Customer Reviews

The Word

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While the underlying premise of this book, namely the discovery of a previously unknown Gospel and a Roman parchment confirming the existance of Jesus of Nazareth, holds a lot of potential for a thrilling story, author Irving Wallace largely fails to deliver here. For the first half of the book, we follow public relations specialist Steve Randall as he travels from place to place meeting various members of the publication team producing a new Bible incorporating these new finds. Unfortunatly, the main reason for these meetings seems to be to allow Wallace to provide his lengthy and detailed exposition in the guise of dialog. The first half of the book is tedious and unexciting, and only when Randall begins to find discrepencies in the new documents does the story begin to improve. Unfortunately, there is too little action for too much of the book, and while the second half is better than the beginning, it takes far too long to get to.

This story also reflects the culture of the early 1970's, when it was written. People smoke in hospitals (!), there is no security in the airports, and the furniture and clothing descriptions clearly reflect the period. The story is also set against the cultural questioning of organized religion that also marked the period, and Wallace seems to be arguing that Christianity needed a breath of fresh air to save it from irrelevance. The underlying themes regarding the nature of faith and its role in life are still worth considering. Perhaps the most important question raised by this book is "What is the meaning of faith?"