Rating: 
Summary: A Readable, "Historical Jesus" Effort
Review: A. N. Wilson has written an informative and entertaining series of essays on Jesus of Nazareth. He is fascinated by Jesus, yet absolutely convinced that he was no God, just an unusually interesting, and caring, prophet. He couldn't have performed miracles, gospels or no, because miracles are impossible. Nevertheless, he is intrigued by the fact that a worldwide religion was sparked by this most unusual man.Like so many "historical Jesus" authors, he attempts to sort out what was myth (a lot, according to him) and what was historical. Of course, like all the others, what he comes up with is more open to criticism than what he started with. And since believers will sensibly ignore his analysis as hopelessly biased, those open to Wilson's method will find the book rewarding and stimulating. If you want to read a superior book about Jesus, one that doesn't pre-suppose the impossibility of miracles, but still treats the New Testament to thoughtful critical analysis, I would recommend Raymond Brown's books (especially "Death of the Messiah"). For an introduction, Robert H. Stein's "Jesus The Messiah" is filled with essential and sensible analysis, especially concerning how an author's "predisposition" (on miracles) fundamentally colors his approach, no matter how learnedly he tries to hide this fact. Mr. Wilson has subsequently issued another volume, "Paul" which has all the readability, but, alas, all the limitations, of this book.
Rating:
Summary: A Readable, "Historical Jesus" Effort
Review: A. N. Wilson has written an informative and entertaining series of essays on Jesus of Nazareth. He is fascinated by Jesus, yet absolutely convinced that he was no God, just an unusually interesting, and caring, prophet. He couldn't have performed miracles, gospels or no, because miracles are impossible. Nevertheless, he is intrigued by the fact that a worldwide religion was sparked by this most unusual man. Like so many "historical Jesus" authors, he attempts to sort out what was myth (a lot, according to him) and what was historical. Of course, like all the others, what he comes up with is more open to criticism than what he started with. And since believers will sensibly ignore his analysis as hopelessly biased, those open to Wilson's method will find the book rewarding and stimulating. If you want to read a superior book about Jesus, one that doesn't pre-suppose the impossibility of miracles, but still treats the New Testament to thoughtful critical analysis, I would recommend Raymond Brown's books (especially "Death of the Messiah"). For an introduction, Robert H. Stein's "Jesus The Messiah" is filled with essential and sensible analysis, especially concerning how an author's "predisposition" (on miracles) fundamentally colors his approach, no matter how learnedly he tries to hide this fact. Mr. Wilson has subsequently issued another volume, "Paul" which has all the readability, but, alas, all the limitations, of this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Historical Jesus
Review: The Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are different. A.N. Wilson writes about the Jesus of history. A likely date for Jesus's birth is 4 BCE. Wilson believes he was born in Galilee. He died about 30 CE. Wilson identifies Jesus as a cult figure of three distinct traditions, that of the Jewish congregation of Jerusalem, that of Paul's teachings, and that of the Fourth Gospel. When Jerusalem was sacked in 70 CE the first tradition died. Paul won the argument. The Old Testament is the record of an evolving religious consciousness. The Book of Job is the most Homeric of the Biblical books. Christ is Greek for Messiah. The Thessalonians were warned to keep a look out. The urgent but essentially false warning came from Paul. Paul uses the phrase so often the Gospel of Christ meaning the Gospel of Good News about the Messiah. Christ or Messiah means the annointed one. A key text for the Jews waiting for the Messiah was the Book of Daniel. In the Greek world it was not surprising that a Jewish Messiah could be perceived as divine. In First Corinthians Paul refers to the historical Jesus. Paul may be said to be the inventor of the Christian religion. The eucharist is more like the mystery cults than orthodox Jewish practice. To Paul the significant fact was Jesus was risen. A.N. Wilson provides a naturalistic explanation to the historical Jesus. He provides fascinating analysis in his book.
Rating:
Summary: Historical Jesus
Review: The Jesus of history and the Christ of faith are different. A.N. Wilson writes about the Jesus of history. A likely date for Jesus's birth is 4 BCE. Wilson believes he was born in Galilee. He died about 30 CE. Wilson identifies Jesus as a cult figure of three distinct traditions, that of the Jewish congregation of Jerusalem, that of Paul's teachings, and that of the Fourth Gospel. When Jerusalem was sacked in 70 CE the first tradition died. Paul won the argument. The Old Testament is the record of an evolving religious consciousness. The Book of Job is the most Homeric of the Biblical books. Christ is Greek for Messiah. The Thessalonians were warned to keep a look out. The urgent but essentially false warning came from Paul. Paul uses the phrase so often the Gospel of Christ meaning the Gospel of Good News about the Messiah. Christ or Messiah means the annointed one. A key text for the Jews waiting for the Messiah was the Book of Daniel. In the Greek world it was not surprising that a Jewish Messiah could be perceived as divine. In First Corinthians Paul refers to the historical Jesus. Paul may be said to be the inventor of the Christian religion. The eucharist is more like the mystery cults than orthodox Jewish practice. To Paul the significant fact was Jesus was risen. A.N. Wilson provides a naturalistic explanation to the historical Jesus. He provides fascinating analysis in his book.
