These authors need a crash course in discerning speculation from fact

The Templar Revelation: Secret Guardians of the True Identity of Christ
Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince
Touchstone, 1998


Claiming on the front cover to be an expose about the "true identity of Christ," the book comes to this conclusion on page 352-3: "Jesus was not the Son of God, and neither was he of the Jewish religion--although he may have been ethnically a Jew...John did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah. He may well have baptized him, because Jesus was one of *his* disciples, perhaps even rising through the ranks to become his second-in-command. Something went wrong, however: John changed his mind and nominated Simon Magus as his successor. Shortly afterwards John was killed. Mary Magdalene was a priestess who was Jesus' partner in a sacred marriage..."

After reaching this point in the book, I put it down in disgust, something I am not wont to do (particularly after I've spent hour after hour plowing through a text), and decided to write this review.

This book is offensive, not necessarily because of its radical and unsubstantiated claims about Jesus, but because it, like so many others of its ilk, confuses a constellation of conjecture, speculation, supposition, and allegation with EVIDENCE as it seeks to support a very unconventional hypothesis.

From its first chapter, in which authors Picknett and Prince discuss the secret symbolism of Leonardo da Vinci's paintings (symbolism that most professional art historians consider spurious, by the way), the following pattern is established:

• Explain away the fact that reputable and knowledgeable parties don't agree with your observations by linking these parties with the "conspiracy" you're attempting to expose.
• Ask a question like, "what other possible explanation could there be?" and then refuse to seek explanations different from your own pet theory.
• Use qualifiers like "perhaps," "could," "suppose," or "might" when establishing a speculative data point, and then forget about that qualifier when you bring up that same data point, as an established fact, in the next chapter to bolster the next data point.
• Connect all your dots and claim that the picture you've just drawn is the REAL DEAL, all the while ignoring the fact that the dots you connected were all of your own design.
  

I can't honestly say that the book was worthless; it was occasionally a fun read and the authors' ruminations contain lots of interesting, if unsupported, speculations about varied topics. The first half of the book does a fair job of showing possible connections between various esoteric and occult groups in Western history, such as the Knights Templar, the Hermeticists, and the Freemasons. As well, the second half of the book, which focuses on the "true identity of Christ," is also interesting, if only because it offers a challenge to those whose knowledge of Christian origins and history is sorely wanting. (Didn't know that the New Testament was put together by a committee of bishops and their representatives? Well now you do.) And the chapter on the Mandaeans of Iraq was also very interesting and made me want to read more about this vanishing remnant of Gnostic religion. Having said that, the authors' tendency to conflate speculation with fact and their lack of hesitancy in passing the former off as the latter ruined this book for me as anything other than a work of fiction.

Read it if you must, enjoy it if you can, but please remember that speculation and fact are two different animals. Just because Picknett and Prince have written it, doesn't make it so.

(This review was originally written on November 20, 2007.)

We ignore this book (and Christian nationalism) at our peril.

Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism
Michelle Goldberg
W.W. Norton, 2007

As someone who grew up in a home influenced by apocalyptic Christian fundamentalism, I admit right up front that I will not attempt an "objective" review of this book (whatever that might mean). I agreed with the premise Michelle Goldberg outlines (i.e., that there is a powerful strand of politicized Christianity in the US that holds the Constitution in contempt and that seeks absolute political control---Goldberg calls them "Christian nationalists") before she ever set fingers to keyboard. Frankly, I was amazed at the empathy and understanding with which Michelle Goldberg approached this material, and found that one of the strongest features of this book. Another of the strengths is in her willingness to let her subjects speak for themselves. Oftentimes the most damning comments come straight from the mouths of the Christian nationalists themselves, and Goldberg does a fine job of putting these quotes into an overall context that should chill anyone who still appreciates the ideals of the Enlightenment.

For example, Goldberg repeatedly exposes a Manichean worldview in which the American body politic is literally divided into black and white, good and evil, with the Christian nationalists on one side and the rest of us on the other. (I leave it for you to guess which side is "good.") "Thus every political issue--indeed, every disputed aspect of our national life--is a struggle between good and evil" (p. 4). She quotes Pastor Rod Parsley: "Everyone asks, `Why is it so close?' The light is getting lighter and the dark is getting darker. These two opponents are not just opponents. This is a values situation. This is lightness and darkness!" (p. 51). As Goldberg sagaciously notes, people have a perfect right to this Manichean worldview, "yet when the United States government works this way, it turns all nonevangelicals into "the other side." The nonreligious are no longer even part of the debate..." (152). I would also note that in this view, the "wrongly religious" (i.e., those who don't accept a particular collection of tenets about God, the Bible, etc.) are also left out of the debate.

