On the tournament trip to Pennsylvania, Qureshi notices that David is a Christian. While the other students go off to amuse themselves at bars, David settles down to read his Bible. Qureshi engages him in conversation, bringing up his arguments that the Bible is corrupted. In contrast to Qureshi’s earlier high school interlocutors, David has answers to all of the objections; he is able to calmly and reasonably respond to each one.

When Qureshi points out that it is known that certain things have been added to the New Testament, David responds that Christians’ knowledge of the biblical text relies on the manuscript tradition, which can offer a robust defense for the transmission of the text. Christians have access to many early manuscripts of biblical texts, which can be compared against each other to highlight where any marginal errors may have crept in, of which there are relatively few.

Against Qureshi’s contention that the sheer glut of different English versions proves the Bible to be unreliable, Wood argues that all the differences in those versions are matters of simple word choice in translation, and that it is the message of the Greek and Hebrew originals that matters.

Qureshi and David become close friends, even sharing several classes together, among which is a class on evolutionary biology. The teacher is an atheist who often goes off on tangential disparagements of theistic religion, so David and Qureshi begin to feel like comrades-in-arms there.

Despite Qureshi’s resistance to the atheistic overtones of evolution, though, he begins to realize that his arguments against the Bible were evolutionary in nature, such as the idea that there had been a long arc of change in the text over time. Going back to the topic of additions being made to the New Testament, David argues that such instances are actually not a threat to the reliability of Scripture for two reasons. First, such additions are relatively minor and infrequent. Second, the fact that Christians can examine the manuscript tradition means that they have objective ways to determine what the original text of the New Testament said. David challenges Qureshi to show evidence of a major change to Scripture that actually affects what Christians regard as the original content of the New Testament, a challenge that Qureshi is unprepared to answer.

David’s conversation with Qureshi continues during a dinner at Qureshi’s house, where David enjoys the hospitality of a Pakistani meal for the first time.

When Qureshi questions why David thinks the Gospels are trustworthy, David notes several specific reasons. First, they are far and away the earliest accounts of Jesus’s life, probably all arising within the 1st century CE. He claims that all other so-called gospels, such as the gnostic and apocryphal texts that so often make news headlines, are significantly later than the biblical Gospels, and in historical studies, early witnesses are generally trusted over later ones. Second, Christians have documentary testimony that the writers of the Gospels were people who were in the apostles’ own circle, directly connected to those who had known Jesus best and had witnessed his words and deeds. Third, some of the Gospels give internal textual evidence of being based on eyewitness testimony. David contends that, epistemologically speaking, one must either adhere to a radical form of skepticism—one that Qureshi did not apply to his own sacred texts, David notes—or admit that the biblical Gospels are simply the most reliable sources of evidence for the life of Jesus.

Qureshi’s friendship with David grows throughout their college years. They respect each other’s deep commitment to their faith, and they have a brotherly affection for one another, expressed in playful jabs and one-upmanship.

One day, David returns to their talks on religion and presses Qureshi to consider where it is going. David notes that Qureshi hasn’t successfully landed an argument against Christianity, and that his continued side-stepping skepticism feels more like evasion than honest engagement. Qureshi replies that if Christianity were true, he would want to know it, but he acknowledges that it would come at great personal cost—effectively, the loss of his entire family. David then asks him bluntly: “So who do you think would win: God, or your family?” (145). Phrased that way, Qureshi admits that God would win, and he would have to follow the truth.

Asked what it would take to think Christianity might be true, Qureshi answers that if his father could not answer Christian arguments, then he would have to give it serious thought. David invites Qureshi and his father to attend an organized discussion with David’s friend Mike Licona.

When Qureshi and his father attend one of the discussions, it happens to be while a prominent Christian is visiting: Gary Habermas, a scholar of the historical Jesus and the resurrection. Qureshi decides to let his father do most of the talking for the Muslim side.

David introduces the discussion by noting that Qureshi and Abba do not believe that Jesus died on the cross, and Abba expands on this by drawing on the Muslim tradition of Jesus’s post-crucifixion life of itinerant preaching to Jewish communities across Asia. Abba draws on interpretations of evidence from the Shroud of Turin and the Gospels to argue that Jesus could not have died on the cross, and Gary responds with contrary evidence from the same sources. Ultimately, the others end up asking Abba why he is willing to draw arguments from selected verses in the Gospels, while ignoring other verses from the same sources. At this point, Qureshi adds his voice, attempting to clarify and restate the challenge, but Abba takes his intervention as a betrayal of authority, and says little more during the remainder of the conversation.

Qureshi is embarrassed at his father’s stumbles, and this begins to wear away his confidence in the strength of the Muslim case. Gary and Mike, David’s friends, bring the discussion to its conclusion by claiming that outside Muslim circles, there is really no dispute of the matter at hand: “Scholars are virtually unanimous: the death of Jesus on the cross is among the surest facts of history” (153).

In the wake of the conversation with Mike and Gary, Qureshi decides to reflect on issues of historical methodology. Qureshi ends up attending a church service on campus at which Gary is speaking. The service strikes Qureshi as strange and irreverent, a contrast to his experience of the solemnity of Muslim worship.

In the sermon, Gary argues that if Jesus rose from the dead, that would be strong evidence that he was divine. This conclusion does not follow from the evidence in Qureshi’s eyes: The resurrection would only mean that God raised Jesus from the dead. In a discussion afterward, though, Gary challenges Qureshi to consider the evidence for the resurrection together with the evidence that Jesus claimed to be divine. Qureshi resolves to dive into three issues: Whether Jesus claimed to be divine; whether he died on the cross; and whether he rose from the dead.

Qureshi attends a debate in his home area, at which Mike, David’s friend, is debating Christian-Muslim issues with a prominent sheikh from Toronto, Shabir Ally. Mike makes his argument, on the basis of historical evidence, for the resurrection of Jesus. Shabir Ally, in response, points out that doctors cannot agree what injury or biological mechanism actually killed Jesus on the cross, so therefore there is room to doubt that he died on the cross at all. Qureshi feels that Shabir Ally’s stage presence was better than Mike’s, but that Mike won the debate on the merits of the argument. Having had some initial exposure to the questions of the crucifixion and resurrection, then, Qureshi prepares to turn his attention to the question of whether Jesus claimed to be God.