Book Review: Reinventing Jesus

May 6, 2006 Posted by Roger Overton

One of foundational claims of The Da Vinci Code by
Dan Brown is that the Bible of Christian tradition is unreliable. The result is
that our idea of Jesus doesn’t match up with the real Jesus who was married to
Mary Magdalene and had a child with her. Rather than respond directly to the
speculations of the novel and works like it, Reinventing Jesus by J. Ed
Komoszewksi, M. James Sawyer, and Daniel B. Wallace seeks to provide a positive
case for why we can trust the New Testament and the Jesus it speaks of.

Reinventing Jesus is divided into five parts
consisting of 18 chapters together. Part one deals with whether or not the
first Gospel writers were able to get the story right. Part two is an analysis
of the transmission of the Gospels seeking to show that what we have now is
incredibly close to what was originally written. The canon of the New Testament
is tackled in part three, where explanations are given for why some were
included in the Bible and others weren’t. With the reliability of the
scriptures established, part four goes on to look at what the New Testament
says about Jesus. Finally, in part five, Christianity is defended against
accusations that it borrowed from pagan mythology.

Throughout the book, the authors interact with the claims of
The Da Vinci Code and other more scholarly works that question the
historicity of the Bible, but the central focus is more about a positive case
for Christianity than a defensive one. At the end of the book are subject and
Scripture indexes, as well as a thorough recommended reading list according to
each part of the book.

Of the works that deal with claims like those in The Da
Vinci Code, Reinventing Jesus is one of the more scholarly. That
said, it does a commendable job of making the scholarly discussions accessible
and relevant to “motivated laypersons” without dumbing down the material
or making the reader feel dumb. The book covers a wide hosts of issues related
to the Bible and Jesus, but due its focus on a positive case for Christianity,
lacks a thorough critique of Gnosticism or “the sacred feminine.” Ultimately,
Reinventing Jesus is a great book for readers who want accurate first-hand
information from scholars about the historicity of the Christian faith in light
of “novel speculations.”