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What Have They Done with Jesus?: Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History--Why We Can Trust the Bible

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Dr. Witherington contends that the primary source documents found in the New Testament are a much more reliable source for information on the historical Jesus than anything you will find in the gnostic Gospel of Judas or in any of the documents found in the Nag Hammadi Library. He also feels that getting close to the historical Jesus involves getting close to the people who knew Him best, and so there are chapters about Peter, Paul, his mother Mary, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, the beloved disciple (the author of the Gospel of John), and his brother James.

Ben reveals that there is no historical foundation for identifying Mary Magdalene as the wife of Jesus, and that the material about her in the Gospel of Philip and in the gospel bearing her name are inconclusive and appear to tell us more about 2nd and 3rd century gnosticism than they do about Mary Magdalene or anything in the life of the historical Jesus.

The chapter about the mother of Jesus shows quite clearly that she didn't really put all of the pieces together about who her son really was until the end of His life, and that she is found in the upper room with the other disciples in Acts 1:14.

The chapter on Peter shows that the Gospel accounts are painfully honest about his triumphs and his failures as an agent of Christ. The material in 1 Peter and in 2 Peter 1:12-2:3 where Peter reflects on what he has learned as one who knew the Lord rings true. Peter very clearly sees Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

There are a few surprises along the way. Ben makes a powerful and convincing case that the beloved disciple who penned the fourth gospel is none other than Lazarus. He also holds (less convincingly in my view) that Joanna the wife of Chuza who traveled with the Lord's apostolic band (Luke 8:1-3) is in all likelihood to be identified with the female apostle Junia found in Romans 16:7.

Ben has also changed his view on the threefold questioning of Peter by Jesus in John 21. He now sees the word change from agape to phileo by Jesus in verse 17 as more significant than he originally thought. He sees it as Jesus questioning Peter's professed brotherly love for Him. I agree with Ben.

Throughout this epochal book, Ben has clearly made the case that there is enough light and truth breaking out of God's Holy Word concerning the historical Jesus that there is really no need to consult spurious documents two hundred years after the time of Jesus or to trust the gnostic and occasionally anti-Semitic Gospel of Thomas. He concludes the church had a high Christology of Jesus from the earliest years of Christianity all the way through the New Testament, and that the ancient faith was not a battleground of dueling Christianities.

This is a wonderful read, and a sorely needed book. There is a lot of junk floating around purporting to tell us something special and new about the real Jesus, and Ben cuts through all the baloney and takes us back to the primary sources. Go ahead and buy this book and read it through carefully. It is a great antidote to the stuff found in the DaVinci Code and to the stuff found in the National Geographic special on the Gospel of Judas.

I am not a seminary student. Most theological books I have read tend to be lofty and rife with jargon. This one is not. Whenever Witherington introduces a term or concept, he explains it for the novice.

Whether you are liberal or conservative in your theology, you can easily understand Witherington's thinking process and exegesis. He is thorough, researched, full of references, and well organized.

This book was hard to put down and left me wanting more which is unique for me when reading nonfiction. I would not be surprised if this book becomes a sort of primer for the historicity of Jesus.

I recommend this book because of its content, exegetic process, and presentation. I received it for Christmas and am proud to display it in my library.

Common to the Christological revisionists are claims that there are lost or suppressed Christianities, and that there is a radical discontinuity between who Jesus really was and how he was represented by his early - and later - followers. What much of this amounts to is an attempt to rewrite history, to undermine the reliability of the New Testament, and to recreate Jesus in the image of liberal scholarship.

Thus we need once again to determine just who Jesus really was, and what in fact was his message. And the best way to do that, argues New Testament scholar Ben Witherington, it to get back to the inner circle of Jesus. Those who were closest to him or knew him best are our most reliable guides to what he believed and what the early faith was all about. This book provides a close look at this so-called inner circle. It carefully examines those from Jesus' own physical family: Mary, James and Jude; as well as Peter, the Beloved Disciple, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Paul.

Taken together, their testimonies help us understand who Jesus was, and what his core message was. A close examination of these individuals reveals that they all agree to a common understanding of the man and his mission.

Witherington argues that no wide wedge can be driven between these close associates and their take on Jesus, and that of Jesus himself. Consider James, the brother of Jesus, and the first leader of the post-Easter Jesus movement. The contents of the epistle that bears his name are remarkably similar to that of the most basic teachings of Jesus.