Of course, though, this point is moot, because making the US an overtly Christian country, in which the nonreligious and "wrongly religious" are second-class citizens at best, is one aspect of the Christian nationalist agenda: "Among [evangelicals and born-again Christians] there is substantial support for amending the United States Constitution to make Christianity the country's official religion..." (9). Leaving us out of the debate makes sense to Christian Reconstructionist theologian R.J. Rushdoony, who denounced democracy as a "heresy and `the great love of the failures and cowards of life'" (38). Whereas many try to sugarcoat this agenda for wider consumption, the raw truth is available for the flock: "Christians have an obligation, a mandate, a commission, a holy responsibility to reclaim the land for Jesus Christ--to have dominion in civil structures, just as in every other aspect of life and godliness. But it is dominion we are after. Not just a voice. It is dominion we are after. Not just influence. It is dominion we are after. Not just equal time. It is dominion we are after. World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish" (p. 41, Goldberg quoting George Grant's The Changing of the Guard: Biblical Principles for Political Action.)

This antidemocratic, authoritarian philosophy can't stand up to the scrutiny of the contemporary world, though, and so, as Goldberg explores in the bulk of her book, the Christian nationalists have set to work building an alternate reality in which myth is science, fiction is history, and public policy is faith-based. From the continued intrusion of creationists in our public schools, to the campaign to refashion the Founding Fathers as Christian nationalists, to publicly funded abstinence-only sex education classes, there is a parallel reality alongside ours. "Originally, conservative Christian activists just wanted to keep Darwin and sex education out of schools. When that didn't work, they developed an alternative, quasi-scientific infrastructure that would legitimate their religious beliefs in secular terms, and which they hoped to use to replace the doctrines they objected to" (p. 138). "To the Christian nationalists...publicly funded religious social services auger nothing less than an epistemological revolution. They allow knowledge derived from the Bible to trump knowledge derived from studying the world. No longer would American policy and American civic life be based on facts available to all of us, on the kind of rationality that looks at `objective or even secular outcomes.' It would be based on faith" (p. 127). "What's lacking, though, isn't just truth--it's the entire social mechanism by which truth is distinguished from falsehood. Blunting Christian nationalism requires turning toward the Enlightenment and rebuilding a culture of rationalism. Unfortunately, multitudes of Americans no longer find Enlightenment values compelling" (p. 181).

That last sentence sums up what is possibly the biggest challenge posed by the theocratic right. Because they no longer find the Enlightenment values of empiricism and reason "compelling," they are assaulting the very criteria for establishing truth claims. Readers of this review may think this an exaggeration, but I can assure you from my experience as an undergraduate instructor that many students can no longer distinguish between fact and opinion, a consequence of twenty-plus years of a concentrated disinformation campaign. "This is a pattern that repeats itself again and again in the culture wars. When experts discredit some bit of fundamentalist orthodoxy, it's taken as further proof of the experts' bias. When religious conservatives are proven wrong, their faith in their righteousness only grows, along with their hatred of the conspiracy they see arrayed against them" (p. 78). "With no agreement on the most basic of facts or sources of authority, discussions between today's creationists and evolutionists seem particularly futile. Dialogue is impossible without some shared sense of reality" (p. 93). Lest the reader think this is merely an academic issue with no bearing on the real world, they need to remind themselves that this alternate reality is populated by pharmacists who confuse themselves with theologians and/or doctors: "A rash of Christian pharmacists have refused to fill prescriptions for both the morning-after pill and for ordinary oral contraceptives--180 such incidents were reported in one six-month period in 2004....In Denton, Texas, three pharmacists working at an Eckerd drug store refused to fill a rape victim's prescription for the morning-after pill" (p. 156). In other words, these ideas and beliefs have real consequences for people, especially for those who don't hold these ideas and beliefs.

