Friday, 24 February 2012
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Review of The Jesus We Missed by Patrick Henry Reardon
By Nic Don at TheopoliticalThomas Nelson publishers sent me a copy of Patrick Henry Reardon’s new book, The Jesus We Missed: The Surprising Truth about the Humanity of Christ, for review. I was not required to give a positive review.
Patrick Henry Reardon has written a book that lightly embraces the idea of a historical reconstruction of Jesus’ life without deviating from orthodox Christian belief. He states in the introduction that nothing he states in the book should be construed as contradicting the great creeds of the church about the nature of Jesus as 100% human and 100% divine.
Rather than contradicting the creeds, Reardon examines what that 100% humanity consisted of. He does historical work, arguing for hypothetical sources for various traditions within the New Testament. In particular, he highlights the role that Jesus’s mother Mary may have placed as a chronicler of his life.
The result is a very comfortable, comforting work for Christians. I found the work enjoyable to read, but unchallenging, in much the same way that Rich Mullins’s music characterized Jesus’ life. Where Philip Yancey’s The Jesus I Never Knew did much the same work, Yancey seemed to feel he was writing rebellious, seditious material. Reardon’s writing doesn’t feel that way; it feels affectionate. The picture of Jesus he paints is the kind of man we would mostly enjoy being around.
Reardon arranges the material roughly chronologically, following along with a conflated gospel account. As such, I would recommend the book as an introduction to the gospels or a commentary on them. I would also recommend the book to reflective Christians with a slight intellectual bent. The strength of Reardon’s analysis for me is probably his focus on how Jesus read the Old Testament and developed his self-understanding from it. Jesus read of the suffering servant in Isaiah, for instance, found his identity there, and followed it.
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Comments (7)
Concerning Jesus, whenever we see "hypothetical sources" or "conflated gospel" the bottom line is unorthodox teachings.
That is the last thing anyone needs.@sometimestheycomebackanyway@xanga - There are unconfirmed hypothetical sources and the Gospel of Luke did use some of the original sources. We may never see them or start to believe that the Book of Thomas might be using some of the original sources (it is more a book of sayings)
The Catholic Church did use a book pertaining to the life of Mary.(the gospel of James). Who are you to say that that is the last thing anyone needs? Anne Rice a recent convert to Catholicism has done her version of the life of Jesus. Are you saying that that is also the last thing anyone needs to read?
@PPhilip@xanga - The Catholic Church chose the books of the Bible. It was the only institution given the authority to do so by Christ Himself.
Further, the Church declared the Bible to be the authentic, true Word of God.
Consequently, any "hypothetical sources" are not to be trusted since they are not authentic. The truth does not deal in hypothetical. The truth deals in what actually is.
@sometimestheycomebackanyway@xanga - Strangely the Catholic Bible has more books than the Protestant version, here's why:
"Both Protestant and Catholic Bibles have the same number of books in the New Testament: 27.
However, Catholic Bibles have 7 extra books, and here's why:
Around 2200 years ago (so obviously before Jesus' time), Jewish scholars
put together all of the Jewish Scriptures - what we call the Old
Testament. There were 46 books, called the Septuagint, that were
accepted until about 100 A.D. At that time, the Jewish leaders decided
to get rid of the non-Hebrew books, of which there were seven.
This change was after Jesus' life, however. So He would have known all 46. And those 46 + 27 New Testament books=73.
So these 73 were accepted as the Bible for almost 1500 years, when
Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation. Because there were not
Hebrew manuscripts known at the time, he changed the Bible from 46 to 39
books...and that's why there's 7 less books there today.
Read more: Why does the Catholic Bible have different chapters than the King James version of the Bible? | Answerbag http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/2286#ixzz1p2BTdZ5X
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The Catholic Church approves of certain books, however they do not stiffle research into other books. For a strong believer it is not the last thing they should do, perhaps only the weak believer should follow the advice of not looking at other orthodox teachings?
@PPhilip@xanga - The reason the Catholic Bible is different then the Protestant one is because Martin Luther took it upon himself to gut seven books out of the Old Testament.
Since Jesus build his Church on Saint Peter, not Martin Luther (according to the Bible), it is clear that Martin Luther had absolutely no authority to change the Bible.@sometimestheycomebackanyway@xanga - careful. Translators of the Bible can present to the Pope new interpretations. Their authority for translations when presented in a fair and truthful manner can give the Pope reason to allow slight changes.
The Jewish scholars continue to present the young girl version instead of the Virgin version of Isaiah. The Catholic version trumps the Hebrew version translation. True those are small variations and shouldn't affect your absolute interpretation.
@PPhilip@xanga - Stripping 7 books out of the Bible has nothing to do with language translation.
If you look at a Catholic Bible you will see an inscription that says that the Bible was translated from the mother tongues and that it was checked for accuracy by two bishops.
Nevertheless, most translations are very close nowadays. The problem with understanding the Bible is the dogma one uses to interpret the text.
Catholic doctrine was given to the Apostles who then passed it down to their successors and so on. Protestant dogma was first cooked up around 1500 by a mad priest named Martin Luther. And the dogma has continued to cook and change ever since then.
Thus, a hopelessly divided Christianity and 1000s of sects each one started by someone who thought they knew better than Jesus.