Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture

General observations: This book is solid, clear, and winsome from front to back. And it's one of the most creatively and effectively organized apologetics books written to date. Specific Highlights: 1. The section on New Testament manuscripts is absolutely unique in popular apologetic literature. The information in this section isn't covered as thoroughly or accessibly from a conservative perspective anywhere else. 2. The entire book is well written but the section on the divinity of Jesus is especially so. By the time I got to the chapter on the Council of Nicea, I forgot I was reading "heady" material. That chapter was as enjoyable as it was insightful. 3. This book combines the best of both worlds: readable prose and serious documentation. By relegating more technical information and references to endnotes, the authors have constructed a book that will serve students and scholars, as well as general readers who can opt to read the less technical chapters and skip the advanced stuff in the back. This was a bold and brilliant move on the part of the publisher. Concluding thought: One reviewer already noted how Christians should purchase this book to encourage publishers to make more of the same. I couldn't agree more! But I hope that Kregel Publishing will be encouraged to publish more editions of THIS book. With more junk on Jesus sure to come down the pike, Reinventing Jesus could easily be updated every few years to stay current. This book is a groundbreaking book that is sure to become a classic apologetics text!

For years now I've been lamenting the sad state of published apologetics, as it seemed that there was far more interest in getting out insipid eschatological novels than in offering defenses of the faith rooted in sound scholarship. I was glad when Lee Strobel's works finally jimmied that door some, and when Licona and Habermas cracked it further open with The Resurrection of Jesus; and now, this trio has blown the door off its hinges and sent it flying into the atmosphere. I'll put it bluntly: Buy this book. Buy multiple copies and pass them out. Rent a forklift and buy a whole pallet of them. I don't care if you know all of the stuff that's in it already. If you're tired of the Christian publishing industry putting out the intellectual equivalent of Hostess Ding Dongs in defense of the faith, you NEED to make this book a success, because otherwise, they won't get the message and we'll get more Ding Dongs instead of more roast beef. Make these three guys stinkin' rich from the residuals or you'll be SORRY. Yes, yes: There are a lot of names of old rogues here: Ehrman, Price, Baigent, Freke and Gandy -- even Acharya S is called on the carpet some. There's gobs and gobs of juicy material on things like textual criticism, oral tradition, copycat christs (Attis, Mithra, Tammuz, Dionysus, Osiris -- these and more get some treatment), the Jesus Seminar, the canon, forged documents, the Council of Nicea. There's also a few things that are new. It sometimes goes into great detail on these things; at other times, not so. So what? If you give it your support, the publishers will be convinced of the need to make more and then future authors won't have to worry about restraints on size. It has copious footnotes and recommends for further reading. The writing style is lucid and enjoyable; no dry bones here, and no excuse for being bored. This is a pioneer work that cares about the reader. In a time when we have things like Ehrman spouting his Chicken Little doubts about the New Testament on public radio, quality response works like these are needed badly, and they need to be supported. The secular world made Ehrman's book a best-seller. Do we dare do any less for Re-inventing Jesus?

For twenty years now, the Jesus Seminar has been roaming the land educating people about what Jesus really said. A book dealing with secret prophecies contained in the Pentateuch called The Bible Code made its appearance in 1998 and was widely read. But when it comes to matters of faith and scriptural "analysis," nothing tops Dan Brown's blockbuster 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code, detailing a fictional plot by the Church to conceal the truth about who Jesus really was. (The movie was released May 19, 2006.) Furthermore, scholar Bart Erhman's book Misquoting Jesus, about the formation and preservation of scripture, has become a surprising bestseller and an English translation of The Gospel of Judas (for which Erhman provides the commentary) has been published with considerable fanfare. It is clear that an unprecedented number of people are asking who Jesus was and what do we really know about him. Where did scripture come from and how did it come to be in its present form? Is it reliable? What are Christians to make of all this? Central to addressing these questions is the academic discipline of "textual criticism." There were no printing presses to make copies of documents in biblical times so documents had to be hand copied by trained individuals. Even with training, these copyist or scribes were inclined to make errors. Some copyist may have altered texts intentionally. Maybe they wanted to improve on the clarity of the wording or maybe they had ulterior motives. Jesus died around 30 C.E. and most of the New Testament was written in the second half of the first century. We have none of the original texts, though we do have some significant fragments that date to the second century. Textual critics examine all the various copies in an effort to regain the content of the original documents. Using multi-disciplinary resources these scholars also try to establish the veracity of authorship and the date of production for the original documents. The pressing question for many of us is, short of going to seminary, how are we to address the issues being raised in the media and cinema about Jesus and scripture? Up until now I have not encountered a resource that helps people sort through these issues in a succinct and jargon free way. However, Kregel Publication's Reinventing Jesus: What the Da Vinci Code and Other Novel Speculations Don't Tell You by J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer and Daniel B. Wallace, is just such a resource. Reinventing Jesus puts textual criticism in terms readers can easily comprehend. The book reminds me some of Lee Strobel's work in that it makes often complex topics accessible. The authors explain: "Textual criticism in general is the study of the copies of any written document whose original is unknown or nonexistent in order to determine the exact wording of the original. Such a task is necessary for an extensive amount of literature, especially that which was written prior to the invention of the movable-type print

