Reinventing Jesus | J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, & Daniel Wallace

J. Ed Komoszewski, M. James Sawyer, Daniel B. Wallace, Reinventing Jesus: How Contemporary Skeptics Miss the Real Jesus and Mislead Popular Culture. Kregel, 2006. 352 pp.

This book is a very good introduction to the topics of Contemporary Issues, Apologetics, and Textual Criticism for the dedicated layman or the serious-minded Bible study leader. I was surprised by the popular level approach to these topics brought by some of the top-shelf names in Christian scholarship. When life-long church members can say things such as “No one can really know what happened two thousand years ago,” the pastor must know that their knowledge is lacking and wonder what is the object of their faith. Their theological training from Sunday School classes has not prepared them for current challenges to the faith, and to their own faith. For pastors with members that are interested in the subject of how we know what we know about the faith, this would make a good gift to show your appreciation for their commitment to the task of teaching the Word. This book, though good for a lay introduction, does not suffice for the seminary student.

With sixty-four pages of end notes (easier to read than footnotes), three pages of Further Reading, three pages of Scripture references, and a ten page Subject Index, there are enough sources for the reader to do further research into the topics covered. The subjects are organized progressively from the writing of the canon, to copying, transmission, translation, and deciding on which variants to accept and why. It was encouraging to see the scholars put the issues at a level that laymen could understand, and add the documentation from their sources so the reader whose appetite has only been whetted can read more and find more about the subjects.

After all the ground work has been laid, the authors finally tackle the tease topic of why The Da Vinci Code and other books of that ilk are wrong. Reinventing Jesus is actually a better way to address the problems of The Da Vinci Code than the spate of other books attacking its author, Dan Brown, and his subject. This has larger effects than simply refuting an already debunked idea. Reinventing Jesus gives the Christian a better foundation for the science and history behind the Bible.

The authors, citing Gerhardsson’s Memory and Manuscript, made a comparison (pp. 36–37) that this writer had not thought of: the history of knowledge has progressed from memorization of history and facts (ancient), to the mass collection and printing of that same knowledge into books (modern as of Guttenberg), to the fixing of that knowledge, and more, in cyberspace and the Internet (post modern).

Following that idea, the amount of knowledge that could be retained in systems has grown exponentially. The sum total of all human knowledge was once less than what is now in an average desk reference dictionary. With Guttenberg, the memorization of materials was no longer necessary, and routine items could be put into books and retrieved at will; and the amount of knowledge exploded because the time and intellect required for memorizing could be given to research and discovery. With the advent of computers, the very definition of literacy may have to change from ability to read a book or newspaper, to storing and retrieving information from data systems (computers and iPods). The apparent downside of mass data storage versus memorization is the loss of collective memory in key areas of mathematics and science and history, and theology and teleology.

In their conclusion (p. 259-262), the authors use a take on the old Ford commercial, “The closer you look, the better we look,” and re-word it to fit the cause of the book: “The closer you look, the better Jesus looks.” Yet, the authors take a lower view of Scripture than this writer holds, saying that the Word records what is “probable” vs. that which is “possible;” and that the autographs have been lost. But they cite the collective memory of the early church as a controlling corrective to possible errors in the text, raising the reliability of the written text. Such controls, assuming memorization and not written texts, result in a still greater degree of reliability. Thanks to Textual Criticism, and people like B. M. Metzger and K. and B. Aland, we can assert the reliability of our Greek New Testaments (NA²⁷ and GNT⁴) as more than 99.9%. And, though no scholarly claims are made for any of the discovered Greek manuscripts, miniscules, uncials, etc., as being originals, would we know how to distinguish an early first century original from a late first century copy? By what mechanism or technique would an original be distinguishable from a mere copy? I suspect that a few of our earliest “copies” may not be just copies.

Timothy Mills
Pastor, Whitton Baptist Church
Tyronza, AR
September 5, 2007

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