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8 of 9 found the following review helpful:
When history and faith collide Oct 12, 2008
By Bradley S. Matthies
The author states that his book is historical rather than a work on faith. To a point it is exactly that but in the last few chapters his personal religious experience seems to trump historical (or scientific) inquiry. More on that in a bit.
Overall McGrath does a good job of laying out how history and historians work. He compares the work of a historian to that of a prosecuting attorney which is actually close to the mark. Generally speaking historians take the available evidence and attempt to make a case towards credibility. They consider such things as authorship, sources, interpretation, style, bias, and audience. In addition, when possible, historians prefer primary (aka original) sources to examine. However, even with original sources at hand it can be very hard to figure out "what really happened." Naturally, McGrath is quick to point this out when he discusses a modern-day parallel: the Kennedy assassination. Even with primary sources, eyewitnesses that are still alive, and film footage some historians still disagree on what happened during this event. Moreover, there is a fringe group of conspiracy theorists who pose all sorts of outlandish claims.
This is important to bring up when discussing an event that happened 2,000 years ago. Moreover, as McGrath is quick to mention: there are no primary sources that chronicle the death of Jesus. What we have are New Testament manuscripts that are copies of copies with no certainty at all of authorship. This is not to say we should discount their value altogether. However, it makes it much harder to get at real event. Still historians who study ancient history deal with this problem frequently. For example, the majority of historians who study Socrates believe he existed. Yet we've never found anything that he wrote. What we know of him is based on the writings of Plato and Xenophon. So it is not unreasonable to make a similar case towards the existence of a person named Jesus.
For the most part McGrath limits his historical examination of Jesus to the crucifixion and resurrection. He spends a lot of time discussing what may have happened with views ranging from the body being stolen to various tomb scenarios. However, he states on p. 61 that when considering the resurrection the tools of history can neither "confirm it or deny it". Here I would disagree. Historians frequently use their method to write opinions on what really happened. For example, both religious and nonreligious historians have attempted to make Abraham Lincoln their own. So too a historian could look at all resurrection events throughout human history and then speculate as to what is really going on. It could be that people do indeed rise (bodily or spiritually) from the dead or their might be a natural explanation. Regardless, bracketing out "religious experience" as something history or science cannot explain is artfully dodging the crux of matter: was Jesus the incarnation of God?
While I disagree with McGrath on certain points the book is interesting and does explore a facet of the Jesus story that is often overlooked: what happened between the death and alleged resurrection event. Moreover, rarely (if ever!) is the historical method covered in your typical Sunday sermon. Thus, McGrath's book will likely serve as an eye-opener for most Christians who base their faith primarily on that which which was taught to them at an early age. I also imagine that some Christians will discount McGrath as too liberal while others may be shocked and some might actually learn something or even have their faith reaffirmed.
As for personal religious experience validating Christianity; well, here I must part ways with the author. First, this notion is problematic for the thousands of people who never have had a "religious experience" (including this reviewer). Secondly, it does little to validate Christianity's truth claim when you have hundreds of competing religions with adherents who all cite the same thing!
6 of 7 found the following review helpful:
 A Great Introduction to Higher Criticism and Faith Apr 20, 2009
By First Presbyterian Church
"John Shuck"
I posted this review on my blog, http://www.shuckandjive.org/2009/04/dead-and-buried.html
James McGrath is the Associate Professor of Religion at Butler University and a prolific blogger at Exploring Our Matrix.
His short book is divided into five chapters,
1. Introduction,
2. Beyond Reasonable Doubt: How History Works,
3. Death Before Dishonor: The Burial of the Historical Jesus,
4. Jesus Beyond the Tomb: Matters of Death and (After)life,
5. Conclusion: Beyond History
In the introduction, James states the purpose of this book:
"This book will seek to clarify precisely how historical study works, and will argue that the very common approach of taking Biblical stories uncritically at face value, and using them as a reason for dismissing evidence not only from history but from science and other sources of knowledge, is fundamentally misguided." P. 8
In the second chapter, James covers a lot of ground, including the relationship between who Jesus was and who Jesus is (history and faith), how historians weigh evidence, authorship of the gospels, the synoptic problem, and the difference between a literary and an historical approach to the gospels. This is an excellent introduction to the basics of higher criticism. James writes that...
