Tuesday, March 01, 2011

The Jesus Inquest by Charles Foster

This book provides a case for and against the resurrection of Christ.  I have to admit, I found this book somewhat difficult to read.  Not because I didn’t understand what the author was saying, but because it often annoyed me and made me think that he did not particularly think his audience was that intelligent.  At least when he was X.  This book took on a slight schizophrenic feel since the author was both X (against) and Y (for).  At first I thought that would be an interesting way to treat the arguments, but after reading the book for a while, I found myself reading out of order.  Since each chapter has subsections in it, I found myself skipping from X’s thoughts on one section to Y’s on the same section and then back to X’s.

There were some arguments made by X that I could see immediately were poor arguments.  While I have studied a bit, I am not a scholar by any stretch of the imagination and was surprised to notice this.  Interestingly enough, the author in his preface diminishes the work of Lee Strobel, but it was through, in part, to reading Lee Strobel’s work that I was able to pick out Mr. Foster’s X poorer arguments, arguments which were proven to be poor when Mr. Foster’s Y arguments were made.  I will probably keep this book as a reference tool now that I have it, but I think there are probably better books out there for those who are looking.  I would check out Lee Strobel.

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