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Rating: 
Summary: No absolute truth?
Review: A previous reviewer wrote: "Christians--and members of all religions--will find diversity and harmony difficult as long as they are committed to the idea of absolute truth."But is this statement absolutely true? If I insist that there is absolute truth, then those who speak like this reviewer must also tolerate me in the name of diversity. It is self-refuting to deny absolute truth. Rather, I would say, "Christians--and members of all religions--will find diversity and harmony MEANINGLESS as long as they are NOT committed to the idea of absolute truth." Do you disagree? Good! You must tolerate me in the name of diversity.
Rating: 
Summary: Strong argument for Christian diversity
Review: The Kirkus review above gives a good description of the book. The author, Gregory Riley, is a professor at Claremont College in California. He provides a good history of Greek and Jewish legends, along with the details of how they could have affected early Christian writers. He also shows the development of dualistic and Hellenistic beliefs (body-soul and God-Satan) in the late Old Testament and New Testament writers. I would also mention Riley's emphasis on the diversity of early Christianity (which was lost for the most part in the 4th Century when Constantine took over the church and imposed uniformity, and which was regained again in the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century). What Riley might have ignored is the intense, often bloody rivalries between Christian sects, then and now. As Garry Wills mentions in "Papal Sin," there is evidence that Peter and Paul were fingered by a rival Christian group as instigators of the burning of Rome, resulting in their execution. Christians--and members of all religions--will find diversity and harmony difficult as long as they are committed to the idea of absolute truth.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but inaccurate
Review: While I find Riley's thesis interesting and relatively entertaining, I am not impressed with his scholarship. He makes statements that do not withstand scrutiny, for example he writes: Jesus was opposed to many Jewish traditions.
Actually Jesus affirms that he has not come to change the Law but to fulfill it, where he does go beyond Mosaic Law it is in employing that old rabbinical device of 'building a fence round the Torah'. By exceeding the demands of the Law he ensures that the circumstances where the Law is broken can never arise. Riley also misquotes, for example in Chapter 4 - The Story of Jesus, the section titled 'The Genetics of the Hero and the virgin birth' he quotes Isaiah 7:14 RSV as:
Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel.
when it actually reads:
Behold, a young woman shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. A very critical difference that has kept theologians in gainful employment for centuries. (But the passage Riley ascribes to Isaiah comes from Matthew) I can't judge whether this is sloppy or deliberate but it undermines the authority with which he writes.
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