The Case For Christ

This chapter marks the beginning of the third, and final, part of The Case for Christ. Titled “Researching the Resurrection,” Strobel uses this and the following four chapters to confront one of the most controversial and hard to believe elements of the Christian faith: that Jesus came back to life, fully healed, after his crucifixion. Once again, Strobel chooses to open with an anecdote. This one uses the story of Dr. Robert J. Stein, who was the coroner for Cook County, Illinois. His meticulous autopsies were often “the final nail in a defendant’s coffin” (255), which speaks to how “crucial medical evidence can be” (256). That is why Strobel visits with Dr. Alexander Metherell, a medical doctor who has studied the physical consequences of death by crucifixion. Strobel hopes to determine whether Jesus could have survived his torture on the cross, which many skeptics believe proves that the resurrection was nothing more “than an elaborate hoax” (256).

After providing the skeptic’s perspective, Strobel asks Metherell to discuss the medical realities of each portion of Jesus’s torture. Metherell begins at the Garden of Gethsemane, where the Bible claims he sweated blood.