For example, one can find over two dozen close similarities between what is found in his epistle and what is recorded in the Sermon on the Mount. This demonstrates, in part, that James is quite familiar with the sayings of Jesus in some form. Says Witheringtom, "the letter of James is deeply indebted to the Jesus tradition".

And the oft-heard contentions that James and Paul are fundamentally at odds, or that Paul has radically reinterpreted Jesus, are far from the truth. There are admittedly differences of emphasis between Paul - the missionary to the Gentiles - and James - who ministered to Jewish believers - but their basic message is the same, centred on a high view of Christ and his saving work.

And Paul's theology flows out of the life and teaching of Jesus. He is no inventor of new theologies, but a faithful witness to the Jesus story. His message is fully in accord with the others of the Jesus circle. Any differences among them, suggests Witherington, are primarily ecclesiological in nature, not Christological.

The inner circle stands in complete continuity with Jesus and his message. And the message they spread was quite congruous. Says Witherington, "the earliest Christian leaders were remarkably similar in their beliefs about the divinity of Jesus, the way of salvation, and basic ethics".

The idea that they, or others, have somehow misrepresented Jesus or departed from his words and teachings is simply without any firm evidence, argues Witherington. Indeed, the idea that there were competing Christianities during the first century is simply incorrect. The kind of Gnostic gospels and alternative Christianities that many modern liberal theologians seek to argue for simply were not in existence during the time of the very early church, but instead begin to appear in the second to the fourth centuries.

"It is pointless to talk about `lost Christianities' if we are talking about the apostolic age," says Witherington, "because there were no forms of Christianity like later Gnosticism already extant in the first century." Indeed, "as far as we know there were no forms of earliest Christianity that did not worship Jesus as crucified and risen Lord".

The earliest leaders of the Jesus movement shared a very high Christology, and a common understanding of the basic Christian message. Indeed, all the New Testament documents "can be traced back directly or indirectly to the inner circle of Jesus," and all 27 New Testament documents present a messianic picture of Jesus.

Asks Witherington, who should we most heavily rely upon: The inner circle of Jesus or later Gnostic writings? The inner circle had "more than enough living contact with the historical Jesus to remember who Jesus was, what his teaching was like, and what claims (implicit or explicit) he made of a messianic nature".

Concludes Witherington, "There is no nonmessianic Jesus to be found at the bottom of the well of history".

It is imperative that the new Christological revisionism is challenged historically and biblically. That Witherington does here to great effect.

The subtitle is a better guide to the contents of the book than the title. I had expected this to focus on critiquing other people's work, but that is only incidental to the author's explication of his own point of view. That's not a complaint, just a clarification. The exception is an appendix, pp. 293-309, which is an in-depth review of James Tabor's The Jesus Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of Christianity. I found that book pretty interesting, and this contains some very valid criticisms.

Since this is a topic about which many people, including me, have strong ideas in which they have a substantial investment, I am not going to attempt to judge whether Witherington is "right" or "wrong", merely whether or not it is worth reading, especially for laypeople. I also have no ambitions to judge his scholarship; I leave the meaning of ancient Greek prepositions to those who know what they are talking about.

Since he refers to them in the third person, I assume that Witherington does not consider himself to be a fundamentalist. I gather that he doesn't regard that Christian canon as inerrant dictations from the Holy Spirit, but rather as the good-faith, reliable testimony of eye-witnesses. He includes miracles and the resurrection of Jesus as events on which they may be trusted. He makes a careful comparison of various texts and comments upon their probably lineage, e.g., Paul to Luke, Peter to Mark, etc. He is concerned mainly with the apostolic era. He argues that there were different streams of Christianity, e.g., Gentile versus Jewish, but that these difference were often more cultural than theological. There may have been multiple churches in one place with different orientations, but these represented an agreement to disagree, not hostility.

By the same token, he argues that the so-called Gnostic gospels, and other later writings, are so different from the early writings that it is doubtful that they were original strains of Christianity. Although I admire the tolerance and equality which some scholars have attributed to Gnostic gospels, I have never found their theology appealing, and I am amused by Witherington's comments (pp.28-29): "This puts salvation on a whole different footing ... [s]alvation is a matter of who you know and how well you understand these secret sayings ... presumably salvation for the literate or even the learned. It is not a surprise that some scholars find this vision of salvation appealing. ... This sounds like a form of revelation that can be received only by those who have far too much time on their hands." Cleverly and effectively put.

