Fabricating Jesus – How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels. By Craig A. Evans. InterVarsity Press, 2006. 290 pages. Hardback
“Fabricating Jesus”, a book written by Craig A. Evans and published by InterVarsity Press, is a helpful and thoughtful summary of the distortion of the Gospels by modern authors, and a well-reasoned defense of the historical Jesus.
Written for the “non-expert” (p. 14), Evans’ book does a sound job of explaining the current academic and popular discussion of the person of Jesus in terms and phraseology well-understand by the average layperson, without sacrificing scholarship or thoughtful commentary.
An obvious strength of the book is Evans’ extensive knowledge of the material. Throughout the book he provides a plethora of information on the early Greek texts, canonical and non-canonical, as well as a thorough grasp and understanding of the men who have, in Evans’ mind “distorted or neglected the New Testament Gospels (p. 16)” in their “never-ending quest to find something new and to advance daring theories that run beyond the evidence (p. 16)”.
It is interesting to note the tone with which the author approaches his opponents. When confronting an erroneous idea from an equally thoughtful scholar, Evans will explain his arguments in terms of likelihood, probability, and the evidence. This discussion on the author’s part is more in line with a polite disagreement, undertaken with civility and assuming a measure of equality. Yet, when Evans starts discussing Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code or Michael Baigent’s The Jesus Papers, his civility becomes a scathing sarcasm. When introducing The Jesus Papers to the reader, Evans calls it “utterly ludicrous” (p. 204) and concludes his description of it with “Beam me up, Scotty”.
As can be seen, Evans does a thorough job of critiquing the opponents of the traditional, historical view of Jesus (including a book-long critique of the Jesus Seminar and the works that it has produced), the non-canonical books that have been offered up in history as being on par with Scriptural canon (The Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, and the Gospel of Peter, to name a few) and the puerile and decidedly false publications about Christ offered up to the popular culture (i.e. The Da Vinci Code and Margaret Starbird’s writings).
Yet for all of its strengths, Fabricating Jesus does have a couple of obvious weaknesses. While not of utmost importance, one could say that Evans’ book is too repetitive. In other words, it reads at times like a set of stand-alone lectures, rather than a smooth-flowing book.
More seriously, though, is Evans apparent unwillingness to admit to the cause of so many authors’ refusal to accept the traditional view of Jesus, especially in light of the evidence. When talking about how scholars approach the canonical Gospels, Evans notes that they are “surprisingly uncritical in their approach to extracanonical Gospels (p. 98)” He then notes that “Apart from the all-too-common human desire to challenge authority, it is hard to explain why scholars give such credence to documents that reflect settings that are entirely foreign to pre-A.D. 70 Jewish Palestine and at the same time reflect traditions and tendencies found in documents known to have emerged in later times and in places outside of Palestine (p. 98)”. While the spiritual state of such scholars cannot be known by men, is it not possible that the cause really is easy to explain and that “Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19, ESV)? Men do not accept the historical Jesus because men do not want to believe in the historical Jesus.
In conclusion, Fabricating Jesus is an insightful treatment of the current and ongoing discussion of the person and work of Jesus and adequately achieves its aims of explaining the topic in an engaging and confusion-clearing way.