Rating: 
Summary: This book restatesthe theological position of the judaizers.
Review: This book presents nothing new. Although well-written researched, it is based on two premises: (1). That the supernatural is not possible, therefore anything in the Bible that is miraculous and supernatural is false, and (2). The author has recovered and restated the theological position of the Judaizers whose conflict with St. Paul led to the Council of Jerusalem reported in the Book of Acts which was won by St. Paul. The Judaizer's position was that Christianity was properly a sect of Judaism, that Christians must first be observant, circumsized Jews, and that Jesus Christ was not divine. These views were continued by the Ebionites and their successors and was the first of the heresies. There is nothing new here, just an articulate recovery of he earliest of the Christian Heresies coupled with higher criticism and redaction analysis leading to the denial of the supernatural. Where Christology (the study of teachings about the nature of Jesus Christ)is concerned, there really is nothing new under the sun.
Rating: 
Summary: This book answered questions I didn't even know I had.
Review: This book is a wake-up call Christians need to hear. Sadly, most won't bother to heed it. I read this massive work in an effort to confirm or refute what had previously been [in my "orthodox-Christian" mind] a cruel rumor: that the apostle Paul was a subversive, apostate preacher of a pagan religion, not to mention a darn good creative writer... Although Eisenman's "volume II" promises to be on Paul, there was plenty in this first volume to prove the "rumors" I'd read TRUE. And while this book has thereby caused my "orthodox-Christianity" to take a loop-de-looping nose-dive, I highly recommend it to other honest truth seekers.
Rating:
Summary: The definitive text.
Review: Over the years, I have read at least a dozen books on the historical Jesus. None comes close to this one for its exhaustive research into all availabe sources. This book or thesis could not have been written in any other less scholarly style because Dr. Eisenman's conclusions demand to be supported exhaustively. And so he does. The thousand pages go by in a whiz even with my patient re-reading of many sections to get it right. Exciting stuff.
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Summary: Great Book teaches a lot but innacurate on Islamic points
Review: Professor Eisenmann has done a great job. I love this monumental work at putting the real nazarenes back into their correct historical perspective. As a practicing Australian muslim I have had many ideas that I have believed for a long time fully articulated in this tome of wisdom. The reason why certain words are used in the Arabic Quran dealing with christianity makes perfect sense through the light of this book. Nasara = nazorean = christian. Reading this book makes me feel a much stronger affinity with Jesus and his real life and religion. I love Jesus more now as the true nationalist political revolutionary that he was and no doubt his follwers were. I can't wait for volume two. Just an aside, and no disrespect to Prof Eisenmann, some of his notes on Islam are a little inaccurate. Thanks for a great book.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely wonderful scholarship.
Review: I first saw this massive book in my small-town library, and, over the last 5 months have had to check the book out on four occasions, in order to get through it! What a treat! Even though I am not the least bit knowledgeable about Biblical scholarship, I read this work with passion. How anyone could find Professor Eisenman difficult to read, is beyond me!.... I am awed!... This work goes far beyond James or Jesus.... It goes to the very heart of a small Jewish cult which was slowly transformed into a monsterous world-wide fraud.
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Summary: Now I know how Christianity got started.
Review: I learned from science that there was a Big Bang, that evolution is a fact, and that souls and spirits are missing. I learned from history that there were about 20 other saviors who were born of a virgin on December 25, were crucified, and rose from the dead. Obviously, Christianity is just another form of Mithraism. But no one until Eisenman presented so much evidence on how the grim fairytale about Jesus started.After many years of searching for a satisfying answer, I am at peace because of Eisenman's great scholarship. About 10% of the population are most grateful for James the Brother of Jesus. The rest are too ignorant to appreciate it, or are the control freaks that perpetuate the myth, or are the fearful, believing sheep.
