THE CASE for CHRISTMAS: A JOURNALIST INVESTIGATES the IDENTITY of the CHILD in the MANGER (Kindle e-book) by Lee Strobel

A Lightweight Version of The Case for Christ

Published in 2009 by Zondervan

I picked The Case for Christmas up for free on Amazon.com as a Kindle e-book. For a freebie, this is a solid introduction to Lee Strobel and his style. But, if you purchase this book as a stand-alone book at the regular price of $1.99 it has issues.

Issue #1. This book is a essentially an edited, truncated version of Lee Strobel's signature book, The Case for Christ. Now, I like The Case for Christ because it is very thorough and includes a lot of detailed arguments as to why Jesus is not who the Church claims he is and then proceeds to counter them. The Case for Christmas is almost exactly 1/3 of the length of The Case for Christ and the editing hurts.

Issue #2. Regularly priced at $1.99, this kindle e-book is 2/3 the price of the original source text it comes from. Right now, you can buy The Case for Christ for $2.99. Spend the extra dollar and get the much more complete, much better book.

A mosaic from the Hagia Sophia in
Constantinople

Issue #3. The title. If I had known that this book was a mere re-tooling of The Case for Christ I would not have gotten it, even if I did get it for free. I own The Case for Christ in paper format. I assumed, because of the title, that The Case for Christmas would be a look at the Christmas story itself featuring interviews with experts on the birth of Christ. Instead, this is a re-working of an existing work that people may buy even though they already own the larger book that it is derived from. If the publisher is playing this game, it is a cheap, greedy move.

I rate this book 3 stars out of 5 because what is here is good stuff. Please, get the original book instead.

Find The Case for Christ here on Amazon.com: The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus

The Case for Christmas can be found here: The Case for Christmas: A Journalist Investigates the Identity of the Child in the Manger 

  Reviewed on December 31, 2014.

HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE: THE RISE and DECLINE of WESTERN THOUGHT and CULTURE (audiobook) by Francis A. Schaeffer

Originally published in 1976
Published by Christianaudio.com
Read by Kate Reading
Duration: 7 hours, 51 minutes

Presbyterian minister and philosopher Francis A. Schaeffer's How Should We Then Live? is a history of the West and a fairly sophisticated bit of Christian apologetics wrapped up in a fairly small package. At times this book rolls along at an enjoyable pace and is quite the listen, other times it is much more difficult. 

Here is a listing of the chapters:

• Chapter 1: Ancient Rome - Schaeffer compares Roman pagan beliefs with Christian beliefs and blames the pagan beliefs for the collapse of the Empire - they were not inclusive enough and the Greco-Roman gods were little more than bigger people with the same issues that all people have.
• Chapter 2: The Middle Ages - Despite its reputation, the Middle Ages had positive points. Threads of Classical thought were re-discovered and fused to Christian beliefs.
• Chapter 3: The Renaissance - Schaeffer offers up the Renaissance and the Reformation as competing thought processes about man and his relationship to God. The Renaissance is essentially the re-birth of Greco-Roman humanist thought with a Christian veneer.
• Chapter 4: The Reformation - Explores the art and culture of The Reformation and compares them favorably to that of the Renaissance.
• Chapter 5: The Reformation – Continued - Looks at the philosophy of the Reformation and how even non-Christian thinkers of the time were influenced by Christian thought.
• Chapter 6: The Enlightenment - Human-centered thought leads directly to the excesses of the French Revolution.
• Chapter 7: The Rise of Modern Science - Science's foundation came from confidence that God had created an orderly world that we could understand.
• Chapter 8: The Breakdown in Philosophy and Science - Philosophy and art are symptoms of the thought processes that are now permeating science.
• Chapter 9: Modern Philosophy and Modern Theology - Humanism creeps into theology.
• Chapter 10: Modern Art, Music, Literature, and Films - Schaeffer offers commentary on several "modern" works.
• Chapter 11: Our Society - How the values of personal peace and affluence have worked their way into our society.
• Chapter 12: Manipulation and the New Elite - Is an authoritarian state ruled by elites coming as a natural result of Humanist values.
• Chapter 13: The Alternatives - Schaeffer makes the argument for a return to Christian values.

The audiobook is quite enjoyable until Chapter 8. I was not a fan of the discussion of all of the different philosophers. The commentary on current movies, art, music and literature are stilted seeing as how the book was originally published in 1976. There is no discussion of Heavy Metal, rap, hip-hop, Star Wars, the current trend towards super hero movies or celebrity pop culture authors like Stephen King. His discussion of modern science is similarly stilted. It's not his fault, it's just the reality of listening to a re-released book.

So, do I buy into what Schaeffer is arguing?

Yeah, mostly. Once you get past the fact that he is still talking about hippies it's still pretty solid.

Kate Reading's narration was neither good nor bad. She did not hurt the interesting parts and did not make the slower parts better. 

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here: HOW SHOULD WE THEN LIVE: THE RISE and DECLINE of WESTERN THOUGHT and CULTURE by Francis A. Schaeffer.

Reviewed on November 17, 2014.

Beyond Belief to Convictions (audiobook) by Josh McDowell and Bob Hostetler

Disappointed in the abridged audiobook

Published in 2002 by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Abridged.