Others have critiqued Goldberg for her comparisons to fascists, whom they usually equate unequivocally with Nazis. While comparisons to Nazis are always inflammatory and rarely helpful, we must remember that fascism has some definable characteristics and that most (if not all) of the movements Goldberg describes can be seen to share many of these characteristics. If it walks like duck, etc. Others have taken her to task for conflating Christian fundamentalists with Christian evangelicals with Christian nationalists with theocrats etc., implying that because the Christian nationalist movement is decentralized and diffuse that it is not real at all. These criticisms, all specious, are tactics employed by the theocratic right, along with a cynical use of "religious liberty," to pursue a pernicious agenda under the radar. We ignore Goldberg's book and the movements to which she alludes at our peril.

(This review was originally written on May 1, 2007.)

Must-read for those interested in an ecologically sound theology

Gaia and God: An Ecofeminist Theology of Earth Healing
Rosemary Radford Ruether
HarperOne, 1994


Professor Ruether's dense and challenging book is a must-read for progressive Christians (and other disciples of Jesus) interested in developing an ecologically sound theology. As she makes abundantly clear in the final section of the book, "there is no ready-made ecological spirituality and ethic in past traditions. The ecological crisis is new to human experience...The radical nature of this new ecological devastation means that all past human traditions are inadequate in the face of it. Whatever useful elements may exist...must be reinterpreted to make them usable in the face of both new scientific knowledge and the destructive power of the technology it has made possible" (p. 206). The clarity of her argumentation, the quality of her prose, and the urgency of our current environmental and theological situation make what could be a daunting read into a fair approximation of a page turner.

The book itself is divided into four sections---Creation, Destruction, Domination and Deceit, and Healing---and in each section Ruether sketches the different lines of myth and metaphor that have shaped and continue to shape our relationships with one another and with the living earth as a whole.

"Creation" begins with the Babylonian, Jewish, and Platonic Greek creation stories, in which nature and the feminine are conceived of as the threatening "Other" in need of suppression by a transcendent (male) ego. This section concludes with the post-Newtonian perspectives of quantum mechanics, ecology, and other contemporary scientific cosmologies that seem to imply a re-integration of the observer ("man") with the observed ("nature"). Ruether feels that this latter "creation myth" needs to become the new basis for our theologies. "We need scientist-poets who can retell the story I have alluded to in this chapter, the story of the cosmos and the earth's history, in a way that can call us to wonder, to reverence for life, and to the vision of humanity living in community with all its sister and brother beings" (p. 58). This language is hardly that of traditional Christian theology, and yet the need for a language of wonder and reverence that is not inextricably connected with 2,000-year old myths and legends is, to me, self-evident.

"Destruction" explores and interrogates Jewish and Christian themes of the End Times, and then examines the converging contemporary catastrophes facing humanity and the entire global biosphere. Are these myths and realities related, and if so, how? In the traditional views, good and evil tend to be understood in tribal terms, and so the response to "evil" often takes the place of total, absolute enmity towards different genders, religions, ethnicities, races, etc. "The impulse to apocalyptic thus becomes genocidal, the extermination of those people who are seen as 'Satan's people.'...Massacres of the enemy through military weapons, ranging from the sword to nuclear bombs, are fantasized by apocalypticists as instruments of righteousness" (p. 83). If the entire natural world is understood as the primal Other which needs to be subdued or subjugated, then it isn't hard to see the connection between these worldviews and our contemporary ecological crises.

The third section, "Domination and Deceit," traces the connections between Judeo-Christian understandings of evil and patriarchal patterns of exploitation and abuse that have characterized much of the history of civilization. Lest the reader come this far only to think that the Judeo-Christian worldview is untenable and irredeemable from an ecological perspective, Ruether provides two lines of theological insight that might provide an ecologically sound basis for a Christian theology of "Healing"---the covenantal and the sacramental. In her final chapter, Ruether outlines how these different theological elements can come into play in our efforts to heal ourselves, one another, and the living world on which we all depend for our existence. It helps also to keep in mind that Ruether is not looking

In short, essential reading for Green Christians and other spiritually and ecologically minded types.

(This review was originally written on April 9, 2007.)

