Jesus: An Historian’s Review Of The Gospels, by Michael Grant

Either the person who had this book before me, or possibly someone before him, made the following comment on the blank first page of this book: “This book is hogwash–and the author is no historian.” This viewpoint is a little unkind, certainly more unkind of a review than I would give, yet it gives an essential sort of difficulty that the author of this book makes. For one, historians who seek to deal with the hazardous ground of religious belief face some difficulties that are unavoidable. Too large a hostility to the religious beliefs may appeal to the biases of the scholarly community, but are unlikely to bring the book any sort of credibility with those who are most interested in religion as believers. Too great a belief of what is written in the Bible (or any other religious text) presents a different problem, as the frankly supernatural content offends the worldview of those who believe in a purely materialistic universe. So those who wish to steer a course between savage and irrelevant criticism and profession of belief that would damage academic credentials are forced to steer a somewhat middle course.

To its fairness, this book attempts to do steer that middle course. If it is not as successful in doing so as K.A. Kitchen’s work [1], it is because this author does not have the command of biblical history, culture, and language to make the sort of evidence-based dogmatic stands of Kitchen’s work. As the author of this book has the moderating tendencies of a historian without the knowledge of material (his knowledge of Paul’s theology and approach, for example, is woefully inadequate to the task), the result is equivocal, and unlikely to please either rigorous historians or people of faith. This is not to say that this book is hogwash, or rubbish, or any such thing, because it has some value. Yet its value is certainly limited by the openly admitted but insufficiently overcome biases of the particular historian towards higher criticism and a distrust of the supernatural. However, the main failing of this book, and many like it, is that it presumes to come to the Bible with authority as a judge and as a critic rather than coming to God and His Messiah as a humble supplicant for mercy. It is that initial error that serves as the foundation for the rest of the many dubious statements made in this book that often overshadow the author’s occasional canny insight.

For, it ought to be openly admitted that this book is at times very clever and insightful. The book begins, after a short introduction, with an analysis of the central importance of the Kingdom of God to the career of Jesus Christ, before looking at a set of titles and identities that Jesus Christ was connected with (the Galilean, Prophet and Teacher, Messiah, Son of Man, and son of God), before looking at a somewhat threadbare narrative of his ministry in Galilee, his fatal challenge in Jerusalem, his death by crucifixion, and the triumph of the resurrection. The author does not draw the evidence of the dramatic change in the mentality of the disciples to their conclusion, but then again he does not accept the veracity of a great deal of the Gospels except for some minimalistic historical kernel, which cuts against any attempt to draw from scriptures anything that does not already correspond to the historian’s own worldview. This book is therefore a missed opportunity, but not a total waste either.

[1] https://edgeinducedcohesion.wordpress.com/2011/06/09/book-review-on-the-reliability-of-the-old-testament/