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Summary: The Jesus I Never Knew
Review: This book is wonderful! If you are looking for a Jesus you can relate to here He is, in this book! I found the book easy to read, and it held my interest. I have recommended it to several of my friends and family members. I especially enjoyed the section referring to the "Sermon on the Mount", in the past I always felt this was an impossible standard to live up to and I was right. But when it is read in the context of Mr. Yancey's workmanship, we can see that it is the standard God would hope for his children, an example to strive for. I will read this book again ,and look forward to reading more of Mr. Yancey's books.
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Summary: One of the most compelling books I have ever read
Review: Just like Philip Yancey, I grew up in the Christian faith. However, it was not until I read this book that I realized that I didn't know what Jesus was really like. Yancey traces the real Jesus through an intensive study of history and the gospels. After reading this book, I felt, for the first time, Jesus's actions and words came to life. The book was an easy read and in fact I plan to study the gospels for myself and then read this book again.
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Summary: A Must Read to jumpstart your relationship with Jesus
Review: Jesus was not the conservative character we learned about in Sunday school. Reading this book opened my eyes to just how radical Jesus was when he walked among men, and it caused me to reappraise my relationship with him. If he came today, would I recognize him? Or would I be too busy to notice him or too set in my preconceptions to accept him? Yancy challenges me to look more closely at my traditions and ideas about Jesus.
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Summary: Fantastic! Should be required reading.
Review: This book really opened my eyes to the Gospels and gave me an appreciation of just who Jesus really is. An amazing book that deserves to be the topic of many a Sunday School class, and really ought to be required reading for anyone who has been a Christian for more than a couple of years. It's fresh and suffused with the Holy Spirit. I love Philip Yancey's work!
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Summary: Jesus?
Review: It is hard to find anything I do not enjoy about Philip Yancey's writing. This book was a great example of how he can take a subject that has been looked at from so many angles, the life of Christ, and put a new and interesting spin on it for the reader. This book, although reaching at times, really makes you feel as if you were walking through Jerusalem as one of Jesus' disciples. What was he really like? How was he to be around? What did he care about? What did he mean when he said... Philip Yancey inspires the reader to read his book, and then dig deeper into the life of Christ. I can see why his books easily win awards for best Christian book of the year, year after year. There are not many Christian authors who will take the risks that he does, to tell it like it really is. The world needs authenticity, and Phillip Yancey delivers that time and time again. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to be challenged about their relationship with Christ, or just to find out more about what Christ was like here on earth while he was alive.
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Summary: Thought Provoking Book about Jesus
Review: This is the first Philip Yancey book that I have read, and I must say that I am impressed. The main reason I like this book is the straight-forward, honest approach that the author uses to find out more about Jesus, Christianity, and the Church. An endeavor that I am currently undergoing myself. For the book, the author did an enormous amount of research looking for the answers to the questions about Jesus that plagued him most. He looks at questions like: What was Jesus really like? How does the Church (and many Americans) view him now? How should we respond to His message? All valid questions that I think many people struggle with at some point. To answer these questions, Mr. Yancey follows the life of Jesus here on earth from start to finish, and gives his thoughts (and many others) and conclusions about Jesus. He draws his material from many sources, but I like the fact that he always goes back to the Gospels as the "measuring stick" for everything. I also like his conclusion that after writing a book about Jesus, that he has even more questions than when he started. I feel the same way. It seems the more I learn about Jesus, the more I feel that I don't know or understand. Luckily, this book has helped answer some questions that I had about Jesus, and gave me some fresh insight into what Jesus was all about. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a deeper relationship with Jesus, and wants to find out more about Him. This book will probably challenge your current view and opinions about Jesus, which hopefully will wet your appetite to know Him better, like it has with me.
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Summary: A must read!
Review: Phillip Yancy always writes from the heart. This book is wonderfully insightful into the mind of Mary and into the minds of the somewhat blundering Apostles. Sometimes people forget that the apostles were just fishermen, farmers, husbands, and tax collectors and that Mary was just a Jewish teenager trying to do the right thing. Yancy really puts things in a wonderfully down to earth, understandable way, and yet the Spirit shines through him and gives the words power. A must read for those who are looking for more Jesus than they get in Church.
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Summary: Good book! (Misleading title?)
Review: Having read the reviews and all, I was expecting to learn more about Jesus as "son of man", his daily life, what it was like to be around him, etc. In these aspects, I would say the book has not been ultimately satisfactory. I guess I was intrigued because of the title; although Yancey dissects some of Jesus' life, he often falls back on "God" or "the Church" as a whole (sometimes even redundantly so), thus the title is more specific than the book in itself. That accounts for the missing star. However, I'd still say that this book is a Must-Read for any Christian who has heard the Good News but wants to encounter the real significance of the Gospel on a more authentic - tangible level: It reveals a lot of truths about our relationship with God, or God's relationship with us, for that matter, and is also quite informative (for non-theologians, that is), regarding historical facts, etc. I might be biased, but this book has really touched my life - at just about the right time. Thank you. :)
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Summary: Inspiring insight marred by misguided interpretive methods.
