A Bounty of Books

The Dawn of Christianity: How God Used Simple Fishermen, Soldiers, and Prostitutes to Transform the World by Robert J. Hutchinson uses biblical and extra-biblical sources to historically trace the beginning of "the Jesus movement." Hutchinson starts from a bit before the birth of Jesus and goes through the Jerusalem council.

Each chapter is short and deals with one particular person or event in the formation of Christianity. The writing flows well and is easy to read and understand. There are numerous helpful end notes at the back of the book that provide either sources or more detail, some of which is very interesting.

There isn't really anything new in this book, but it does serve as a great introduction to an important topic for both believers and skeptics. It is organized and informative without going so deep into any one particular topic or scholarly controversy that someone new to the topic would become bogged down. Overall, I recommend The Dawn of Christianity to anyone interested in how Christianity was formed and took root.

I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookLook book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255

The Jesus Inquest: The Case For and Against the Resurrection of the Christ by Charles Foster is one barrister's attempt to present all of the most widely accepted facts and arguments on both sides of the debate over whether or not the historical figure known as Jesus Christ rose from the dead. Foster uses two fictional people - X and Y - to present both sides of the debate regarding the sources, the death, the burial, the empty tomb, the post-resurrection appearances, whether or not the early church believed in the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and where Christians got their idea of the resurrection.

There have been very few books in my life that I have started and not finished either because I enjoyed reading them, or out of sheer stubbornness. The Jesus Inquest was one of the few that I simply could not bring myself to read all the way through. After slogging through the introduction and first 3 chapters, I skimmed the rest until the conclusion, which was not really a conclusion at all.

One reason is that Foster's format is confusing. He lists all of the arguments from X on the chapter's topic, then has Y list all of his. The problem is that there are numerous arguments dealing with each chapter's topic. It is difficult to truly see both sides when one has to think back through a bunch of other arguments. Perhaps a dialogue format would have been more conducive what Foster was trying to do. Besides the confusing format, the tone is often unnecessarily sharp and disparaging of the other side. The content is comes in such a way that at times it feels like being shot at by a machine gun. The lack of context, and the quick blurbs of information that flow one right after another leave one little time to process, much less compare both sides to decide which one to agree with. To his credit, Foster does provide several appendices to supplement his text, as well as thorough documentation of his sources. Overall, I would not recommend this book to anyone but someone who already has a firm scholarly grasp on the overall topic.

I received this book free from Thomas Nelson Publishers as part of their BookSneeze book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255