I think this is very well done: clear and logical. I don't think that definitive answers are possible to these questions, but Witherington has done an exemplary job of presenting his case. The chapters are organized around particular members of the early Christian community: e.g., Peter, James the Just, Mary Magdalene, Paul, etc. Particularly in the beginning, Witherington often shows a good-natured wit: the Introduction is entitled "The Origins of the Specious." The section labelled "Doubting Thomas" (p. 27) begins: "There is no doubting that the Gospel of Thomas ... "

I don't accept Witherington's criticisms of Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why (Plus). Ehrman's point is that while the originals of canonical documents may have been written in the first century, we have only later copies which differ from one another. In the picky, ruthless world of theology, "those who have far too much time on their hands", small differences have led to bloodshed.

I recommend having a Bible while reading this, since Witherington does not always explicate the verses he quotes, but although I didn't have one, he explains well enough that I didn't feel too much lack. (I have not read most of the Epistles, and in those cases, I had no idea what they were about, except as Witherington explains them.) [Added later: After a well-deserved chatisement by a commentator on this review, I read the rest of the Epistles - none of my views are changed.]

There is no bibliography, outside of the notes, which also contain numerous explanatory in addition to bibliographic notes. My personal preference is for having a separate bibliography and explanatory notes at the bottom of the page. The indexing could be a little more thorough: the reader is not led to information about the Gospel of Thomas by looking up Thomas, the Apostle, or Doubting Thomas. Even though the author does not believe that the Apostle wrote that Gospel, I think the two should be linked. There are two indexes, one for subjects and one for scriptures.

There are many strange theories about Jesus, but they don't come from Ben Witherington II, a professor of New Testament at Asbury Theological Seminary and the author of over thirty books on the subject. His title probes what is known and what cannot be known about the Jesus presented in the Bible, dispelling myths, using a 'personality profile' to illustrate basic Christian claims, and drawing important connections between key historical figures and the Jesus image. It's a fine addition to both general-interest Christian libraries and the holdings of more advanced, college-level seminary readers alike.

Regardless of where you stand, Ben Witherington III is considered by biblical scholars to be a heavyweight contender. The title to this book sounded interesting to me, so I decided to check it out. In this book Witherington overviews the people in Jesus' live, including the disciples, the women, and Paul. I found the overview refreshing, as most of the information is not new, but it helped remind me of keeping things in historical perspective. Witherington believes that we ought to consider the earliest documents first and foremost while taking the gnostic gospels and later additions with a grain of salt. So many scholars who we see on the Easter television shows don't have that same perspective, and so we end up getting some fascinating theories that just don't have any basis in fact. Yet how many viewers walk away from the DaVinci Code-type information and doubt the historicity of the Christian church? It has to be confusing for the typical lay audience.

I found several things most fascinating. First, I had never heard Lazarus as a possibility for the disciple whom Jesus loved. This theory hit me for a loop. I'm not sure he fully convinced me, but I'm going to have to consider it more than I did before I knew it was even a valid theory. I also had never thought much about Joanna being Junia. That was interesting to me as well. In addition, I appreciate the fact that Witherington changed his mind about phileo/agape Peter/Jesus dialogue in John 21. Sometimes we get so hung up on our beliefs that it's hard to change, so I guess it was refreshing to hear that this scholar was willing to say, "Hey, I changed my mind." May I be as open-minded.

The book is profitable and so I recommend it for those searching for the historical Jesus.

Ben makes an excellent case for the historicity of the NT and for the person, life and work of Jesus of Nazareth! In most cases his research is superb, and he arrives at his deductions and conclusions carefully and brilliantly. After reading this book, there can be no question in anyone's mind about the historicity of the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus. And books like the Da Vinci code and Gnostic philosophies simply do not stand.

In his attempt to show how impossible it was for these first eye-witnesses to concoct the Resurrection and spread the Christian faith however, I think Ben takes certain leaps which may not entirely be warranted. For instance, he does not satisfactorily address the issues of Mary the mother of Jesus perpetual virginity and the rival claims that Jesus' brothers were really Joseph's former sons or his cousins. I also do not think it is possible to conclude that Mary the mother of Jesus was assertive or did not believe He was the Messiah from the one passage we have in Mark Ch. 3 . Lastly, while Ben makes an excellent case for the authorship of the 4th Gospel, that may be exactly what it is, a hypothesis.

