Reinventing Jesus

It seems that Hollywood is the cause of more interest in Jesus these days, but be that as it may, any talk of Jesus will eventually lead to talk about WHO Jesus was and is. It is with little surprise to find that the current pop-Jesus(es) have more to do with fiction than fact, since the fictional Jesus demands nothing and is, if you take the time to read and study all sides of this debate, more a creation of the image of American pseudo-religion and atheist nihilism than a first century Rabbi who claimed to be equal with God.This not so slim volume is to my mind the best technically oriented refutation of the pop-Jesus scholarship and fiction floating about and popularized not only by Hollywood, but also by some folks with big names in the scholarly community, notably Bart Ehrman and Robert Price. This book also addresses a frustration I have developed with discussions on this topic. Often someone makes a hugely fallacious claim, bases it upon some technical linguistic feature of the bible or translation process of the bible, and then when refutations are provided, the counter claim is made that it "misses the big picture" or is being nit-picky. This book addresses the big picture and the nitty gritty; namely, there is a popular movement to redefine Jesus based upon a loose handing of the primary sources and the history of the primary sources (the New Testament) and that a detailed analysis of the claims of skeptical scholars, even their best arguments, are much less earth shaking or even true when taken apart by evidence. To be frank, I was surprised by how little there was in Ehrman to even be respected after reading this and several other works (listed below) which show he not only clearly misrepresents his own scholarship to purposely lead the less educated into a state of doubt (beyond the warrant of his own findings) but also that some of his legitimate research (and there is much) does not alter in any way the traditional teachings of the received text of the New Testament.Here is the breakdown of the book.Part one examines how the Gospels were compiled in their final form, which covers the bases from oral tradition, memorization on a widespread scale, and finally the writing and copying process.Part two is all about what is called textual criticism, which is another way of addressing this question: "How can we know what the earliest texts of the Gospel said, and how/why have they changed or not changed?" This is to me the highlight of book and it is worth getting for this section alone. What we find is that Ehrman greatly overstates even his best cases, and his claims that "the whole epistle or gospel is changed if I am right" is simply unfounded. Case after case make this point. (As an aside, if you ever read Ehrman's introduction to the New Testament, which he co-authored with the master of the text and his teacher, Bruce Metzger, you find a much more honest and cautious Ehrman at work, an Ehrman who is less sensationalist and more mainline in his judgments. Curious how audience/marketing changes the message for him.) In the end we discover that NT transmission is not like the telephone game where you start with one thing and end up with another. The NT text as we have it is, to quote Ehrman's other less sensationalist works, "At this stage, our work on the original amounts to little more than tinkering. There's something about historical scholarship that refuses to concede that a major task has been accomplished, but there it is...Scholars are convinced that we can reconstruct the original words of the NT with reasonable (though probably not 100%) accuracy."Part three examines how the canon of the NT came to be, and in the process refutes those who claim that the early church just shouted the loudest and had the backing of the Roman State and so effectively bullied down the opposition, an opposition of hitherto viable candidates for true Christianity. This commonly held belief by college freshman and watchers of the cable history programs gets a thorough refutation. There was a unanimous rejection by those churches that had apostolic continuity of the forged. Moreover, the debates were different than they are today. Unlike modern theories that try to show that Jesus was not divine, what was at stake for the early Church, and what was often denied by the later heretics, was the humanity of Jesus. They all agreed Jesus was divine in some sense. But only a God-Man could save.Part four addresses the debate over the quality of Jesus' divinity in greater detail, refuting the current trend in "pop-Jesusology" that he "became divine" sometime in the fourth century (or more commonly, at the Council of Nicaea under pressure from Constantine). The facts do not bear out a later creation of Jesus' deification. There is no overwhelming evidence to show that Jesus' identity was reconsidered in the third or fourth century to make him divine. It is easy in the second century, when Christianity was gaining traction, that even the enemies of the faith aknowledge that the Christians view Jesus as divine. The binitarian and trinitarian developments were the logical liturgical and theological outcome of the Church's experience of God in Christ. And as a side note, contra the revisionists, Nicea had nothing to do with the creation of the canon of Scripture.The last section of the book refutes the notion that Christianity as we know it is simply rehashed pagan myths that were `baptized' and sneaked into this morphing Jewish cult centered around a dead Jewish rebel. While one may find some parallels, to go the route of Joseph Campbell and say that they are related in causality is simply unfounded. It sounds plausible, but it doesn't bear the weight of facts. Both the virgin birth and the resurrection are unique to Christianity. Pagan parallels are similar to the degree that they have to do with virgins and resurrections, but all circumstances and meanings and modes are radically different from the gospel accounts. What is curious is that the case can be made that it was in fact the pagans who borrowed form Christianity, with what we see in some gnostic and mystery cult circles, in order to remain popular as Christianity blossomed.The endnotes are also useful reading, coming in at 64 pages.Other books of interest may include: The highly detailed and thorough  Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament: Manuscript, Patristic, and Apocryphal Evidence (Text and Canon of the New Testament)  (this is a must read),  Who Chose the Gospels?: Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy , The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture's Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity , What Have They Done with Jesus?: Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History--Why We Can Trust the Bible , The God of the Gospel of John , THE VIRGIN BIRTH OF CHRIST , The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance , The Real Jesus : The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels , anything from The Marginal Jew series is essential if you are more than an armchair scholar  A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus: The Roots of the Problem and the Person, Vol. 1 , Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels  and, lastly, N. T. Wright's Who Was Jesus?Enjoy!