"...the New Testament Gospels do not give us direct access to firsthand accounts of eyewitness testimony." P. 35
Given that, how do scholars determine whether statements made by Jesus (or any of the characters) are historical reporting or literary creations? How do you know when the authors are giving us the facts or spin? That is why we need historical study:
"Historical study is not the only way of approaching the Gospel, and depending what one hopes to accomplish, it may or may not be the best way. But if one wants to ascertain what we can know about Jesus as a historical figure "beyond reasonable doubt," then historical study is the only way to accomplish that." p. 58
In chapter three, James makes his unique contribution by discussing the burial of Jesus. According to James, if there is one piece of data more reliable than all others, it is that the historical Jesus was executed.
"The brute fact that Jesus was executed by crucifixion is essentially beyond doubt. If there was anything normally would have automatically excluded someone from serious consideration as having been the Messiah, it was being executed by the foreign power ruling over the Jews." P. 63
An executed Messiah (Christ) would need to be explained at least. Historians say it is probable that Jesus was thought of by some as a Messiah before his death and his execution created an embarrassment that needed to be explained. Paul and the Gospels were put into service to explain this oddity. Therefore historians are confident that a crucified messiah is not something you create, but an historical reality you try to understand.
"All in all, the Gospels give us a core of historical information (Jesus was crucified) overlaid with theological interpretation, and further development of the narrative based on elements drawn from the Jewish Scriptures." P. 65.
So we have him dead. How do we get him alive again? What happened to his body? Each Gospel has a narrative of going to the tomb and finding no body. What is a reasonable conclusion? In addressing that question James evaluates the Gospel accounts, Paul's witness, and ancient burial practices (including burial practices of criminals executed by the Romans). Executed criminals if buried at all were buried in a common grave. This is probably what happened to Jesus, as the earliest gospel, Mark, tells us. Joseph of Arimathea (who is not a disciple) takes the body and puts it in a tomb.
"Burial in a common grave for criminals was itself dishonorable, even though not nearly as much so as being denied burial altogether. For this reason, later Christians considered it important to honor Jesus by giving him as honorable a burial as possible in their literary depictions of the event." P. 77.
The empty tomb narratives are not historical reportage. Neither are they fabrications out of whole cloth. They are literary elaborations on an historical event. Apparently, Jesus' body wasn't where it was supposed to be when the disciples went looking for it. How do you explain a missing body? Ask your local police detective. Would a detective assume that God raised it from the dead and it is wandering around your neighborhood? A police detective would find a more mundane answer and if unable to determine the mundane answer would leave the case open rather than say God did it. This is how an historian approaches the question of Jesus' body and claims of resurrection as well. That is as far as history can go.
"...since most religious believers would agree that resurrections are both unusual and improbable events, for that very reason no historian will ever be able to say "the body was probably missing because God raised Jesus from the dead." P. 95
An empty tomb narrative proves nothing. It does however, show that the missing corpse coupled with personal visions (as attested by Paul), and experiences of a mystical nature by his followers led them to affirm that Jesus was in a very real sense, alive. That is the mystery of resurrection faith that James discusses in his final two chapters concluding:
"Resurrection faith, we have suggested in this book, was not born from historical deductions regarding the whereabouts of a body, but from life-transforming religious experiences. For those of us who have had such experiences, faith is not primarily (if at all) a matter of doctrines but of what we can only speak of in symbolic terms as a life-transforming relationship to the ultimate. When the focus of Christian faith is placed there, then the possibility of keeping faith about humble trust rather than arrogant claims to certainty becomes realistic." P. 142
This is a fine book that helps those grappling with these early texts and the central claims of faith to discover an approach that nurtures both mind and heart and sacrifices neither. I would recommend this book for both religious and non-religious people. It would make a fine text for your book club or church school class.
