“Reinventing Jesus” Book Review

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.

A Book Review by Michael Kruse

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 in the Pentateuch called The Bible Code appeared 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. (If you haven't read the book, what is sure to be a blockbuster movie version of the story is coming to a theater near you on May 19, 2006.) Furthermore, in recent months, scholar Bart Erhman's book Misquoting Jesus, about the formation and preservation of Scripture, has become a surprise bestseller, and an English translation of The Gospel of Judas (for which Erhman provides the commentary) has been published with considerable fanfare.

An unprecedented number of people are asking who Jesus was and what 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 copyists or scribes were inclined to make errors. Some copyists may have altered texts intentionally. Maybe they wanted to improve 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 some significant fragments date to the second century. Textual critics examine all the various copies to regain the content of the original documents. Using multi-disciplinary resources, these scholars also try to establish the authorship's veracity and the production date for the original documents.

The pressing question for many of us is, short of going to seminary, how can we address the issues raised in the media and cinema about Jesus and Scripture? Until now, I have not encountered a resource that helps people sort through these issues succinctly and jargon-free. However, in May (or June, according to Amazon), Kregel Publications will be releasing just such a resource. It is called 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.

Reinventing Jesus puts textual criticism in terms readers can easily comprehend. The book reminds me of some of Lee Strobel's work in that it often makes 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 printing press in the mid-fifteenth century. And the New Testament is no exception to this rule. Textual criticism is needed for the New Testament for two reasons: (1) the original documents (known as autographs) no longer exist, and (2) no two copies agree completely. In fact, among even the most closely related copies from the first millennium A.D., there are as many as ten differences per chapter. If the originals were still with us, there would, of course, be no need for this discipline.

The book opens with a presentation of key terms and concepts. The authors summarize what the gospels are, why they were written the way they were, and when scholars believe the gospels were written. Especially important to this discussion is that Jesus didn't write anything down. How can we know that the gospel texts are reliable portrayals of Jesus' teaching? After addressing these issues, the authors give a very helpful presentation of textual criticism.

From here, the attention turns to other substantive issues. The authors relate the process through which the Scripture became canon, once again making a complex topic accessible to non-academic readers. They address the topic of Jesus' divinity as it played out in the early centuries of the Church. They end the book by examining the likelihood that elements of the gospels were merely rearticulations of prevalent myths of the time.

The authors are frequently in dialog with the Jesus Seminar, The Da Vinci Code, and Bart Ehrman in portions of the book. They help place the Gospel of Judas in an appropriate context even though the Gospel of Judas came after this book was written, and it is not directly referenced. While the book helps the reader understand the issues involved with these other works, it is not simply a rebuttal. The book also works as a primer for understanding the broader application of the issues addressed.

The authors distance themselves from the "King James Version only crowd" on the right and those on the left that discount the integrity of the Scripture as the authoritative Word of God. The authors clearly see themselves at the center of evangelical scholarship. I can't speak with great authority about this characterization, but it does seem to fit with what I know of the topic and with the judgment of others I trust (Craig Keener and Scot McKnight, among others.)

At the end of the book, the authors claim six conclusions can be made from their presentation:

• The Gospels are historically credible witnesses to the person, words, and deeds of Jesus Christ. What the evangelists wrote was based on a strong oral tradition that had continuity with the earliest eyewitness testimony. In essence, the gospel did not change from its first oral proclamation to its last written production.
• The original text of the New Testament has been lost, but it has been faithfully preserved in thousands of copies. Today we are certain of about 99 percent of the original wording. In no place is the deity of Christ or his bodily resurrection called into question by textual variants. Although much of the wording of the text has undergone change over the centuries, the core truth-claims of Christianity have remained intact.
• The ancient Church exercised careful scrutiny and sober judgment in determining which books belonged in the New Testament. They showed deep concern for authenticity—authentic authorship, history, and theology. And although the Church wrestled with some of the books for centuries, a substantial core of books was accepted in the beginning.
• There is no evidence that the early Church had to sort through various gospels to find the ones that agreed with the Christian community at large. Rather, the earliest Gospels prevailed precisely because they were written early, they were written by reliable eyewitnesses and/or historians, and they were not given to flights of fancy.
• The view that the divinity of Christ was invented in the fourth century is historically naïve. From the time that the New Testament was penned through the centuries that followed, the evidence is overwhelming that Jesus was consistently viewed as more than a man by his followers. Even the enemies of Christianity recognized that the early Christians worshiped Jesus Christ as deity.
• The Christian message did not plagiarize the writings of pagan religions. There is no substantiated connection between belief in the virgin birth and resurrection of Christ with the cults of Osiris, Dionysus, or Mithra. Alleged parallels between earlier religions and Christianity are not sustainable when the evidence is fairly examined.

I readily agree that the authors have made their case.

As to the authors themselves, I know none of them, although I have corresponded by e-mail with Dr. Komoszewski. You will observe from the bios on their website (see below) that two authors hail from Dallas Theological Seminary and one from Western Seminary. As someone who is decidedly not dispensationalist and probably not supportive of other distinctives at these institutions, I came to this book with a degree of caution. I found pleasantly little in this book that gave me pause. On the contrary, I found myself affirming most of what I read. I am sure others more thoroughly trained in the subject matter will find points they wish to debate here and there.

Nevertheless, the book is a very good introduction to the topic from an evangelical perspective. It is well written, extensively footnoted, and should serve well as a primer for textual criticism and related topics. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for such a resource.

The authors have a website called www.reinventingjesus.info. In addition to the book, the authors are beginning to schedule their own "Reinventing Jesus Seminars." You can also learn more about the authors, the book, and the events surrounding the book's release. To order your copy at Amazon before publication, click here.