Monday, May 31, 2010

A Journalist's account of Yeshua (Jesus)

If I could rate a book a 0, this would be the one. The Gospel of Yeshua: A Fresh Look at the Life and Teaching of Jesus is certainly not a critical study of Jesus, which is fine, but I find little that is "Fresh" that is also not just goofy, if not absurd.
Johnson claims that Jesus went to other countries to learn about other faiths, but has no evidence or citations to back up this assertion. He claims that Jesus would not use his miraculous powers to give people material comfort, but what would you call the "miracle of the loaves"? In typically Protestant fashion, he downplays or denies "The Anunciation" and the prominence given to Mary in The Gospel of Luke.
He also keeps the bias about Jesus being all about Love and not beginning caught up in the Law, though Jesus does say that he is the fulfillment of the Law too.
I'm not sure his method of combining the Gospel accounts and adding his own works, but footnotes or some idea how he came up with these accounts would be nice.
Johnson has Jesus as a practitioner of Eastern meditation, but again there is no clear idea where this comes from!
Don't waste your time with this book, there are many, nearly any other "biography" of Jesus that would be better than this one.
Czar

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