7 of 12 found the following review helpful:
A Historical Approach Sep 24, 2008
By N. T. W.
As the author explains, the approach in his book is historical -- rather than apologetic and faith-based. One historical issue which has already been raised in these reviews (and, prematurely dismissed in a somewhat knee-jerk reaction by a prior reviewer) is the role of visionary experiences amongst Jesus' earliest followers. While the historical explanation of the burial and resurrection of Jesus as a vision, or dream, or 'hallucination' might be something that more literalistic believers find hard to deal with, the historical evidence is compelling in favor of such an explanation.
The genres of ancient history and ancient biography overflow with records of dream and vision reports, which are placed, without embarrassment, alongside the everyday reality of waking life. What moderns categorize as 'miracle stories' are frequently inserted into ancient histories and biographies, and more often than not as the result of a dream or vision experience. Although the mixing of dreams and mundane waking life would seem strange in a modern history, this was quite normal in the corresponding ancient genres. Ancient reports of dreams and visions typically did not treat them as something that merely occurred in one's head, but -- as experiences of reality itself.
Moreover, there is an expectation that visionary experiences would be exaggerated in the vision reports -- so that a vision had by a single person would later be reported as being shared by a group of people, even up to a whole army or town! Such `doubling' of dreams and visions, as ancient Near Eastern scholar Leo Oppenheimer explains, functioned as a rhetorical demonstration of the `truth' of the dreams and visions. That is, if more than one person were reported as having the same dream, the ancients concluded that its content must be true.
There are many examples of ancient vision reports where an individual's vision is claimed to be shared by a mass or group of people. In ca. 648 BC, a vision given to Ashurbanipal by the goddess Ishtar, telling him to cross a raging river, was reported as having been seen by his entire army! The Church historian Eusebius reports that the Emperor Constantine told him that the vision the Emperor saw (of a sign of a cross in the sky) was a vision shared by his entire army as well -- in the middle of the day. But when we read Lactantius' earlier version of events, we read that Constantine alone saw the vision -- in a night-time dream! Again, during Alexander's siege of Tyre, it was not only reported that Alexander had a personal vision of his later victory, but every townsperson in the city of Tyre had a vision of the god Apollo telling them that they would lose.
In order to appreciate the story of the burial and resurrection of Jesus, one must appreciate the culture and mindset of these ancient people. What may seem 'ludicrous', from a modern bias, may actually be what was considered 'normal' in the first century AD. James McGrath's book examines these first century events by conducting a historical examination of their particular beliefs, including what we might consider a rather odd belief in the reality of visions. While this may be uncomfortable to some more literalistic believers today, McGrath provides an explanation which is considerably more historically plausible than naively accepting the ways in which the various biblical stories are told.
3 of 6 found the following review helpful:
 Disappointing Oct 18, 2009
By Aquinatis
James McGrath teaches religion at Butler University. I enjoyed enormously his theological research monograph John's Apologetic Christology (corresponding to his PhD in New Testament theology under the famous James Dunn), and liked quite much his scholarly theological book The Only True God: Early Christian Monotheism in Its Jewish Context (I very heartily do recommend both books).
So I was having good expectations about this book. But I am disappointed.
First of all this is in no way a scholarly book. It is not written for an academic readership nor in a academic manner, but it is a popular book that seems to aim at the evangelicals, who are not educated nor read in theology. Although he tries to go down to the level of the layman, his manner of speech is not so personal, but still feels like that of a professor. With this book he does not seem to be as gifted as Bart Ehrman in reaching out to a large audience.
In the first chapter McGrath explains that he has to work as a historian. In the third and last chapter presents a (unorthodox) view which is also frequent among New Testament exegetes regarding resurrection.