Good news about the Good News

Recovering the Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament and Contemporary Contexts
Joel Green and Mark Baker
InterVarsity Press, 2000


What is scandalous about the cross of Jesus and why do Christians need to recover it? According to the authors, the cross is scandalous insofar as it turns all the categories of the world--failure and success, master and servant, sin and redemption--upside down. Not only are Jesus' disciples in the Gospel of Luke confounded by the apparent failure of his mission (i.e., dying on a cross rather than leading Israel as newly anointed Davidic king), but also the entire project of salvation involves God becoming human and DYING out of his love for humanity. Contemporary mainstream American Christianity, with its self-assured and monochromatic emphasis on individual salvation through God's redemptive violence, too often misses the subversive and countercultural dimensions of the scandalous cross. In this powerful examination of the models and meanings of the cross in Christian history and theology, Green and Baker provide an antidote to this monochromatic gospel by revealing the ambiguity of the cross and challenging the reader's preconceived notions about what the New Testament itself says about salvation in Christ.

For the earliest followers of Jesus, his death "on a Roman cross was an event that lacked within itself a self-evident, unambiguous interpretation" (11). In fact, according to the authors, while the earliest Christians affirmed the centrality of Christ's death on the cross to their salvation, they didn't seem to worry too much about how it had its saving effect. The New Testament itself uses a wealth of different metaphors to describe the salvation obtained through the cross--justification, redemption, reconciliation, sacrifice, triumph--and because these different terms with their subtle shades of meaning get elided in the monochrome of penal substitution theology, the authors spend two full chapters examining these metaphors and teasing out their possible nuances in the context of early Christianity.

The diversity of meanings ascribed to the cross isn't limited to the discourses of Christian scripture, either. In the fifth chapter, the authors outline and critique several historical interpretations of the cross, including the Christus Victor model of Irenaeus and Gregory Nyssa, the Satisfaction model of Anselm of Canterbury, the Moral Influence model of Peter Abelard, and the contemporary model of penal substitution. (This chapter alone is with the price of the book.) In chapters six, seven, and eight, the authors examine the significance of the cross in other, non-Western cultures, revealing the diversity within contemporary global Christianity and using these cross-cultural perspectives to illuminate blind spots in American penal atonement theology.

The authors' efforts in this book are not mere intellectual exercises, either. As the authors repeatedly point out, the cross of Christ grounds the gospels in this world as much as in the next, because it was abusive political power and the desire to protect privilege that lead the Jewish and Roman authorities to execute an innocent man. The ambiguous, scandalous cross challenges all of our received notions about the status quo, and addresses contemporary social issues like racism, social justice, extremes of wealth and poverty, environmental degradation, and our very relationship to the rest of the world. The penal substitution atonement, with its overemphasis on the individual and her sinfulness, omits any critique of our cultural norms and institutions as unnecessary to Christian discipleship. "Given the diversity of witness to the saving significance of the cross in the New Testament, should we not look with caution, even dismay, when we see the atonement articulated in terms of one model only, and especially when that model coheres so fully with the emphasis on autonomous individualism characteristic of so much of the modern middle class in the West" (213). The authors provide ample reason for us to view the contemporary Christian theological scene with dismay, but they also afford the reader many opportunities to look at the Good New anew. And that is definitely good news.

(This review was originally written on March 14, 2007.)

So does this book count as God's wisdom or man's?

The Battle for the Mind
Timothy LaHaye
Baker Book House, 1980

Timothy LaHaye, best known as co-author and idea man for the Left Behind series, vomited up this work back in 1980 just in time for "morning in America." In it, he pits "God's wisdom" against "man's wisdom," and in the time-honored tradition of ideologues of every stripe, proceeds to define the former as everything he values and the latter as everything he derides. This isn't the place for a full rebuttal of this book (and that this book even needs rebutting bespeaks the current anti-intellectual state of the nation), but suffice it to say that LaHaye manages to be breathtakingly wrong-headed 100% of the time. To add insult to injury, his writing is juvenile, impressive only to those who recently graduated from his alma mater, Bob Jones University.

For LaHaye, following "God's wisdom" does not simply mean regarding the King James translation of the Bible as absolutely inerrant in all matters. It turns out that God is also the mind behind such wisdom as free market capitalism and American patriotism. The Bible, and Judaeo-Christian morality (as LaHaye defines it, of course), are the "intellectual base[s] for a morally sane society" (p. 49), an assertion that would certainly surprise ethical adherents of religions other than Judaism and Christianity. LaHaye even goes so far as to equate God's wisdom/Christianity with "science," albeit apparently not the same science that has its origins in reason and empiricism.

