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1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 An Excellent Starting Point Nov 18, 2008
In The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith, James McGrath provides a well-written introduction to a number of topics that many people will not have seen, but should nonetheless be aware of if they wish to understand the Bible in terms of the social and political contexts of its time. Concepts of the interplay between history and faith, the uncertain authorship of the Gospels, and the Synoptic Problem are topics that the average Christian of any (or no) denomination is unlikely to encounter unless he goes out and deliberately looks for them. McGrath gives a high-level overview of these subjects, and then ties them together with a case-study of the details of Jesus' burial as provided by the Gospels, demonstrating how the details of this event were embellished over time subsequent to their description in the earliest Gospel, Mark.
The use of Jesus' burial as the example here is an interesting one, as many discussions of Gospel inconsistencies focus on the differences between the Crucifixion accounts or the Resurrection accounts, ignoring the small but crucial matter of what happened in between. Comparing the Gospel accounts to contemporary Jewish burial customs gives clues about how far removed culturally, geographically, and temporally the Gospel writers were from the events they portrayed, and comparing the accounts to one another gives clues to how those accounts may have been embellished over time. Both comparisons illustrate the challenges inherent in literal, inerrant interpretations of the Biblical texts.
The only notable omission from the book is the lack of an index or list of references. McGrath's work here shows some echoes of the work of Bart Ehrman, the late Raymond E. Brown, and perhaps the late Bruce Metzger, all of which would be valuable resources for a reader interested in further explorations of New Testament studies.
Overall, The Burial of Jesus: History and Faith gives an excellent and very readable introductory treatment to several important topics in modern Biblical scholarship, and is highly recommended for anyone seeking a place to start gaining a deeper understanding of the Bible in the contexts from which it evolved.
Thoughtful and Challenging Oct 27, 2008
You can't use the right tools for the wrong job. You can't open a paint can with a Phillips screwdriver, you can't cut a steak with a butter knife, you can't pull a shot of espresso in a percolator, and you can't make historical claims about the bible using theological methods. That's the most important thing I learned from this book.
Here's my favourite quote, which summarizes the general perspective of the work:
Biblical Christianity . . . takes fully seriously the differences between Biblical writings and the development between them, rather than forcing their divergent perspectives into the idolatrous straightjacket of a doctrine of Biblical inerrancy. (139-40)
There are some words in that quote that will make a lot of believers uncomfortable. How can Biblical inerrancy be idolatrous? Read the book and and find out! (Here's a hint: God is the only proper object of our faith.)
This book is essentially about two related issues, reflected by the title and subtitle of the work:
1. How should history and faith interact?
2. What happened to Jesus' body when he died?
I found the discussion of how faith and history interact more compelling than the primary focus: Jesus' burial. By the time the burial was directly discussed, it felt like a mere case study of McGrath's historical method. That's not a criticism, either. A well-reasoned argument of what happened to Jesus' body after his death may convince some people on that issue. However, when you give people the critical apparatus to make those sort of investigations on their own, you've equipped them to rethink their entire belief systems.
Although McGrath's conclusions on the second question (above) will disturb a lot of evangelicals, it's simply the logical outworking of his method. History and faith are different, but complimentary. McGrath refers to them as "necessary partners" (10). Listen to his words on the relationship between them:
The problem is that Christians often wish to make historical claims without having sufficient historical evidence, as well as at times confusing theological affirmations with historical ones. (97)
When you look at many of the popular apologetic works of the last century, you'll see this problem in action. Believers love to make historical claims based on their theological presuppositions. The use of real historical method can feel threatening, because it doesn't respect our theological safety zones. But is all truth God's truth, or not?
Faith may go beyond historical data, but it should never either ignore such information or be in contradiction to it. (20)
Admitting that we have partial historical data that is open to misinterpretation and restructuring, this statement holds. If we cherish a theological view that is clearly and obviously contradicted by the evidence, then the God--who is truth--demands we reconcile the dissonance. The case of Galileo and heliocentricity is a telling case study here.
This book will make people uncomfortable, but that's a good thing. If you're ready to question your assumptions and drop some defensive posturing from your faith, McGrath is a steady guide.
3 of 3 found the following review helpful:
When history and faith collide Oct 12, 2008
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 9 found the following review helpful:
A Historical Approach Sep 24, 2008
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.
4 of 14 found the following review helpful:
 Historical Jesus, revisited Sep 24, 2008
A short read, exploring the historical view of the New Testament documents and evauluates burial and resurrection accounts.
Dr McGrath seems of the liberal bent, although I believe some of his wrting was of the viewpoint of the liberal historian function and maybe not in totality representative of his views.
The phrase" Absence of evidence isnt evidence of absence" is obviously not taken to here, the fact later gospel writers expand on the less descritpive and wordy Mark is construed to mean the later authors made up their claims.
Citing the Jesus Seminar's belief none of the statements uttered on the cross were histoircal seems to reflect the author's view. The fact Mark records women were "afar" to him means nobody could hear anything etc etc.
Its late, lets just say that all too often books on the historical Jesus deal with what the historian himself thinks was probably not said based on his or her own opinion, and in this book some of the reaosns for discounting eyewitness accounts or questioning hsitoricity bordered on absurd.
The assertion the earliest Christians all were likely victim to some grand shared hallucination or dream flies in the face of medical fact, McGrath's resurrection scenario is ludicrous.
All in all not a bad work, and he does make some good points, but its another rehash of "I think this wasnt historical" based on no facts to the contrary.
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