<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing but the truth
Review: For the reader from Andrews,South Carolina, a review of this book needs not be an attack on the writer as a disciple of satan. The problem with many of chirstians starts with your stupid blind faith. Many of you accept all the myths of the bible without appealing to your logic . The bible is a myth, an allegorical myth. Religion is a virus blocking scientific advancement and freethinking. I don't need to believe in a barbaric "god" to run my life. Retreat from your blind faith and question the nonsense you have learned. Once you can do that and stop being a fundamentalist, perhaps you can begin to understand the point the author is trying to make.We need more people like him to stop the madness that has plagued humanity for the past two thousand years. In the name of Jesus, we have exterminated millions of people, stopped science on its course,plunged human race to a thousand years of dark ages,embraced slavery. If I recall correctly from the bible,your god killed innocent children, men am women; chased them from their homes in favor of the israelites.By the way, that's a flagrant act of terrorism. Show me in the bible one instance where satan acted that way.It is a humourous fact that the only argument christians have against people who doubt their nonsense allegorical myth, be it jesus or adam and eve,is that it has to be the work of satan. I'm still puzzled to see that so called "intelligent" people still believe in this fairy tale.
Rating: 
Summary: Faulty Premise - But Interesting Read
Review: The basic premise of this book is, "If something in the gospel record addresses any concern of the early church, it must be rejected as inauthentic." The book takes off from there, jettisoning much of the material in the four gospels.
While it is true that the four evangelists wrote their books to address certain peoples with certain needs, it does not mean that they were deliberately trying to deceive their disciples by contriving false stories of what Jesus said and did. Also, just because something written in, say, 1890 addresses an issue that faces a certain group of people in, say, 2002, it doesn't automatically invalidate the work of 1890. It just means that perhaps the author had enough foresight to know that certain problems would arise and that he wanted to address those problems.
This book will be of interest to Christians who desire to expand their minds and who want to be aware of the reasoning processes of certain schools of theology...
Rating: 
Summary: Bad Guess Disguised as the Concrete Truth
Review: This is "shock" theology at its worst. In other words, if you say enough radical and outlandish things about the Christian religion (and especially its central figure), you will usually make something of a name for yourself and get newspaper articles written about you and roam the college lecture house and talk show circuits.
Don't get me wrong, I was EXCITED when I saw this book. I was extremely interested in what Ludemann had to say about the authentic (and inauthentic) words of Jesus, especially as he comes across in his introductions as something of an authority on the subject. Unfortunately, this book is far removed from a scholarly work and borders on the inane. The "proof" of all the things those dastardly 1st century Christians put in Jesus' mouth to further their cause (mostly an enterprise in being hounded by their own people and butchered by the Romans) is full of circular reasoning ("Jesus couldn't have said what John said he did, because Mark said he said THIS instead") and judgement calls ("Jesus couldn't have said this because I don't think that, looking at historical context, he WOULD have said it"). You can't go about disproving Biblical text by citing other Biblical text as being "authentic" while dismissing what you don't approve of intellectually. Also, if you look at the historical record, people can say some wild and off the wall stuff. You can't discount statements and dialogue based on your assumptions and perceptions of the character of one that we have so little record of. Even claiming that the followers of Jesus made him say things to strengthen their current position by changing the words of the past is highly suspect. You can't make it true just by claiming it is (one of the author's favorite tactics). I found this whole book to be a maddening and elementary exercise in futility. Scholarly and authoritarian in about the same sense as those sappy Christian self-help books that tell you God's plan is for you to own a mansion and a BMW.
The author made it very clear that the research leading to this work caused him to forsake Christianity. I don't fault him for his decision, I just wish he had a better reason for doing so. Jesus and the Christian faith will surely survive such shallow scrutiny.
Rating: 
Summary: Neither bad nor good.
Review: This is not a book for believing Christians. The author
dismisses Christ's supernatural nature as just wishful thinking.
I wish he had explained why -- but he doesn't.This book was of mixed value to me. It reads like a college
text book in which a lot of the key information is left as an
exercise to the reader. The author makes an understandable
definition of how he went about determining which sayings of
Jesus were original and which were created by the churches
that sprung up after his death. However the criteria are often
hard to see in his examples -- I felt that more detailed
explanations would have helped. I am however glad that I bought the book because the author's
explanations of the sayings of Jesus and the cultural context
of Mathew, Mark, and Luke were enlightening. I guess I wanted
more than I got but was glad to get what I did get.
<< 1 >>
|