In opposition to "God's wisdom" is the wisdom of man, which LaHaye equates with humanism. But "humanism" for him does not simply mean the "broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appeal to universal human qualities" (source: Wikipedia article on "humanism"). Rather, LaHaye's "humanism" entails atheism, Communism, liberalism, socialism, Freudianism, higher criticism, feminism, sexual liberation, art, self-determination, rock music, tolerance, evolution, rationalism, empiricism, situational ethics, Unitarianism, and just about everything else that LaHaye doesn't like or find "moral." (Hard to believe he didn't include the commitment to universal literacy in his laundry list since the ability to read is what has led so many to embrace the "evils of humanism." Maybe he covered that in a sequel.) LaHaye is only the second person I've encountered who seriously regards Renaissance nudes as precursors to pornography (the first person being my father). He also makes no bones about condemning both the Renaissance and the Enlightenment as eras that brought us to this sorry state by insisting on evil ideas like individual dignity, self-determination, and the brotherhood of man. The fact that free market capitalism is as much a product of these eras as Marxian socialism escapes LaHaye, as does the fact that the Constitution was inspired by the Enlightenment ideas of Baron de Montesquieu etal. (That LaHaye attributes the idea of "separation of powers" to the Bible with a straight face indicates perhaps that he needs a straightjacket rather than a publishing deal.) Also conspicuous for its absence is any mention of the other world religions, even those that predate Christianity. I guess Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, etc. are all just atheist, amoral humanists in disguise.

LaHaye's so-called research is pathetic. He bases his discussions of humanism on two publications and falsely asserts that these two works are definitive, "the official position of the humanist movement...accepted by the faithful as the current mandate on humanist beliefs, values, and goals" (p. 85). One doesn't even know where to begin dismantling this monstrous claim. First, humanists, as narrowly defined, don't have an "official position" since one of the claims of humanism is that each is to be guided by his or her conscience. In fact, this description says more about LaHaye's projections and understanding of the faithful-as-automatons than it does about humanism, however one defines that term. As well, since LaHaye's "humanism" effectively includes every worldview except his own, finding a definitive source would be IMPOSSIBLE. And then there is the matter of citations. If he wants to quote scripture, he is right there with chapter and verse, but when he makes the craziest assertions about the evils of "humanism" he does so without a single source to back him up. Oh well, my reliance on facts and evidence is probably just indicative of humanist indoctrination.

This book would be laughable if LaHaye were merely one more fundamentalist moron who can't come to grips with a bigger, more complex world than the one into which he was born. Alas this is not the case. The ideas he expresses in this book inform his best-selling Left Behind series, which has influenced millions of self-proclaimed American Christians. Throughout his book, he talks about how "humanists" are unfit for holding public office in the US (a position that flies in the face of Article VI of the Constitution) and repeatedly advocates that "Christian, pro-moral Americans" take power back by whatever means necessary. If you don't find that a chilling thought, read about how non-Christians are treated in the Left Behind books or play the new Left Behind video game, and you may change your mind. When examined, LaHaye's us-versus-them worldview reveals itself to be murderously pernicious and downright fascistic.

Alas, with the dawning of the 21st century, it looks like "taking the power back" is precisely what LaHaye's acolytes intend to do. Those of us who still care about individual freedom and Enlightenment (i.e., Constitutional American) values would do well to read this book to see what we are up against. It ain't pretty.

(This review was originally written on February 22, 2007.)

Breathtaking work of literary genius and theological inquiry

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ
Jose Saramago
Harvest Books, 1994

In this novel Saramago has created a masterpiece, both in terms of style and content.

The prose is musical, poetically evocative of the streams of consciousness and conversation that fill our lives. While Saramago's paragraphs often run several pages in length, and his idiosyncratic use of punctuation (e.g., his refusal to use quotation marks to delimit speech and his insistence on ending all sentences--including questions--with a period) can seem daunting, the fluid, melodic language makes reading the story a true pleasure.

In terms of content, Saramago has mastered the art of faithfully retelling a story while simultaneously subverting the text through interesting asides, editorial comments, notes to the reader, etc. He also subverts the normal relationship between humanity and God in Christian tradition, wherein humanity is in need of God's forgiveness. In Saramago's retelling, it is the inhumanity of God that is need of humanity's forgiveness. I have often wondered at the needless brutality that lies at the core of mainstream Christian theology (i.e., God needing to have his only child brutally murdered in order to forgive me for being the imperfect being I was created to be), and finally, in Saramago, I have found an author willing to take God to task while not dismissing the sorrowful beauty of the life of Jesus.

