show why there is good reason to question the Gospels and reject their claims.

Challenging the Verdict: A Cross-Examination of Lee Strobel's "The Case for Christ"

Religion & Spirituality

Earl Doherty

Christian Books & Bibles

Age of Reason Publications,Canada

(Please see description attached to book on Amazon site under former publisher--in Special Orders category).

The Jesus Puzzle: Did Christianity Begin with a Mythical Christ? Challenging the Existence of an Historical Jesus

Age of Reason Publications

Mainstream biblical scholarship is far from achieving consensus in its ongoing attempt to separate the glorified Jesus of faith from the ever elusive Jesus of history. It remains to be seen how soon traditional academia will overcome its reluctance to take the plunge into the New Testament s final, uncharted territory: the theory that Christianity began with belief in a spiritual heavenly Son of God, that the Gospels are essentially allegory and fiction, and that no historical Jesus worthy of the name existed... 
 The Gospels and Acts of the Apostles form one small portion of the early Christian documentary record. They reflect but one category of thought and witness to what that broad movement came to believe in. Modern scholars and believers alike view the world of early Christianity through the prism of this narrow handful of inbred writings, a chain of literary dependency and enlargement on the first one written, and it has distorted all that they see. The Gospels and Acts need to be put in their proper perspective, so that they no longer obscure a more clear-eyed view of what early Christianity constituted. That view can be found in everything from the New Testament epistles to the non-canonical documents, to the writings of the Gnostics and second century apologists. Until we allow ourselves to recognize what broader factors of the era brought the idea of a Jesus into being, and how he evolved over the first 150 years, the Western world will continue to live and perpetuate a fantasy... 
 Earl Doherty, through his website and first book, The Jesus Puzzle, is regarded by many as having given Jesus Mythicism its most legitimate and convincing expression in over a generation. Jesus: Neither God Nor Man is a new and revised expansion of that work. The product of almost three decades of study, it presents a case of unprecedented depth and lucidity for the non-existence of an historical Jesus. (The original The Jesus Puzzle will continue to be available as a condensed version of that case.) In this age of the Internet and the increased dissemination of knowledge and ideas across a wide public constituency, the true beginnings of one of the world s major religions may finally be ready to emerge.

Jesus: Neither God Nor Man - The Case for a Mythical Jesus

When New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman published DID JESUS EXIST? THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT FOR JESUS OF NAZARETH, he not only attempted to prove the historical reality of a man called *Jesus of Nazareth*, he sharply criticized scholars who have sought to develop a new paradigm in the study of Christian origins scholars who have claimed that Jesus was a mythical, not historical, figure, and that the traditional, Jesus-centered paradigm for studying the origins of Christianity must be replaced by an actual science of Christian origins. In the present volume, some of those scholars respond to Ehrman s treatment of their research and findings, showing how he has either ignored, misunderstood or misrepresented their arguments. They present evidence that *Jesus of Nazareth* was no more historical than Osiris or Thor. Several contributors question not only the historicity of *Jesus of NAZARETH,* they present evidence that the site of present-day Nazareth was not inhabited at the time Jesus and his family should have been living there.

Bart Ehrman and the Quest of the Historical Jesus of Nazareth: An Evaluation of Ehrman s Did Jesus Exist?

D.M. Murdock

Robert M. Price

Richard Carrier

René Salm

David Fitzgerald

Frank R. Zindler

PH.D.

American Atheist Press

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Books by Earl Doherty