![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/230\/2014\/04\/glass-book.jpeg\" "\\"glass")
<\/a>\u201cPeople have been looking for Jesus for a long time, but never quite like this.\u201d \u2013 N.T. Wright, \u201cFive Gospels but No Gospel\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nI\u2019ve heard many descriptions of the historical Jesus over the years. Garrett Glass\u2019 Jesus seems as unfamiliar to me as any. Billed as a work of historical fiction, the self-published\u00a0Jehoshua: Signs and Wonders<\/em> is heavy on the fiction\u2026 not so much on the history, though.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been reading this book for a few weeks now, off and on. I\u2019m having roughly the same reaction to it that I had to Reza Aslan\u2019s Zealot<\/em><\/a>. In order to hit with the pros when it comes to the historical Jesus, you have to be a pro yourself. This has to be your discipline. To write well in this sub-genre (Historical Fiction\/New Testament Era), requires not only expertise in literature\/creative writing, but also a massive amount of reading and study in ancient near eastern culture, languages, archaeological research, text critical studies, as well as discussion with experts in the field. You have to read and assimilate at least the major works that comprise the full spectrum of modern historical Jesus scholarship. That, plus you have to be a brilliant writer who, having done all the research, knows how far to push without overreaching. It\u2019s an incredibly demanding discipline. Which is probably why it\u2019s not often attempted, and rarely done well. I know I could never do it.<\/p>\n Jehoshua<\/em> is meant to be a fictional telling of the first 25 years of the Christian movement. Predictably, Glass\u2019 Jesus is not divine, doesn\u2019t do miracles, and did not rise from the dead\u2013although he is so overweight they need extra rope to keep him on the cross. He also introduces the possibility that his real father is a Roman soldier named Pantera (insert Life of Brian<\/em> jokes here\u2026 \u201cYour father is a Roman<\/em>, Brian!\u201d). Moving against the four biblical Gospels\u2019 interpretation of Jesus\u2019s life, Glass envisions a movement that came about as a result of Jewish and Roman cultural-political machinations, committed or deluded followers, as well as a cloying portion of happenstance.<\/p>\n The project is ambitious, and his stories are interesting at times. The back matter includes appendices with some rudimentary historical facts, and a bibliography, which in and of itself is odd. I don\u2019t remember seeing a bibliography in a work of non-scholarly historical fiction before. However, the list provides some insight into Glass\u2019 influences. It reads like a who\u2019s who<\/em> of the Jesus Seminar: John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, Robert Funk, Burton Mack, Karen King, John S. Kloppenborg, James Robinson\u2014all Charter Fellows of the Jesus Seminar, plus other controversial scholars like Bart Ehrman and John Shelby Spong.<\/p>\n To be sure, any survey of historical Jesus scholarship work has to include Crossan, Borg, Mack, et al. But too many names are missing. Notably absent are people like N.T. Wright (who has to be at the top of any list of living historical Jesus scholars), Ben Meyers, Anthony Harvey, E.P. Sanders, or even a more popular name like A.N. Wilson. (If you ever want to trace the history of historical Jesus scholarship, Wright has written a concise survey called Who Was Jesus<\/em><\/a>). The result is that Glass seems to have based his view of Jesus and the early church on the historical findings of only a few closely aligned scholars occupying ground far outside the mainstream\u2014ground that has not yet been won in terms of the wider scholarly debate. Glass takes a bag full of these strands of (dubious) historical detail and attempts to weave every single one of them into the narrative. The result is that the story often feels contrived. For instance:<\/p>\n The downside of a story like this is that it blurs the lines between fact and fiction excusing anything they author presents that might in fact be misleading or outright wrong as just part of a made up story. It\u2019s like when my kids say something cruel, followed by \u201cI\u2019m just kidding.\u201d Over the course of the novel, it starts to feel disingenuous, if not fantastic.<\/p>\n The upside of Glass\u2019 attempt to retell the story of early Christianity is that he roots the story of the early church firmly in the narrative of Israel and 2nd Temple Judaism. Whatever historical details might be off, Glass sidesteps the fatal mistake of most liberal tellings of the early Jesus story by acknowledging the early Christian movement as a fundamentally Jewish reality (whether he gets that Jewish reality right or not is another story).<\/p>\n In his introduction, Glass states that Jehoshua<\/em> is not \u201cintended to be a challenge to anyone\u2019s beliefs as a Christian. I am not trying to convert people away from Christianity.\u201d The front cover, however, reads \u201cThe novel that will change forever your view of Christianity.\u201d Given the material in the front and back matter, it seems clear that Glass has a more polemical agenda in mind. Glass says he writes for an audience of Christians who are open to \u201calternate endings of the Passion story,\u201d Christians who are distanced from the faith, completely secular, or those who have opted out of Christianity altogether. I think all of those audiences would benefit from a more thoroughly researched novel.<\/p>\n If you are so inclined you might try: Anne Rice\u2019s Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt<\/em><\/a>,\u00a0Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana<\/a>;\u00a0<\/em>Nikos Kazantzakis\u2019 The Last Temptation of Christ<\/a>;<\/em>\u00a0Anita Diamant\u2019s\u00a0The Red Tent<\/a><\/em>; or one of my personal favorites The Lost Letters of Pergamum<\/em><\/a> by Bruce Longenecker.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cPeople have been looking for Jesus for a long time, but never quite like this.\u201d \u2013 N.T. Wright, \u201cFive Gospels but No Gospel\u201d I\u2019ve heard many descriptions of the historical Jesus over the years. Garrett Glass\u2019 Jesus seems as unfamiliar to me as any. Billed as a work of historical fiction, the self-published\u00a0Jehoshua: Signs and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1000,1016,1010,1012,1019,1011,1013,1018,1020,1017,1014,31,1015],"class_list":["post-3067","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bart-ehrman","tag-burton-mack","tag-garrett-glass","tag-historical-jesus","tag-james-robinson","tag-jehoshua-signs-and-wonders","tag-john-dominic-crossan","tag-john-s-kloppenborg","tag-john-shelby-spong","tag-karen-king","tag-marcus-borg","tag-n-t-wright","tag-robert-funk"],"yoast_head":"\n\n