James Patrick Holding's review inspired me to check out the book for myself and I wasn't disappointed. The negative reviews were too baseless and lame to take seriously. Reinventing Jesus has become the new dogma of liberal scholarship which bends over backward to conform to modern pop culture. This in turn has given rise to cheap sensationalism which appeals to pseudo-intellectuals who read books to titillate their curiosity and make good conversation at cocktail parties.Modern liberal scholars like the highly touted Jesus Seminar want to create a caricature of Jesus which everyone can agree upon and which doesn't offend anyone. To accomplish this, they strip away the miracles, the prophetic announcements, the fiery judgement, and the exclusiveness of Jesus. Thus we are left with a beatnick philosopher who never would have offended anyone, been nailed to a cross, or inspired his followers to risk martyrdom by proclaiming him as lord and saviour.The authors of this book focused their efforts on defending the New Testament...and what a masterful job they did. The New Testament is the target of debunkers. In order to create their own Jesus, they have to drive a wedge between Jesus and the New Testament. To them, the real Jesus can be found only in verses which are hand-picked by a panel of scholars, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the gnostic gospels, etc. ad nauseum. This book exposes the reinvention of Jesus for what it really is, a fraud and a sham.The book demonstrates how the Christian concepts of baptism, rebirth, and resurrection are foisted upon pagan myths by sensationalists who claim that Jesus was a product of the so-called mystery religions.The so-called gnostic gospels portray a Jesus which is far less human than the Jesus portrayed in the canonical gospels. The reason why they were widely rejected by the early Christians is quite simple...They had no real value.Another brilliant insight can be found in Galatians 2 where Paul openly admits that he travelled to Jerusalem and laid his gospel before the pillar apostles in order to verify the accuracy of the gospel which he was preaching to the gentiles. Paul goes on to say that they added nothing to his gospel which obviously met their approval.The idea that the divinity of Christ was created in the fourth century is absurd. Some of the 48 fragmentary Greek texts which predate the fourth century explicitly mention the divinity of Christ. Second century Roman critics of Christianity such as Celsus, Pliny, and Lucian testified that Christians drew the ire of Roman authorities because they worshipped Jesus.The authors point out that a huge amount of New Testament manuscripts dating from as early as the second century over a wide geographical area have been carefully scrutinized and compared. Similarities of the same passage point to much earlier sources and the variations among the manuscripts are too miniscule to change the core doctrines of the Christian faith. The Apostolic Fathers of the early second century such as Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp, and Clement of Rome quoted passages from the New Testament. In addition, the Muratorian Canon containing much of the New Testament, including the four gospels, was composed at the end of the second century.The real controlling authorities of what was handed down in the canonical gospels were not a council of fourth century church fathers but the earliest eyewitnesses to Jesus himself. Richard Bauckham also makes this point in his book "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses". The synoptic gospels were committed to writing before the last of these eyewitnesses passed away. If the canonical gospels were somehow altered we must assume that Jesus' disciples were completely disengaged from the earliest Christian communities or suffered from complete amnesia after the resurrection.The greatest insight in this book which should blow away all the arguments of the debunkers is the fact that a high degree of unanimity in regard to the New Testament existed over a wide geographical area long before the fourth century and long before there was any central church authority.AMAZING ISN'T IT!!! Christians from as far west as Britannia and as far east as Mesopotamia and Syria accepted the same books which were incorporated into the New Testament long before there were any church councils to tell them to do so!IMAGINE THAT!!! Coptic Christians in Egypt and Syriac Christians in the Persian empire were reading the same four gospels as Greek speaking Byzantine Christians and Latin speaking Roman Christians!All this should make it very clear that the earliest controlling authorities over what was handed down to us in the canonical gospels were not fourth century bishops but the actual disciples of Jesus and those who witnessed him firsthand. IF YOU DON'T LIKE WHAT'S WRITTEN IN THE GOSPELS...BLAME THEM!!!I realize that the debunkers have too much time, money, and reputation invested in trying to reinvent Jesus to accept the truth for what it is. Hopefully, some of the MTV generation with a mind of their own will see the reinvention of Jesus for what it is...a fraud.The bottom line is that the biblical Jesus is as close as we will ever get to the real Jesus.Case closed.