(This review was originally written on June 19, 2006.)

Possibly the single most provocative book on Christianity that I've yet read

Lost Christianity: A Journey of Rediscovery
Jacob Needleman
Tarcher, 2003

This book challenges the reader to re-think almost everything they understand about "lost" Christianity. Needleman does not present another work on Gnosticism, Christian contemplation, esoteric teachings, or hidden gospels; instead he indicates that a change of heart (an almost ontological change, and not merely one in thought and emotion) is necessary for even the most rudimentary Christian teachings to take root and become REAL in a person's lived experience.

Professor Needleman's writing is superb, with insightful (DEEPLY insightful) comments abounding (in some places, I flagged one or two sentences per paragraph, which is rare). The only "drawback" is that it is up to the reader to find the spiritual guidance necessary to maintain the Question, to develop the unity of purpose needed to realize the Christian gospel (or any other wisdom teachings, for that matter). At least I have a clearer notion of what I am seeking and of what I need to make my Buddhist and Christian spiritual practices REAL.

I am definitely going to reread this book. Highly, highly recommended.

(This review was originally written April 28, 2006.)

Generous and much needed "experiment in literary investigation"

The Gulag Archipelago, 1918-1956 : An Experiment in Literary Investigation I-II
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Harper Collins, 1974

Gulag--a Russian acronym for the network of camps where prisoners languish without recourse to law or justice, where women are gang-raped by thieves, and where innocent people are starved, beaten, tortured, killed, disappeared. Though Solzhenitsyn's experience of the Gulag took place under Soviet rule, the phenomenon does not seem to be uniquely Communist but is symptomatic of totalitarianism in general. This is why this "experiment in literary investigation" is so relevant right here, right now. The potential for something like Gulag in the age of the eternal "war on terror" is terrifying. (And as the author notes, many of the evils committed in Gulag depended upon the perpetrator believing that what he did was not only necessary, but actually moral.)

Yet Solzhenitsyn's indefatigable sense of humor and generosity of spirit keep this book (at 615 pages, the first volume of three) from being a work of torture in itself. Instead, he mocks the pretensions of the Soviet penal code and revels in the small joys (i.e., sleep, reading, comradery) he experienced in Gulag. In fact, at times, Solzhenitsyn conveys the sense that Gulag was a potentially redemptive experienced for those who made it through, since it winnowed away the chaff of life from the wheat and revealed the nobility we may find in our darkest, deepest hour.

(This review was originally written April 26, 2006 and it refers to the first of the three volume series. Subsequent volumes await my attention.)

An intriguing collection of ideas about Jesus, based on circular reasoning

Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography
John Dominic Crossan
HarperOne, 1995

"If, by the way, our eyes or heads are now spinning, this is part of the process. We are persuaded of the validity of the argument by the sheer difficulty in taking it apart. It is almost easier just to listen and nod or read and agree that to analyze, explore, and disentangle." Although Crossan makes this comment (on page 150) about those who historicized prophecy by reading the texts of the past into the events of the present, it is just as readily applied to his arguments in this book. While I do not necessarily disagree with his conclusions, most of which boil down to the idea that Jesus threatened the fabric of the social order (both Jewish and Roman) by preaching and living a gospel of radical egalitarianism, I take umbrage with his incessant use of circular reasoning to make his points. For example, Crossan will read a passage from Josephus that explicitly makes a claim, he will assert that this explicit claim was added to Josephus by later Christian editors, and will then use his edited version of Josephus (minus the alleged addition) as evidence to support his thesis; interestingly, he assumes his thesis when editing out the explicit claim made in the first place. This sort of "argumentation" occurs so frequently in the book, which is otherwise very nicely written, that the reader can be forgiven if she begins to accept Crossan's assertions as arguments and facts.

One further problem that continues to plague me about Crossan's vision is why this illiterate peasant made such an impact on the world. I ask this question because, by Crossan's own admission, revolutionaries and sapiential teachers were quite common at the time. Crossan fails to adequately explain how the Jesus of history became the risen Christ of faith, and by extension how this illiterate Mediterranean peasant came to claim the hearts and minds of billions, which is a major hole in an otherwise interesting collection of ideas.

(This review was originally written April 24, 2006.)