That said, the book itself is wonderful reading and anyone who is confused about the nature of the early church or what the first Christians believed would greatly benefit from reading it. When it comes to NT times, culture, history and the person of Christ, the book is first-class. For those interested in even better reading, I would recommend "Simply Christian" and "Challenge of Jesus" by N.T. Wright.

I've been told that Witherington is too challenging by some friends I've shared his work with. This book has been an exception. Witherington is, in my opinion, the finest Biblical scholar and historian we have today. His books are generally written for the aggressive, intellectual, deep diving God seeker. "What have they done with Jesus" opens the window of opportunity to be shared with a larger audience.

Witherington breaks from his socio-rhetorical commentaries and historical narrative style. He cuts back on his typically extensive academic narrative (letting the reader peruse the supporting notes and references for themselves) while boosting the granularity of his critique of modern and historical controversies. "What have they done with Jesus" condenses and reorganizes his more extensive works into a lively, entertaining perspective on hot button topics.

The book flows through the action of:
* Overlooked, and misunderstood female hero's
* Scriptural revelation versus theologically modified characters
* The mother of Jesus and matriarch of the family in scripture, society and time
* The mysterious "disciple whom Jesus loved" revealed
* The late blooming brothers of Jesus
* Paul and his real versus contemporarily imagined challenges in the Jesus movement
* What of the other disciples?
* Those strange Gnostics that have captured the media

A picture is created by this scriptural detective of a far more interesting historical Jesus movement than one might imagine. There are a number of eye openers here to be considered. Witherington masterfully engineers his arguments and leaves popular revisionists no slack.

If you are seeking to understand the Bible story with state of the art translation and understanding, Witherington is your author and this book is a great place to start. Witherington treads on `sacred cows' and `media darlings' with the nuance and fact of `what we can know' from scripture in such a way as to make you deep dive contemporary conceptions. The aggressive God seeker will not be disappointed by this book.

Witherington certainly has a fine writing style that keeps the reader engaged with precise scholarship sprinkled with learned speculation and Columbo like inquiry to discern whether the Christology of Jesus was evolved and embellished by later Christians or was from the beginning by the Inner Circle.

Witherington thus runs through this hypothesis viewing the family and close disciples of Jesus and then the apostles. He concludes from this fine, thorough search: "there is no easy evolutionary spiral from low to high Christology, from early to late Christology, from more Jewish to more Gentile Christology, or from Christology more for Jews to Christology more for Gentiles. Just as the majority of New Testament documents can be traced back to the inner circle of Jesus either directly or indirectly, so also can the high and often divine Christology found in documents for both Jewish and Gentile Christians be traced back to the inner circle of Jesus."

No lost Christianities or streams equal to the inner circle's teachings that were purposely obscured until recent scholars rediscovery and media promotion.

I do take exception with his take of linking Joanna/Junia as an apostle in sense of same usage as Paul's apostleship. Equally informed exegetes see this as not a female, and the term there is not always used as an eyewitness with that authority, but as sent one.

His other suggestion as to the author of Gospel of John being Lazarus, the Beloved Disciple, is a new one to this reviewer. It will have to stand the test of peer exegetical review before it can be accepted.

Fascinating read. Interested readers will also want to read Larry Hurtado's "Lord Jesus Christ:Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Centuries" and Richard Bauckham's "Jesus and the Eyewitnesses."

Though I wouldn't say this is light reading it is certainly accessible for the lay person; what a worthwhile read it is too. It is written as an uncovering of the evidence.

Ben Witherington goes back to the most reliable sources to discover the "real Jesus". Those sources are the ones written by eye witnesses and are of course the Gospels and letters of the New Testament.

The approach is to look at the those who were involved in Christ's inner circle and to piece together the evidence that is presented. I find the whole quite fascinating. The author's portraits bring the individuals to life in a new way and encourage us to read the Bible ourselves to judge what he says.

There is also useful information on the origin and contents of the Nag Hammadi documents that influenced the Da Vinci Code. The so called Gnostic gospels are put firmly into perspective as they were written hundreds of years after Jesus lifetime.

I heartily recommend this book as an encouragement for those of us who are committed to walking with Christ.