It is in the second chapter that McGrath shares his own contribution, a reasoning regarding the burial of Jesus according to his historical approach. Using knowledge about general Roman practices, he relies on the gospel accounts, but not in a positive manner, seeing them instead as fabrications which show that they were made up to cover up embarrassing facts. Actually I don't think see his view is new, and such a view is refuted (for lack of explanatory power, etc.) by William Craig in the last chapter of his book Reasonable Faith, 3rd ed. 2008. Craig takes into account the whole pictures and all the possibilities regarding a credible birth of Christianity and the reaction of its enemies.
But the best book on the issue The Final Days of Jesus: The Archaeological Evidence, 2009, is definitely not written by a theologian / religious scholar, but by a historian, the Israel-based archaeologist Shimon Gibson. Ironically this book may enrage theologian (who normally dismiss the John's gospel as historically worthless), as Shimon Gibson, being a historian / archeologist and no theologian, has no prejudice against the datation of the high christology of the fourth gospel, which contains many historical statements which have been archaeologically confirmed (which show an accurate knowledge of the culture and religion of Palestine at the time), and has a higher regard for it than for the synoptics... Shimon Gibson's book, also aimed at a popular readership, is also much more entertaining, yet strongly based on scholarship (long bibliography, and about 300 endnotes). Shimon Gibson has a chapter on the burial of Jesus (chap. 7), deals also with the issue of the trench grave, and as an authority on the subject, comes to quite other conclusions that McGrath. Strangely, it is Shimon Gibson the (apparently) non-Christian archaeologist, who gives support to the gospel account of John (and somewhat, more critically, to the synoptics), whereas it is McGrath, the Christian theologian, who debunks the gospel accounts and church traditions regarding the burial of Jesus. Both should then be praised for their intellectual honesty.
With all my apologies to McGrath, I recommend then Shimon Gibson's The Final Days of Jesus: The Archaeological Evidence instead of the present book (and some passages in Craig's Reasonable Faith). And if someone is looking for a treatment by other N.T. theologians of the same issue McGrath dealt with, I do recommend Craig Evans and N. T. Wright's Jesus, the Final Days: What Really Happened (2009), esp. Chap. 2 « The Silence of Burial ». James McGrath remains however a sympathetic author to me and I hope that he will produce excellent books again like his first two ones.
1 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Concise and refreshingly rational! Feb 16, 2010
By Johnny P
Considering this book is written by a Christian, and I am an agnostic (between atheism and deism), I found this book to be a fine read. I is short, which is great considering my lengthy backlog of books, and is not burdened by footnotes, revelling in its elegant simplicity.
The strength is that the author, as a believer, does not bring to the table, as a historian, any presuppositions. One often sees conservative scholars being forced to find strength in other conservative works because of their presupposed beliefs, as opposed to the strengths of the evidence and arguments proposed.
McGrath, however, deals with evidence in a historical and naturalistic manner - which is all a historian really can do. The evidence, therefore, is dealt with objectively - or as objectively as I have ever seen any Christian. There needs to be more research into the burial and whether it was honourable or not. The evidence would really point to a dishonourable one, and it is thus frustrating that people like William Lane Craig build whole arguments built on fallacious premises that the burial was honourable, or that Joseph of Arimathea was a secret Christian. I embrace the fact that here we have a rational Christian, McGrath, who looks at the evidence, and detaches himself from what he wants it to conclude, and conscludes based upon the plausibility of the evidence, and the methodology of historical approaches. There are also throughly sensible views towards inerrancy and suchlike.
A thoughtful conclusion follows, rounding up a sound book that I raced through in record time. I thoroughly recommend this, especially to those just entering the world of biblical scholarship, as concise synopses of Gospel historicity are given. It has made me visit his blog, and I have parleyed with him on John Loftus' blog, where he has always been rational and logical in his approach to his belief. Good stuff - I wish more Christians were as rational and balanced.
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