Rating:
Summary: This book is well researched and logically thought out.
Review: This book is well researched. The author applies logic to arrive at various conclusions. His conclusions will certainly not be well received by traditional Christians as they call into questions many fundemental beliefs of most contemporary Christain churches. Jesus comes across as a good man who perhaps had a unique message that was misunderstood at the time. This misunderstanding may have contributed to his brutal death.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant balderdash.
Review: This book suceeds admirably in capturing is primary subject: its author, A. N. Wilson. As for Jesus, try another book. Wilson frequently adjusts facts to fit his story line. Paul's "as though I were a child abnormally born" processes through his imagination and comes out as a confession that Paul's Gospel "is quite different from the beliefs and practices of Jesus' own friends and family." (Never mind that he said just the opposite.) He discovers that Jesus had a home, after all, and that Peter "made a substantial profit" in his fish business. (Perhaps he found a scribal copy of his W-2 form?) Wilson shows little feel for the available evidence from First Century Palestine. Paul reports that hundreds have seen the risen Christ. Roman historians do not mention these witnesses, therefore, Wilson deduces, Paul is making it up. By contrast, when real historians speak of the period, they point out that even for central facts about mainstream Jewish religion, they may need to rely on reports that are 150 years after the fact. In such circumstances, making an argument from ignorance ("No confirmation, therefore it must not be true") is like asking why none of the apostles appeared on Oprah. At times Wilson appears to be competing with Bertrand Russell for who can shock people by saying the silliest bon mot. "One could name dozens of figures who have been of far greater influence on the human race than Jesus," Wilson says. Then he names one dozen, four of whom were deeply committed followers of Jesus, four of whom reacted against Jesus, and all of whom together may or may not have equalled the influence of the Sermon on the Mount. Wilson plays Sherlock Holmes. "It is a curious number, 500." "The devils didn't go out of the demoniac and into the pigs. No, clearly, his shrieks frightened them," and they all rushed down the hill and plunged into the lake. At times like that, he reminds me a bit of Inspector Cleauseau negotiating his way across the lobby of a Swiss hotel. He doesn't quite know the language, his credentials are mostly bluff, and he asks questions (in a pretentious tone) that are over-clever and under-wise at the same time. But I grant the spectacle is entertaining. Not that Wilson is a stupid man. Despite himself (as he says of the Gospel writers), on occasion a snatch of eloquence or even good sense peeps through the bluster. He speaks of "another layer in (John's) endless layers, another ingrediant in its inexhaustible richness and fascination as a literary text." "No saying or story of Jesus can be taken to its logical conclusion without being contradicted by some other saying or fact." But then the sun drops behind another cloud of subjectivity and wild imagination. Perhaps his atheism is partly to blame. Trying to find a historically and psychologically explanation for the birth of Christianity that fit the materialistic paradigm was one of the great cottage industries of the 20th Century. Wilson seems to hope that he'll be the lucky one to hit the jackpot. But he lacks the scholarly tools, or temperament, to make a serious attempt. I read this book just after finishing N. T. Wright's Jesus and the Victory of God, which is a genuine work of scholarship. By contrast, scholars call Wilson's NT works "wrongheaded and muddled" (Luke Johnson) and "silly and pretentious" (Richard B. Hays). Wright is also patronizing, but he has some excuse: he really knows something about 1st Century Israel. The difference is extraordinary. If you want to learn something about history, read Wright. If you want a poetic interpretation of Jesus, this book has its moments, but Chesterton's Everlasting Man is superior. My first Wilson biography was of C. S. Lewis. An aquaintance of Lewis noted that for all Wilson's literary talent, his portrait of the man was "almost unrecognizable." Both men were Oxford grads, Anglican and atheist as different times, and talented writers whose native language was English. Jesus, of course, was different on all counts. This biography is subjective and mistaken to a corresponding degree -- unless, of course, you read it as an autobiography. Author, Jesus and the Religions of Man
Rating: 
Summary: The "thinking person's" biography of Jesus.
Review: This fascinating book is best seen as a prelude to Wilson's biography of St. Paul, which develops several of the themes touched upon here. Wilson is a respected novelist and biographer whose life of Tolstoy was particularly well received. As a non-academic, he is free to make leaps and take risks that (while deplored by scholars) enable his fortunate readers to grasp the living realities that lay, or might have lain, behind Wilson's subject.
Wilson approaches Jesus as a rational biographer/historian, without imposing any particular dogma (unless one considers post-Renaissance rationalism to be a dogma). Starting with the relatively non-controversial theories of Biblical critics and historians of religion, which are lucidly explained, Wilson applies his own intelligence and understanding of human nature to suggest where the historical Jesus probably differed from the "Christ" figure that has been handed down to us.