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Summary: Prof. Eisenman's Response to Saldarini Review of JAMES THE B
Review: CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, LONG BEACH
DEPARTMENT OF RELIGIOUS STUDIES (310)985 5341
April 28th, 1997
Charles McGrath, Editor
The New York Times Book Review
229 N. 43rd Street
New York, N. Y. 10036
[This letter responding to Professor Saldarini's review of my book, JAMES THE BROTHER OF JESUS (4/27)]
It is a pity people like Anthony Saldarini, the Jesuit-trained associate editor of the Catholic Biblical Quarterly, are unwilling to face up to the anti-Semitism in their own religious documents. But it is just this anti-Semitism and the fictionalized overwrites in early Church documents that foster it, that James the Brother of Jesus helps illumine and ameliorate.
Prof. Saldarini cries out for the Greek blood shed in Palestine, while ignoring pogroms in cities such as Caesarea, Alexandria, Damascus, Bait Shean, etc. and the literally hundreds of thousands of Jews butchered in this period, amply documented by Josephus. At Tiberias alone, a focus of his outrage -- and mine -- Josephus reports that "the whole Sea of Galilee ran red with blood" ( 6700 being butchered ) and catalogue 1200 old and infirm slaughtered, 6000 able-bodied young sent to dig the Corinth Canal for Nero, and 30,500 survivors sold into slavery.
Where "idiosyncrasy" is concerned, consider Prof. Saldarini's own interpretation of the single passage from Josephus he cites (from my dedication no less!), which makes it clear that Monobazus and Kenedaeos, royal converts to Judaism from Northern Syria -- and among the bravest warriors of the outbreak of the war against Rome, were martyred; and so they were -- despite his attempts to deny this.
He mentions "Silas and Niger", who clearly survived to die later -the latter under the peculiarly 'Christ'-like circumstances I describe -but I do not say otherwise. In claiming this proves the first pair did not die (only a Jesuitical mind could manage this one), he buries poor Monobazus and Kenedaeos a second time, denigrating their Jewish martyrdom in favor of his own heroes and mythologies. But Josephus only cites this second pair as an afterthought and example of the bravery exhibited by the first.
His intent in focusing on my dedication to Monobazus and Kenedaeos, which exercises him inordinately (as does the Jewish nationalism he feels he detects lurking beneath it), is to make it appear as if I have confused their grandmother, Queen Helen of Adiabene with Queen Kandakes in Acts. How could I confuse the two, when I spend a whole Chapter (25), the penultimate ("The Conversion of Queen Helen and the Ethiopian Queen's Eunuch"), discussing them?
Rather, I think one is a parody of the other (malevolent at that,since Helen's sons circumcised themselves when they converted -- therefore Acts' allusion to "eunuch"). But he could only know this if he had bothered to read to the end of my book, since it is not a fixture of the orthodox scholarship ha represents. Demonstrably he did not.
In deliberately confining himself to such minutiae, his purpose is to make it appear to an unschooled audience that I do not have my facts right; whereas it is his version that is incorrect. We have had two millennia of this kind of history. Isn't it time the opposite side had a chance to be heard?
Mr. Saldarini's critique of my dedication to "Jesus son of Sapphias" (did he get beyond this point? ) is even more bizarre. He is so biased, that it is not only hard to recognize my book in his retelling, but by focusing on the side issue of the relatively minor Greek casualties in the rioting, he makes it appear -- as with Queen Helen's descendants above -- that Jesus son of Sapphias was not massacred on the Sea of Galilee with 6700 of his revolutionary Galilean/boatmen followers by Roman soldiers!
Even more importantly, again he misses the whole point of my citing this Jesus and the parody involved (not one of his strong suits). The events surrounding "Jesus" and his revolutionary boatmen are the precise inversion of the "Jesus" in Scripture (or rather vice versa -- the "Jesus" of Scripture is the inversion of them!) and the really tragic and blood-curdling events that were transpiring upon the Sea of Galilee in those days.
