Rating: 
Summary: An excellent reference book
Review: This is an excellent book. It presents many of the known canonical gospels and extracanonical gospels and gospel fragments from the first two hundred years after Jesus' ascension. These gospels are grouped together by type, such as narrative, sayings, and infancy. This book also contains the Signs Gospel; a collection called the Orphan Sayings and Stories; and gospel fragments. If your interest, or your studies, requires a starting point for understanding extracanonical gospels, add this book to your library. It is well researched and understandable. It is an excellent reference source.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting book, bad reference to follow
Review: This may serve as an entertaining book for the biblical student and some scholars... but is a misleading guide for the casual reader. Here are several untruthful "gospels" and incredible legends that really do not help us to understand the real Jesus. The Jesus Seminar made a contribution putting all these documents together and offering a new translation of some documents of the first christians era. But their ideas will confuse the naive readers.
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Summary: The Faulty Scholarship of the Jesus Seminar
Review: This review is meant to present caution to anyone who considers buying this book. In this review I will discuss the role of the creators of this book, talk about thier faulty scholarship practices, and present words of caution.This book is published by a group known as the Jesus Seminar. This group of people represents a great minority among biblical scholars, however the media feeds off of their findings because they are controversial. The majority of biblical scholars find thier work to be nothing more than horse poop. The Jesus Seminar tries to make texts that are obviously counterfeit in the world of scholarship EQUAL to texts that have historical backing. For example, they took a so-called "gospel" known as the "Talking Cross Gospel" which isn't even in a biblical language and try to say that it's as valid as any other gospel! Not only is it in a phony language, but it's from another time period! The early church saw this as an obvious fake, however the Jesus Seminar tries to validate it. Additionally, they try to evaluate what they think Jesus "really said," assuming that it was made up and added in later. This is totally bogus. I suggest that anybody who reads this should also read a book called "The Case For Christ," which goes into much further detail in one of its sections about this. Anyone who uses this book as a source of "enlightenment" will be misled. I suggest that anyone who wants to seek true "enlightenment" throw this book away. I did. It's deceptive, and absolutely not scholarly. If anyone who reads this is really seeking the truth, then he or she will absolutely consider reading a book called "The Case for Christ." Thank you.
Rating:
Summary: New Translation of the four Gospels plus lesser known books.
Review: This translation, called the Scholars Version, takes text from the original language, be it Greek, Herbrew, Aramaic, even Coptic, and brings it directly into modern American English. This method clarifies like no other translation I have ever read. The distinguished scholars who worked on this project succeeded in making in the four canonical Gospels exciting and understandable. In addition, many documents that had been lost for centuries are brought into the modern age. The Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Mary, the Hebrews, and others are presented from a historical prospective without comment on the content. That is left up to the reader. In addition, the Secret Book of James and other obscure documents reveal early Christian writings that will expose the reader to ideas and teachings that might conflict with the more common persecptions of Jesus' teachings. I highly recommend this book for anyone who continues to search for Jesus from both a spiritual and historical point of view. But please be warned that thi
Rating: 
Summary: New Testament Bowdlerization
Review: WARNING: This is not the self-proclaimed Scholar's Version it purports to be - it would be more appropriately entitled the Politically Correct Version (PCV). If your are considering purchasing this book, you may wish to read the following reviews: Buyer Beware (10/29/99), The Faulty Scholarship of the Jesus Seminar (09/03/00), A Collection of Gospels - What's All the Fuss About (12/03/00), Great Idea, but I Hate the Translation (04/19/01).
Rating:
Summary: kareema wheat
Review: Warning: this purported Scholars Version (SV) is really a Politically Correct Version (PCV).
Rating:
Summary: New Testament Bowdlerization
Review: WARNING: This self-proclaimed Scholar's Version (SV), would be more appropriately entitled the Politically Correct Version (PCV). If you are considering purchasing this book, you would do well to read these previous reviews: Buyer Beware (10/29/99), The Faulty Scholarship of the Jesus Seminar (09/03/00), A Collection of Gospels - What's All the Fuss About (12/03/00), Great Idea, but I Hate the Translation (04/19/01).
Rating:
Summary: A Collection of Gospels - What's All the Fuss About?
Review: What a mixture of feelings I have about this book. It is clearly polemical in intent; but it is also useful, bringing together so many Gospels in one place. It speaks in a language (supposedly more today's language) that I don't speak - but then I don't come from North America. What does this say about the Jesus Seminar and its relevance? It provides useful cross-referencing between intra and extra cannonical Gospel texts. But let me cut to the chase. I don't want to say "This is from the Jesus Seminar and they are biased, secular scholars with their own anti-evangelical agenda". This may or may not be true. Either way, the producing of texts which facilitate greater inquiry into their contents is always to be welcomed if it is done with integrity and promotes sane discussion. "The Complete Gospels" is a book I use and which enables me, as a graduate student, to take part in the debates about the historical Jesus and I would recommend it for this use. I can't claim it gives me any great(er) spiritual insight nor can I claim that it offers anything other than very basic (and somewhat selective, but then who isn't?) "cameo essays" about the texts contained and one or two related topics (i.e. the Synoptic problem). I would expect any reader, as with any other book, to have access to other works on similar topics from which to make an educated choice. This book does its job basically and, within those parameters, well. It isn't the oracle and neither is it the devil in disguise.
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