{Paul Verhoeven. Jesus of Nazareth. Seven Stories Press 2010. 304 pages. $23.95}

Reviewed by Craig Detweiler

Imagine this movie trailer:  from the director of ”Showgirls” and “Basic Instinct” comes his most revealing project yet—“RoboJesus.”   One might expect such a seemingly absurd tagline from provocative Danish filmmaker, Paul Verhoeven.    Instead, Verhoeven has written a smart, rigorous and accessible book about Jesus of Nazareth.   While rooted in scientific skepticism, Verhoeven also adds a storyteller’s appreciation for Jesus’ subversive parables.

In 1986, Paul Verhoeven joined the Biblical scholars gathered for the Jesus Seminar with the idea of making a movie.  He was surprised that during the process, “I had become more interested in Jesus himself than making a movie about him.”   While Verhoeven occasionally indulges in the rhetoric equivalent of his Starship Troopers (like following a discussion of how Nazis viewed Hitler as a god, with a discussion of how we’ve inflated the legend around Jesus), his investigation of Jesus of Nazareth is utterly sincere.   On MTV, Verhoeven even claimed his violent RoboCop is actually “about a guy that gets crucified after 50 minutes, then is resurrected in the next 50 minutes and then is like the super-cop of the world, but is also a Jesus figure as he walks over water at the end.”   While marketers may pitch Jesus of Nazareth as controversial, it is a remarkably respectful and even admiring exploration of the historicity of Jesus.    Instead of “RoboChrist,” we get “Jesus the Man,” separated from the supernatural. [Read more...]