Review: The main problem I have with this book is how Yancey frequently quotes the Gospels as if they were more or less history to support deductions or conclusions, not about faith in the risen Jesus Christ, but the historical Jesus who he might have seen as a first century observer, a vantage point that he deliberately adopts. He does not explicitly acknowledge doing this, perhaps because his intended audience will not be particularly knowledgeable or troubled by the technique. But his technique leaves his interpretation open to counter interpretations of the "personality" of Jesus, citing other evidence from the Gospels. The truth is that the Gospels were not intended to portray anything like a biographical image of Jesus and to the extent that they do, they are often inconsistent with one or the other evangelist editing the basic traditions or sources and even each other's words (particularly Matthew and Luke of Mark). So Yancey should have made clear that he could not draw the kinds of conclusions and human portrait that he does except from an imaginative exercise done for his own (and our) edification. There is nothing wrong with that exercise - to imagine Jesus as he was on earth by filling in with plausible supposition the many gaps and reconciling or picking and choosing among the inconsistencies - as long as we don't let ourselves be lulled into the notion that such a portrait is a substitute for the only direct understanding we can have of Jesus through Scripture - as the now risen Lord testified to in the Gospels (as well as the rest of the New Testament). This understanding comes only by reading/hearing them in faith. I believe that is what Yancey has done and then filled in his imaginative human portrait by selecting bits and pieces from the Gospels (and his own imagination) even though a scholarly consensus may exist that particular episodes he cites (especially from the Gospel of John) are hardly historical. Instead, they represent a truth, not of historicity, but of faith in the risen Christ. To rely on them for a literal "biographical" or psychological portrait of Jesus is to open Christianity to a charge of credulity. For example, to rely on the notion that Cana was literally Jesus' first miracle (as John would have it) to speculate about the course and development of Jesus' ministry and self-understanding is patently at odds with even conservative biblical scholarship. Yet Yancey engages in that kind of deductive reasoning repeatedly. Surely it would be better to tell us what John was conveying to us about the Lord Jesus in the miracle story of Cana than to simply write as if Cana was historical fact and to imply that its significance comes in substantial part from its historicity. For if historicity is assumed as a criterion of the Gospels' truth then we soon find ourselves in a terrible muddle because the historicity of much, if not most, of the detail in the Gospels simply cannot be defended. So a biographical and/or psychological portrait of Jesus, and a derived understanding of Jesus based on such a portrait, is inherently misleading because we cannot know the Jesus of history in that way. The "historical Jesus" critics (not to mention other skeptics) have a field day debunking and demythologizing portraits of Jesus based on strict literalism. If our faith depended on such a portrait, then we can trust that Jesus would have seen to it that an official biographer would have been commissioned with whom he could have shared his thoughts, feelings and motivations, or better yet he could have written his own memoirs or at least left around some documentary evidence. We would not have had four evangelists telling the story in highly idiosyncratic ways removed from Jesus by a generation, two of whom were independently dissatisfied enough with the first so that they saw fit to rearrange, edit, and greatly expand his material. This is a shame because Yancey has so much to say (and how well he says it) that is true and compelling about the Jesus of faith witnessed in the Gospels. But I could conceive of a different portrait by emphasizing other portions of the Gospels and then supplying interpretations and speculations (as many of opponents of Christianity have done throughout the ages) that would tend to discredit the Jesus of history and contradict the Christ of faith. So we need to carefully distinguish between what we say of Jesus as a matter of fundamental faith (which is why careful exegesis of the Gospels is so important) and the embellishments we add to that foundation to stir our imagination or intensify our personal faith or piety. I dwell on these qualifications because many other commenters have ably attested to the estimable corrective value of Yancey's work in reminding us that we really need to go back and read the Gospels afresh and be prepared to wrestle with the meaning both which the evangelists intended to convey and which we can now discern for our lives in the 21st century.
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Summary: Everyone serious about who Jesus is should read this book
Review: Philip Yancey has always been my favorite writer. His works have some peculiar candid which are hardly found elsewhere. He is serious about his Christianity belief, and never hesitate to ask tough questions normal believers would rather skip till they get to heaven. It is in this process of seeking answers to these tough questions that Yancey painfully but yet firmly grows his faith. I am always amazed by the courage and sincerity that Yancey put into each of his books exposing the troughs and peaks of his spiritual pilgrimage. Only by doing so is he so powerfully able to demonstrate to the world that Christianity is not a religion merely for the biased people who are raised in churches but rather universal truth that can be grasped by any serious seeker. You got questions about your belief that you dare not ask? You ever wonder why those crazy Christians around you are talking Jesus and God all the time? Read this book and other books by Yancey. You will be plentifully rewarded if you do so. Highly recommended.
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