Certainly, Wilson's *Jesus* will frustrate Christian believers who may be uninterested in questioning Jesus' divinity. But open-minded readers who want to begin to understand the origins of Christianity will enjoy this book immensely. Recommended follow-up volumes are Wilson's *Paul* and Mack's *Who Wrote the New Testament?*
Rating:
Summary: Beautifully written, profound, but not very convincing.
Review: This is a beautifully written, entertaining, and quite profound work. But I give it only three stars because the last chapters on the Passion and Resurrection are a more than a bit flaky. For me, the major themes of Wilson's book are that Jesus did not set out to create a religion, and that he never claimed to be the Son of God. These themes (hobby horses?) don't get in the way much when Wilson is recounting the life of Jesus. But they prove to be a real impediment to his understanding of the Passion, Resurrection and Christ's role in creating the Christian religion. While discussing Christ's life proper, Wilson sometimes goes out on a limb. For instance, he insists that Jesus was not born in a manger. His arguments for this point of view are substantial, but they aren't so convincing as to make us want to disbelieve the explicit testimony in Luke to the effect that Mary wrapped up Christ and "laid him in a manger." Luke repeats this detail two more times in the next few sentences of his Gospel. Why in the world should we believe Wilson who lived two thousand years after the event, and disbelieve Luke, who was a relative contemporary of Christ? No historical argument, no matter how cleverly couched, is more convincing that Luke's simple, straight forward testimony. Nevertheless, Wilson is a good writer, who digs under the surface of events and sees much of what is important in the Bible. He writes beautifully and convincingly about the central import of love and forgiveness in the Bible, and is openly accepting of most of Christ's miracles. The real problem comes in the end, when the discussion turns to the import of Christ's life. In these passages, Wilson insists that Christ is not the Son of God. But Mark opens his Gospel by saying "Here begins the Gospel of Jesus Christ the Son of God." And there are numerous other references throughout the Bible to much the same purpose. Again, Wilson insists that there is no evidence for the trinity in the Bible, but in Matthew, Christ says his disciples should "baptize men everywhere in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." And Wilson says that Christ never intended to create a church, but Jesus explicitly asks his disciples in Mark 16 to "Go forth to every part of the world, and proclaim the Good News to the whole creation." Wilson is not a fool, and his problem is not that he misses these obvious passages in the Bible. Rather, he buys into a lot of contemporary scholarship which attempts to say which parts of the Bible are valid and which are not. This is a very risky business, as it is very difficult to convince a reader that contemporaries or relatively contemporaries of Christ did not know what they were talking about, and that some scribbler, no matter how intelligent or learned, living 2000 years after the fact does know what actually happened. Worse, Wilson often fails to tell both sides of the case. For instance, he cleverly says that Jesus never explicitly stated that he was the Son of God, but neglects to point out passages where Christ implies as much, or where other authorities explicitly state that he is the Son of God. To be convincing, you need to both present arguments for your side, and show why arguments to contrary are false. In most cases, Wilson is a sympathetic and moving writer. But in some cases he has a tin ear for the facts. For instance, he can't understand why Christ should be worried about his upcoming death if he knows that he will be resurrected. Wilson uses this argument to try to convince the reader that Christ was not sufficiently all knowing to understand that he would be resurrected. I myself am a Christian, and believe that I will "live" after I die. This does not mean that I would be unconcerned to learn that I was about to undergo an ordeal as painful and humiliating as a Roman crucification. Nevertheless, this book is beautifully written, often quite moving, and in spirit often close to what I believe to be Christ's actual message. It also contains a number of "fun facts" or interesting theories that made me smile or sent me happily thumbing through my Bibles. If you are interested in a reading a series of books on Christ's life, I would recommend this one. If you are interested in reading only one book on Christ, then I don't think this would be a good choice. A reason to overrule my rating would be if you have found other book's on Christ's life to be hopelessly boring or heavy handed. This book is neither, and should keep you interested and involved throughout all but the last two or three chapters. You might also find this book interesting if you have never read a book on Christ by an intelligent skeptic before, and want to read an entertaining one just for the sake of rounding out your education. There may be other skeptics who have done a better job than this, but Wilson is way above the norm for the genre.
Rating:
Summary: Journalism with scholarship
Review: This is a very scholarly treatment with Wilson's own thoughts on the subject. Not just history, but what he feels about it and how it makes sense to him. Avoiding the extreme that Jesus did not exist, this book is an objective account of Jesus' life and represents a very readable, sympathetic study. Great for students, scholars and sceptics but not so much for traditionalists.
Rating:
Summary: A Defense of Jesus the Man
Review: This remarkable book accomplishes two difficult tasks that may seem at odds to those who have not read it: it decisively dethrones any remaining New Testament claim to historical validity while defending the life and teachings of the real Jesus against the institutions that have grown in their influence by putting words in the man's mouth. It is difficult to imagine a more impressive feat.
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