Yes the book you mention, Jesus, the Final Days: What Really Happened is short but well worth reading. One correction however: Wright is not – and as far as I am aware, has never been – a member of the Jesus Seminar, but has instead been rightly quite critical of it.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

There’s now a book out on Jesus’ resurrection by Craig A Evans concerning Jesus’ resurrection, which will be available to you Ben Carter. Interestingly it seems like N.T. Wright (the current bishop of Durham, UK) is a co-author of this book, he was one of the scholars part of the Jesus Seminar, an organisation who most probably popularized if not created many of the controversial and radical views concerning Jesus. He also is well-read and observes the historical evidence ‘critically’ (not skeptically like the way many scholars these days work in theology especially now in Durham, where i am from.) An expert in the field of Jesus’ resurrection and its historicity is Gary Habermas, i hope you can be critical (not skeptical) of his work regarding Jesus’ resurrection and consider the effect this will have on Christians and everyone today. But i do recommend you read this book if you want a balanced view of the authenticity of the four canonical gospels first and consider their points carefully, as i have, before passing judgement on anyone.

Michael Lee

An interesting review.

Contention about the life of Jesus and the accuracy of all the various accounts is hardly new. Believers,agnotics and disbelievers alike have always been interested in Christ’s personal details.

The Davinci Code is hardly the darling of just agnostics and atheists. How many ‘Christians’ do you think cherish a fond hope that Jesus did escape Israel with Mary Magdalen and Joseph of Arimathea to the coast of France to found Europe’s royal bloodlines and shoot the holy grail over to Britain? We would need an army to count them!

As we know the Church has, particularly in modern times, struggled with this and similar issues. Belief in the Resurrection is the key issue that determines whether someone is a Christian. If you can’t recite the Nicene Creed in good faith then no amount of hym singing will get you there. But the Church knows that congregations would be heavily diluted if you excluded every church attendee with doubts about the Resurrection from the ranks of the ‘faithful’.

The Church also knows that many in its congregations have, since the earliest times, felt it easier to relate to Jesus because of Luke’s and Matthew’s accounts of his early life.

Therefore, while I thinks its unreasonable for atheists and agnostics to hold Christianity to a much higher standard than they do themselves on issues like the existence of God, I also think its faintly ridiculous of some Christians to focus so heavily on defending the accuracy of the New Testament Gospels about the early life of Jesus.

Its harmless and good for the kids, but I nevertheless feel the onset of madness when I see all the mangers and wisemen!! We simply do not know the precise details of Jesus’ birth or other things like whether or not he was a decendant of David. And who cares!

The only thing that can possibly matter is whether Jesus was crucified and was recurrected from the dead. By contesting irrelevancies like Jesus’ ancestry we play into the hands of the atheists and agnostics who want to apply Enlightenments tests to everything.

Cheers
Ben Carter