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Rating: 
Summary: Historical What-ifs
Review: In 1971, I was a public high school senior who had dropped out of the Catholic School system after ten years of Catholic indoctrination and an excellent high school education under the Sistine Jesuits. I took an English elective entitled, "The Bible as Literature." Our first reading was "The Passover Plot." I found the book to be highly interesting in its presentation of the historical facts of the time (history has always been my passion), and its subjective interpretation of the life of Jesus. Keep in mind that my background had been the religous indoctrination of the Catholic Church, which had been the preeminet spiritual and temporal leader of Europe until Martin Luther happened along. Also, keep in mind that Protestants are considered to be heretics of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. Anyway, my take on the whole matter is quite simple. I am sure most of us remember the old school game where you wisper a message in someones ear and have that person pass it to ten people. At the end of the line you ask the last person to reveal the message, and your original message has been totally twisted around. The same with history. Here we are two thousand years later after Jesus' presumable death at the
"brutal" hands of the Romans whose empire is also dead, and, more importantly, still waiting for his "SECOND COMING" as Christian believers, and no one can really say with sound accuracy if he lived or if he was just a myth. The bottom line really is quite simple. Regardless of his existence, a religion was started, and our modern world is now caught up in the grips of a terrorist inspired JIHAD. The crusades revisited. Jews against Moslems, and Moslems against Christians---an age old story. Yet, all three religions claim to be descended from Abraham, but are killing each other against the precept of "Thou shallt not kill thy neighbor." The more lethal the weapon, the better. Oh, and now we have a movie, "The Passion," which is exploiting the violent side of our souls in order to get a message out or is it the old Hollywood story--to make a bigger buck and be the all-time money grosser. When will we as so-called educated, enlightened humans ever learn that the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Sorry, if this was not an exact review of the book, and more like a polemical takeoff of my feelings on the book...but,... In conclusion, the book does make an interesting read for someone who is open-minded enough to accept or reject the authors precepts. It should be read along with other books on the subject. Like the Constitution and the Bible, it is a matter of one's own interpretation. For historical research, I give it four stars, and for his "subjective" analysis and conclusion, I give the book three stars.
Rating: 
Summary: Scholarship and speculation
Review: It was Schoenfeld's specualtion that Jesus faked his crucifixion that made this a hot best-seller in its day, but the virtues of the book lie in the meticulous and persuasive scholarship that underlie the sensational element. Schoenfeld is particulary good at explaining what it means to understand Jesus as a Jew, a fact given lip service but rarely understood by Christians. Also outstanding is his analysis of the differing theological conceptions and aims of the four gospel authors, and how their religious views shaped their versions of the story. His idea that Jesus deliberately set out to fulfill the Old Testament prophecies and become the Messiah is interesting and plausible. One needn't accept his highly speculative passover plot theory of just what happened on that first Easter to get quite a lot out of this excellent work.
Rating:
Summary: 4 stars because it took some real testicular fortitude to
Review: write this book in 1965, and to try and provide the thesis with scholarly support. Schonfield does exactly that. I'm not sure I can buy into all of what he is saying, but there certainly exists an aura of plausibility. Indeed, if one reads the Koran and some of the Indian texts that exist, Schonfield's book isn't so revolutionary. Specifically, Indians to this day claim that Jesus is buried in there country. Is it true? who knows, but we do know that contemporaneous writings from immediately after the crucifixtion refer to Jesus in India. Who knows, maybe it is all bunk. I think one thing is for certain--that Gospels as published today, don't match up with their original Greek manuscripts. I suspect that perhaps the truth is somewhere in between the Gospels and Schonfield's view.
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