Book Review: What Have They Done With Jesus? Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History - Why We Can Trust the Bible by Ben Witherington III

This is another fantastic book. He takes a view of each of the eyewitnesses of the resurrection that contributed greatly to the Church. He looks at Mary Magdalene, Mary, Jesus' mother, Joanna, Peter, James the Brother of Jesus, Jude the Brother of Jesus, and Paul. The book is very well written with good exegetical insights all over. His basic conclusion is that the Jesus presented in the NT by the eyewitnesses of the resurrection are in agreement on all major details about Jesus. Their agreement proves that the "historical Jesus" is the Jesus of (at least first-century) Faith. He takes major umbrage at scholars who take their historical method to the extreme - as the title suggests - he blasts Tabor's conjectures in an appendix.

The overall point of the work is very very solid. But I found the best points to be smaller details that made the whole picture of the Biblical narrative so much more real and whole. I can't pick out any at the moment - I just finished it, and it's late. But I can stand back and say that this is definitely one of the best books I will read this year (even though it is the second).

I made a post on a smaller topic I found to be very insightful here - http://kingdomready.org/blog/2007/01/08/childbearing-1-tim-215/ And I plan to make another post on a smaller topic (Rev 12), so keep your eyes peeled for that.

If you are interested in reading more of him - you can find his blog right here on blogspot - http://benwitherington.blogspot.com/