I've seen Josh McDowell speak many times and I know that he can be a strong speaker and I do wish that he had read this book. This book has strong attributes, but when combined with the reader (Greg Wheatley) it can be tedious.

The audiobook seems poorly put together at times but I suppose that is due to a poor abridgement.

The reader is very poor, which is surprising since the cover notes that he has a wealth of radio experience. He fails to do basic things like pause. For example, most readers would read like this:

Chapter One
(pause)
It was a dark and stormy night...

This book is more like this (in a monotone):

ChapterOneItwasadarkandstormynight.

Other negatives:

McDowell includes a fictional story of friends at college that are struggling with their faith. Those stories are stilted and read like they were written for ...well, like they were written for a Sunday school book. The people don't talk like kids (I teach high school and those kids spoke more like 60 year olds than teenagers) and the reactions of some are so emotionally secure that it seemed fakey.

Following the climax of the fictional story came a sermon that was not all that hot either. Perhaps it was the reader, but it didn't do much for me.

What was good:

McDowell tells a lot of his personal story in here. If he'd have ditched the fictional people and told more about himself it would have been so much more powerful because his story is compelling and touching.

The ending is very strong with a good dose of Christian apologetics concerning the crucifixion.

Another reviewer on Amazon.com noted that there is another version of this book read by McDowell himself. Search that one out if you have to have this book in audio format.

I rate this audiobook 2 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: Beyond Belief to Convictions.

Reviewed on March 10, 2009.

Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus by Timothy Paul Jones

An Enjoyable Counter-Argument

Published in 2007 by IVP Books.

Timothy Paul Jones' Misquoting Truth: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart Ehrman's "Misquoting Jesus is a reasoned, polite yet firm response to Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, a best-selling book that disputes the authenticity of the New Testament by noting that there have been numerous errors in translation and copying over the years, especially in the first 200-300 years of the Christian movement.

Jones starts by addressing Ehrman's criticisms directly. He acknowledges that there have indeed been a great number of errors, most in spelling, some in grammar and some were simple re-copying of lines of text or skipping a line of text. He notes that while there are a lot of them, most make no difference, such as my use of commas and other punctuation in this sentence - if I had left them out, the meaning of the text would not have changed. To use an example of my own from English, they might be as simple as using the word "house" rather than "home" in a sentence - a different word but not a different meaning.

This addresses more than 90% of Ehrman's citations of error, which makes me wonder why Ehrman brought them up to begin with...

Timothy Paul Jones

Ehrman asserts that the 4 gospels have had many different names over the centuries ("A wide variety of titles") as an argument against their authenticity. True enough, agrees Jones, but they've only had slightly different names, such as "The Gospel According to Mark" or "The Book of Mark." The authors' names have been attached to the same texts no matter where they've been discovered in the former Roman Empire. (pages 97-100)

Jones discusses how the early church determined which books were canon and which were not, addresses Ehrman's determination that none of the 4 Gospels could have been written by "illiterate" men such as Peter and John. Ehrman never considers that Peter and John would have had access to scribes, despite the fact that Paul refers to a scribe writing for him while he as in jail awaiting a hearing with Caesar and he ignores the fact that Matthew the tax collector turned disciple would have had to have been literate. Luke the physician would have probably been literate or he could have used the same scribes that Paul used since they were clearly companions.

I found this to be an enjoyable, polite response to Ehrman.

Highly recommended. 5 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Misquoting Truth.

Reviewed on December 26, 2009

The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ (audiobook) by Lee Strobel

Published in 2007 by Zondervan
Read by the author, Lee Strobel
Duration: 10 hours, 45 minutes
Unabridged

Lee Strobel has written several "The Case for..." books. The Case for the Real Jesus: A Journalist Investigates Current Attacks on the Identity of Christ explicitly counters the arguments from many different sources that question Jesus, the teachings about him and the integrity of the New Testament.

Critics argue that Strobel is not an expert on the things he writes about. I believe he would agree with that - at most he is a well-informed layman. But, Strobel did the best thing that one can do to create a rebuttal these arguments - he went out to the experts and questioned them (because, really, who is a qualified expert in all of these fields?). Strobel asks them the questions that the "anti-" crowd would ask (really a wide range, from Muslim teachers to Hollywood directors to college professors to former Christian clergy to internet bloggers).

Lee Strobel

The beauty of having these experts interviewed rather than just reading the books they may have written is that Strobel pushes them for clearer explanations and doesn't let them give answers that only sort of answer the questions. Strobel reads the book himself. This enables him to insert the inflections (outrage, sarcasm, sympathy, weariness and more) that were present in the original taped interviews. Of course, it would have been better to have the original recorded interviews, but the quality would not be as good as that of Strobel sitting in a recording studio and to try and re-create those interviews in a studio would be foolish - they would not have the same feel as the original interviews).

This was a most enjoyable audiobook. I learned a lot. I know my wife got tired of hearing me tell her what new thing I learned while driving to and from work. My only negative is that it is so hard to go back and find a particularly relevant piece of information in the audiobook format. In a book you can just insert a bookmark - in an audiobook the information is harder to go back and access.

Highly recommended.

I rate this audiobook 5 stars out of 5.

This audiobook can be found on Amazon.com here: The Case for the Real Jesus.

Reviewed on February 6, 2010.