The Four Witnesses : The Rebel, the Rabbi, the Chronicler, and the Mystic

Rating:
Summary: The Four Witnesses
Review: There are plenty of nuggets that justify the effort it takes to stay with this book, such as glimpses of how Paul might have influenced the shape of the gospels. Overall, Mr. Griffith-Jones' opaque style seriously clouds what could have been a more illuminating study. I wonder if he meant to be so inaccessible. The author has plenty of insight to share, but spends much of the reader's patience on elaborate and contorted constructs which sometimes turn into circular thinking, and often lead to a fairly mundane point. He also wanders off for pages into tangential texts without making it clear they add all that much (a few do). The most valuable thing I got from the book, and it is significant, is a fresh sense of how audacious the Gospel messages were and are. This alone made a sometimes frustrating read worthwhile.

Rating:
Summary: No bueno
Review: While I learned some things about what it was like in Rome and surrounding communities when the early church was forming, I will second, third, fourth and fifth the other reviewers who say he would tell us what he was going to say and then not tell us. He was long-winded, and I found no real conclusion to the entire book, though it felt like he was trying to lead up to one. Perhaps I missed it.