Great!They do introduce you to the issues and in a non-technical and kind of concise way do dismiss some of the nonsence people make up against the New Testament and Jesus... what's very worthy is the sourced they quote for further studying.

Within the past few months I have had the pleasure and profit of reading and reviewing (on amazon)three books dealing broadly with the same topic, namely the authenticity and reliability of the New Testament record of and testimony to the Person, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and his sending of the Holy Spirit to found a church and spread the Christian message throughout the world. They are, (1) "The Jesus Legend - A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition" (Paul Eddy and Gregory Boyd, Baker Academic, 2007); (2) "Fabricating Jesus - How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels" (Craig Evans, Inter-Varsity Press, 2007); (3) "Putting Jesus in His Place - The Case for the Deity of Christ" (R Bowman Jr and J Ed Komoszewski, Kregel Publications, 2007). This third book concentrates on showing not only that the New Testament Jesus is the `Real Jesus', but that the New Testament overwhelmingly views the `Real Jesus' as God.Here now is a fourth book to join that good company: (4) "Reinventing Jesus - How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture" (J Ed Komoszewski, M James Sawyer and Daniel B Wallace, Kregel Publications, 2006).Having read carefully through these up-to-date books, I accept and make my own the verdict of James D G Dunn given on p.34 of his 2005 book, "A New Perspective on Jesus". It is quoted on p. 453 of "The Jesus Legend". I edit it slightly (in square brackets) because I have taken it out of Dunn's immediate context. "If we are unsatisfied with the Jesus of the Synoptic tradition, then we will simply have to lump it; there is no other truly historical or historic Jesus ... [T]he quest [for the historical Jesus] has been too long captivated by the will-o-the-wisp of a historical Jesus, an objective artifactual figure [supposedly] buried in the Gospels and waiting to be exhumed and brandished aloft, as [being] different from the Jesus of the Gospels - not fully realizing [that] the less the reconstructed Jesus owed to the Synoptic picture of Jesus, the more it must be expressive of the agendas of the individual questers."All of these books especially target the publications of the members of the Jesus Seminar, and Bart Ehrman. (I am not close enough to the workings of American biblical scholarship to understand how Bart Ehrman could have been accepted by Bruce Metzger and his publishers, the Oxford University Press, as co-author of the fourth edition of Metzger's benchmark book, "The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration" in 2005.)To concentrate now on the main subject of this review. The authors of "Reinventing Jesus" divide the book into five main sections. Part I, "I believe in Yesterday", has three chapters which discuss some of the reasons why the New Testament writings can be trusted. They were indeed written between 20 and 70 years after the death (and claimed resurrection) of Jesus, but by eyewitnesses or hearers of eyewitnesses, whose whole purpose (both the eyewitnesses and their hearers) was to perpetuate and spread the `good news' brought by Christ. Those who support the authenticity of the New Testament witness have an infinitely stronger case than those who try to explain it away and must instead explain how this incredible story came to be invented. Part II, "Politically corrupt? The Tainting of Ancient New Testament Texts" is an introduction to the science of textual criticism, from which it emerges that the number and coherence of the manuscripts of the New Testament establishes a far stronger case for the authentic transmission of these authentic original Christian texts than can be made for any other surviving text of the centuries before and immediately after the Christian era. Study the statistical testimony for surviving manuscripts.Part III , "Did the Early Church Muzzle the Canon?" is very strong. It reminds us that over the wide area of the Roman Empire, over three or four centuries, all or nearly all of the 27 books of the present canon of the Church (with most difficulty only for 2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John, and Revelation) were consistently seen as authentic transmitters of the Christian message. Very strikingly, no Gnostic writing or other `apocryphal' fringe `Christian' writing of the time ever found a permanent (or even a long-lived but temporary place) in this New Testament canon. This is an excellent section.Part IV, on "The Divinity of Jesus: Early Tradition or Late Superstition?" summarizes the message of book (3) above, "The Case for the Deity of Christ". Finally, Part V, "Stealing Thunder: Did Christianity Rip Off Mythical Gods?" completely routs again the now-discredited view that Jesus is just an invented copy of some pagan dying-and-rising god. I emphasize that it is a common fault, in those who attack the mainstream view of Christ, to exaggerate the most insignificant similarity between two people into an absolute identity. Furthermore, our book convincingly shows that many of the pagan similarities to Jesus were added to the description of the pagan gods, using the Christian picture of Jesus, after the death of Jesus. The pagans borrowed from Jesus, not the other way about. Even this favourite exhibit, the dying-and-rising god, is never found with any clarity in the pagan records. Neither Osiris nor Mithra, nor Alexander the Great nor the `deified' Julius Caesar, is in any way a serious comparison to Jesus of Nazareth.I conclude: the positive case for the reliability of the New Testament record is overwhelmingly strong; the negative alternative, the case for some alternative story, or some alternative supposed model for the New Testament Jesus, just never ever convinces. Unfortunately, the negative alternative often does "mislead popular culture". We need more books like "Inventing Jesus", and an end to 'misleading' books like the "Da Vinci Code".