Regarding my proofs, which areextremely painstaking and detailed, Mr. Saldarini appears to resent people like myself being given the opportunity to fully present their arguments and criticizes my editors for publishing my work. He would obviously prefer I go through another inquisition conducted by people like himself first. His presentation of my arguments regarding the election to succeed Judas Iscariot in Acts as a malevolent overwrite of the election of James to succeed his brother -- one of a almost whole series of missing historical events, almost always overwritten with anti-Semitic intent in Acts -- is scandalous.
Seriously, how can my work be fairly judged by someone who is constrained to deny Jesus had any brothers ( rather "cousins" or "half-brothers" ), not to mention that they were his legitimate successors in Palestine; nor that the Book of Acts is full of loopholes -- nay, even deliberate fabrications -- and is obliged to embrace doctrines, such as the "perpetual virginity" of Mary?
But this is just the point of publishing a book like mine -- rich in data and packed with proofs -- so the public will have the wherewithal to decide for itself. It is not I who amill-serving the public, as he puts it ( he would have to ), but rather The New York Times and its readers are ill-served by prejudiced and inaccurate reviews like his.
Yours sincerely,
Robert Eisenman
--www.csulb.edu/~relstud/
Rating:
Summary: Forbidden History
Review: Eisenman's "James" is the best work of non-fiction I have EVER read. It should be required reading for anyone who makes ANY claim to (Western) religious knowledge -- whether theological, historical, or spiritual. It is not for the faint of heart: it is both physically massive and conceptually dense. It took me six months to read it all. My wife called it my "Tome." To pick it up is a real commitment, but boy is it worth the investment.
Though his style is scholarly, Eisenman's tale is nonetheless gripping. He outlines his premises, then fills in the details with meticulous care. As a reader, I was as absorbed and involved as I've ever been in a mystery. And ultimately that's what this book is: a detective story -- but one to which each of us has a real and important relation. It's a story of intrigue and transcendence, of subterfuge and conflict. It shines a very direct light on the shadowy foundations of Western religious assumption.
Reading it, I was fascinated by the principal personalities of Eisenman's story -- James, Josephus, and Paul -- as well as the dozens of fragmentary echoes of voices that were silenced long ago. One is left wondering at the systematic erasure of sources like Eusebius: all that remains of his histories are a handful of attributed quotes, which appear in others' writings. Eisenman gathers a thousand such fragments and very carefully links them up. Taken separately, the pieces say very little; together, they really, in my opinion, constitute a secret, essential, and yet sadly forbidden story.
The major points the author makes are:
James was the undisputed successor to Jesus;
Early Christianity was very Jewish and very messianic;
Paul's philosophy of inclusion is antithetical to the real tenets
of early Christianity;
Early Christianity was stronly allied with the Qumran-Essene population;
... and a thousand other things....
If you want to understand Christianity, "James" is a giant first step.
Rating:
Summary: Woeful
Review: I quickly came to detest Eisenman. I formed the firm impression that his preferred conversational style is to trap a listener in a corner & rave incoherently at him or her for hours, caring nothing for the other's interest, understanding or enjoyment.
An historian addressing this period needs to do so with great humility, acknowledging always that there are only scraps and fragments of evidence to work with. Any conclusions must be tentative & an honest worker will always rememember that while it is necessary to formulate stories to make sense of the bits & pieces, they are always just stories.
This is not the attitude of Eisenman, and in a sense the value of his conclusions is irrelevant, because he is not somebody I can trust to modify his sory if a better one comes along, or some of the assumptions behind it are overtaken or re-initerpreted.
Rating: 
Summary: ouch
Review: If one longs to undergo the cerebral equivalent of a 24 hour root-canal then this, literally, weighty tome is the perfect answer. Thick with a plethora of "factlets", dense with obfuscation, rife with interminably convoluted explanations, Eisenman's epic is perfectly suited for the intellectual masochist. I am highly suspect of any author who demands a pound of reader determination in exchange for an ounce of enlightenment. Spare the biceps and the brain...seek out Hyram Maccoby's books if you seek cogent information.
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