David B. Capes, Rodney Reeves and E. Randolph Richards. Rediscovering Jesus: An Introduction to Biblical, Religious and Cultural Perspectives on Christ. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2015. See here to buy the book.
Rediscovering Jesus explores portrayals of Jesus in both the
New Testament and also outside of the Bible. It discusses how Jesus
appears in each New Testament Gospel; the Pauline writings; the Epistle
to the Hebrews; the letters of James, Jude, and 1-2 Peter; and the Book
of Revelation. In terms of portrayals of Jesus outside of the Bible,
the book looks at Gnostic literature, Islam, historical Jesus studies,
Mormonism, America, and the cinema. In its conclusion, the book
candidly acknowledges that it did not cover the portrayal of Jesus in
non-Western cultures, and it says that one cannot legitimately
stereotype the “African Jesus” or the “Asian Jesus” because these
regions and their portrayals of Jesus are so diverse.
In terms of its place on the spectrum of scholarship, the book has
both conservative and liberal elements. The conservative elements are
that it believes that the Gospels of Matthew and Mark manifest a high Christology
(i.e., Jesus is God, and even pre-existent in the Gospel of Matthew),
and it maintains that Paul wrote Ephesians and Colossians, that James
and Jude the brothers of Jesus wrote the New Testament books that bear
their names, and that Peter wrote 1-2 Peter. While the book makes
arguments for Mark and Matthew having a high Christology, it usually
(not always, but usually) seemed to assume its beliefs about authorship,
without really defending them.
In terms of the book’s liberal elements, it acknowledged the
diversity of Scripture. It even went so far as to dispute that Luke saw
Jesus’ death on the cross as atoning for people’s sins, maintaining
that Luke had another view about the significance of Christ’s death.
The book also challenged evangelical tendencies to project their beliefs
onto the text, or to conflate New Testament texts rather than allowing
each New Testament author to speak with his own voice: the book says,
for example, that the Gospel of John does not really have a concept of
Christians going into the world and evangelizing but envisions Jesus the
shepherd bringing new converts into the community; that Paul, too, has a
rather inward focus on the Christian community in his letters; and that
the Book of Revelation does not even envision God granting people an
opportunity to repent during the eschaton. Whether or not one agrees
with the book’s conclusions (and I do not entirely), its wrestling with
issues and its willingness to arrive at conclusions that may be
unconventional for evangelicals are what make the book interesting.
The book speculates about an intriguing question: What would
Christianity be like if all we had was one particular source? Suppose
that we only had the Gospel of Matthew, or the Epistle of James? This
exercise did allow the reader to focus on what each source said, and
what it did not say. It was a valuable exercise, and the book did well
to include it. I have two critiques of it, however, from two opposite
perspectives. First of all, such an exercise may assume that Christian
communities operated in a vacuum, when that may not have been the case.
The book holds that, in a number of cases, Christian communities only
had one Gospel rather than all four, whereas Richard Bauckham in The Gospels for All Christians
challenges that idea. Second, from the opposite perspective, the book
seems to maintain that all of the New Testament writings complement each
other, in the end: that, say, Revelation cannot stand alone, but it
needs voices from other New Testament writings to complement it so that
we arrive at a more balanced perspective. But I question whether the
writings can complement each other successfully, in certain areas. The
book said that, if all we had was Matthew’s Gospel, we would be
observing the Torah. How would that complement Paul’s view that
Gentiles did not have to observe the Torah?
Usually, in reading books about Jesus, especially evangelical books
about Jesus, I try to observe how the books treat the idea that Jesus in
the synoptic Gospels expected the imminent end of the world, and also
how they define the Kingdom of God in the synoptic Gospels. Rediscovering Jesus
did interact with these issues, sometimes indirectly, and sometimes
more directly. It quoted Mark 3:27 and said that Jesus in his ministry
was binding the strong man (Satan) in order to take possession of the
world. It said that the Messiah in the Gospel of Matthew had something
to do with deliverance from Roman oppression. In these cases, the book
did not really wrestle with the question of whether Jesus was
successful, but its discussion of the Gospel of Luke did wrestle with
whether (and how) Jesus fulfilled his Messianic mission, and it
mentioned the idea that the Kingdom of God was already-but-not-yet. The
book said that Luke had a gradual eschatology: God’s reign spreads
throughout the world as the Gospel is proclaimed through the power of
God’s Spirit, and that this occurs gradually until Christ’s return. My
impression was that the book deemed this eschatology to be different
from what is in the Book of Revelation. In terms of eschatology, some
of the book’s discussions were unsatisfactory or incomplete, especially
in detailing how Christian believers can deal religiously with passages
that may arguably manifest an imminent eschatology; some of the book’s
discussions, however, were quite good, especially the one on Luke’s
eschatology.
The chapters about Jesus in extra-biblical literature were good,
overall, in that they were lucid and informative. The chapter on
Gnosticism acknowledged the complexity of defining Gnosticism, and the
chapters on Mormonism and Islam provided useful background information.
The chapter on the American Jesus made some good points, especially
about the Jesuses who appeal to women and to men (i.e., romantic Jesus,
macho Jesus), but I thought that it could be judgmental, in areas,
especially when it was criticizing people who believe in a radical
Jesus—-essentially, it was putting words in their mouths and making
judgments about what motivated them and what they would do in
such-and-such situations.
I had a variety of favorite passages in this book. The book referred
to a historical Jesus scholar who said that Jesus did not multiply the
loaves and fishes but rather encouraged people by his example to share
their food, something that they were reluctant to do; the book disagrees
with this view, and I do not entirely buy it either, but it is a
beautiful concept. In discussing the complexities of portraying Jesus
in film, the book was asking if Jesus was carefree and happy when he
told the scribe who wanted to follow him that the Son of Man had nowhere
to lay his head (Matthew 8:20; Luke 9:58)—-that Jesus was not trying to
put the scribe off, but rather was encouraging the scribe to embrace a
carefree life of trusting in God to meet his needs. That reminds me
that tone is everything, that maybe the Gospel passages in which Jesus
appears to be a jerk can be understood differently. The book said that
one who believes in a masculine Jesus would highlight that Jesus was
strong in the midst of his crucifixion. I personally tend to recoil
from attempts to proclaim a macho Jesus, but that passage did resonate
with me, perhaps because it highlighted that different views of Jesus
can notice different things. The book said more than once that people
try to create Jesus in their own image, but maybe that is not entirely
fair: perhaps people notice different things about Jesus that are
edifying, based on who and where they are.
The book was written by three authors, and it would have done well to
have identified which author was speaking, particularly when the author
was telling stories in first-person narrative.
This book is informative, and it would be good for students of the New Testament, or interested learners.
The publisher sent me a complimentary copy of this book, in exchange for an honest review.