JESUS: A BIOGRAPHY FROM A BELIEVER

By Paul Johnson. New York: Penguin Books, 2010.

This is a concise, thought-provoking, sincere, easy read. I would highly recommend this book for both the believer and the unbeliever. Nevertheless, I have a few quibbles with some of the assertions herein which I thought I would address in no particular order.

The rich young ruler clearly didn't recognize Jesus was God. If the young man had, he wouldn't have addressed Him as “good teacher.” As C. S. Lewis said, “He hasn't left that option open to us.”

Luke 7 15 specifically says Jesus was in His hometown when he preached in the synagogue.

Johanna was actually Herod's servant's wife. (Luke 8 3)

Jesus died on a Wednesday afternoon. Christ said He would be in the grave three days and three nights as Jonah was in the whale three days and nights. You can't get three days and nights out of dying on a Friday and rising Sunday morning. By the way, don't buy the argument some people will try to come back with that the Jewish people reckoned the part of Friday afternoon and the part of Sunday morning as one whole day each because nowhere else in Scripture do we find part of a day being counted as a whole one.

The Canaanite woman with the demon possessed daughter was a believer. We can tell this by the way she addressed Jesus. Being God, Jesus knew she was one of His followers. He responded the way He did to her in order to teach the disciples that the kingdom was open to Gentiles, too.

Jesus was not tempted in Gethsemane, as he was by Satan in the wilderness. Rather, like any normal, healthy being, Jesus didn't want to die: yet He was perfectly willing to do so if the Father hadn't perhaps provided another way to accomplish the destruction of the devil's works. Wrestling with the enormity of something is not the same as being tempted by the devil to disobey God's will.

The text suggests there were two Gadarene demoniacs, living together.

I'm not comfortable with the way the author speculates about Jesus wandering around in the years before He began His ministry. The Bible doesn't say anything about this one way or the other.

As for the year of Jesus' birth, I think Lee Strobel has some information in his book "The Case for Christ" which dates Jesus birth in 2 BC, as opposed to 6-4 BC as previously thought.