In some ways the title is unfortunate, because Reinventing Jesus is so much more than another response to The Da Vinci Code (as good as some of those are). What this book provides is excellent scholarship on a number of issues that have been inadequately addressed, if addressed at all, by traditional apologists. The authors have actually lowered themselves to address arguments and theories that academics rarely encounter in scholarly circles. As noted in Reinventing Jesus, much of said sludge has flowed forth as a result of -- in the author's words -- "ready access to unfiltered information via the Internet and the influential power of this medium. The result is junk food for the mind--a pseudointellectual meal that is as easy to swallow as it is devoid of substance." Id. at 221-22. In response, Reinventing Jesus provides rebuttals to arguments propounded by the likes of Internet Infidels, Robert M. Price, and even, yes, Earl Doherty (though not yet his Jesus Myth stuff). In my opinion, the best part of the book is a superb discussion of the textual transmission of the New Testament. There is the usual stuff we see from apologists like Josh McDowell about the wealth of manuscript evidence comparative to other ancient writings, but there is a lot more. Reinventing Jesus breaks down the information into greater detail, explaining the manuscript evidence more deeply, the nature of the disagreements in the traditions, the types of traditions and their origins. The result is a powerful case for accuracy of our modern translations. All this is written for the layperson, but the authors apparently believe that the layperson can handle a lot more (intellectually and spiritually) than is typically assumed. This targeting of the well-informed layperson is a hallmark of the entire book, resulting in more information and deeper analysis than the typical apologetic provides. The discussion of the origins of the NT Canon is also excellent, once again giving layreaders more information than they may be expecting. Reinventing Jesus goes through the criteria by which the books of the NT were chosen and is candid about which books were quickly accepted as well as those which where not. The authors also discuss those who made the decisions and when the decisions were made. Special attention is given to the last books to be accepted. In this section, as well as throughout the book, the authors attempt to come up with examples and metaphors from sports, work, pop culture, or everyday life. Most of these examples are well made and a feature employed throughout the book. Another very effective set of chapters addresses what the authors call "Parallelomania." Here the authors take on an argument that even many of the online-skeptics have abandoned; namely that Christianity was merely a myth based on pre-existing pagan myths. It is good that they do such an excellent job of debunking all of the supposed "parallels" because too many of the underinformed on the internet

One of foundational claims of The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown is that the Bible of Christian tradition is unreliable. The result is that our idea of Jesus doesn't match up with the real Jesus who was married to Mary Magdalene and had a child with her. Rather than respond directly to the speculations of the novel and works like it, Reinventing Jesus by J. Ed Komoszewksi, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace seeks to provide a positive case for why we can trust the New Testament and the Jesus it speaks of. Reinventing Jesus is divided into five parts consisting of 18 chapters together. Part one deals with whether or not the first Gospel writers were able to get the story right. Part two is an analysis of the transmission of the Gospels seeking to show that what we have now is incredibly close to what was originally written. The canon of the New Testament is tackled in part three, where explanations are given for why some were included in the Bible and others weren't. With the reliability of the scriptures established, part four goes on to look at what the New Testament says about Jesus. Finally, in part five, Christianity is defended against accusations that it borrowed from pagan mythology. Throughout the book, the authors interact with the claims of The Da Vinci Code and other more scholarly works that question the historicity of the Bible, but the central focus is more about a positive case for Christianity than a defensive one. At the end of the book are subject and Scripture indexes, as well as a thorough recommended reading list according to each part of the book. Of the works that deal with claims like those in The Da Vinci Code, Reinventing Jesus is one of the more scholarly. That said, it does a commendable job of making the scholarly discussions accessible and relevant to "motivated laypersons" without dumbing down the material or making the reader feel dumb. The book covers a wide hosts of issues related to the Bible and Jesus, but due its focus on a positive case for Christianity, lacks a thorough critique of Gnosticism or "the sacred feminine." Ultimately, Reinventing Jesus is a great book for readers who want accurate first-hand information from scholars about the historicity of the Christian faith in light of "novel speculations."