I'm not one usually for long reviews but to be blunt this is simply one of the best if not the best Christian Apologetics book I've had the pleasure of reading. The authors have produced a work that is of both scholarly in its research yet understandable for those with no previous history in the subjects included. I won't give every chapter by name, as there are too many, but the book is split into five different parts which cover the following:Part 1: Believe in Yesterday. Goes into the sources used by the Gospel authors and some of the means by which information was gathered, such as Oral tradition although for a more extensive look at that subject see: The Jesus Legend by Paul Rhodes Eddy & Gregory Boyd. It also looks at the different criteria critical scholars use to determine the reliability of an ancient text.Part 2: Politically Corrupt? The Tainting of Ancient New Testament Texts. Looks at manuscript evidence, dates etc. Deals with many of the modern myths put forward by popular writers such as Dan Brown the author of the Da Vinci Code. Looks into textual criticism and some of the work of Bart Ehrrman, and examines many questions regarding the historicity of the NT documents.Part 3:Did the Early Church Muzzle the Canon? Looks at different suggested canons, dates and some of the debated books for inclusion.Part 4: The Divinity of Jesus: Early Tradition or Late Superstition? One of my favourite parts of the book, it examines both internal and external evidence that look at Jesus' divinity and looks specifically at the Council of Nicea as this has been thought to be an area of controversy by some. However for a more detailed examination of this subject see: Putting Jesus in His Place by Robert Bowman & Ed Komoszewski.Part 5: The authors look into the claims that have again been popularized by many misinformed internet nibblers that Jesus is some sort of copy-cat of Egyptian deities such as Osiris. These claims generally stem from the Christ-myth position, a very ignorant position if you were to ask me.So that's a brief summary, but all I can say is buy the book for yourself, recommend it to your friends, then your Pastor/Elders then anyone else who will listen. Awesome book!

My thanks to Tim Hawthorn for his earlier review of this book, which persuaded me to buy it after I had read Craig Evans' useful volume, 'Fabricating Jesus'.Just today, I have read a review in the Saturday Telegraph of Richard Dawkins' recent Channel 4 programme on Darwin. The reviewer, himself an atheist, casually slips in a comment about the 'many mistakes/inaccuracies' in the Bible. These kinds of ideas float around in a world of their own, unattached to the real one of historical fact and known data - but due to constant repetition they achieve their purpose: a general acceptability in the public arena.'Reinventing Jesus' deals with many of these ideas - tackling head-on such issues as (i) the composition of the Canon, (ii) those 'other' books which did not make it into the New Testament, but which Dan Brown depends so heavily on for 'The DaVinci Code', (iii) the self-serving proclamations of 'The Jesus Seminar', (iv) the myths about Christianity 'borrowing' from other world religions.The authors survey a great deal of material in this book. It is pithily written, and bang up to date. A great read for Christians who simply want to understand the factual background to the world's greatest book - and, I would suspect, something of a challenge for those who base their unbelief on the notion that the Bible is unreliable and suspect. It's a book I'm going to keep on my shelf and come back to time and time again.

If you prefer the facts to fiction this is the book for you.It always amazes me that people can get so many basic, simple facts wrong. For example, some people 'claim' there are no manuscripts that predate the 4th century, yet there are a MINIMUM of 48 (and possibly nearer 60) that date back to the 2nd century - a simple matter of counting (see Institute for New Testament Textual Research INTF - not a 'fundamentalist' site by any means!!). The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford alone holds 12+ such documents.If you're genuinely interested in the truth read this book