The Apocryphal Jesus: Legends of the Early Church

Rating:
Summary: Colourful and entertaining
Review: The Apocryphal Jesus is a wonderful and colourful collection of stories gleaned around the early Church. I found much that I hadn't come across before. If it were only for this it would be worth buying, but it is more. Elliott has done a masterful job in clearly presenting the stories against their contemporary settings. However, after reading the wonderful and revelatory account of "The Autobiography of Jesus of Nazareth and the Missing Years" by Richard G. Patton I now view most 'authenticated' offerings around the man we know as Jesus with a degree of skepticism. Elliott's "Apocryphal Jesus" is a colorful delight but is up against the wonderful and profound offering by Richard G. Patton.

Rating:
Summary: Boring
Review: While some of the stories do tend to be moderately entertaining, this book consists mainly of nice safe stories that are often simply speculation on (and expansion of) stories found in the canonized New Testament. Even the Gospel of Thomas is reduced down to sayings that can pretty much be found in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The author/editor goes to lengths to avoid anything Gnostic or otherwise "heretical" and always warns the reader if something that comes close to that category will be mentioned. Basically it is just clean and friendly reading for the cautiously rebellious Christian. No worries of burning in hell for reading this one. In fact, you might as well just read the New Testament again.
The one slightly redeeming quality, which was likely not intended, is that it allows the reader to see where the roots of much anti-Semitism and persecution of all non-Christian thought has it's origin. More than a few of the stories harp on how evil Jews are or how stupid Pagans are.