Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels

Sometimes one wonders how modern scholars justify completely denying the narrative core of the Gospels, or dismissing them as mythology, when the New Testament was written while Jesus' followers were still alive, and the modern works of critics some twenty centuries later! How can they claim to know the "real" Jesus better than authors who knew Him, or at least, knew the men who knew Him? Craig Evans takes on this question in a fascinating book that should be in the library of every person who enjoys New Testament apologetics. He systematically demolishes the claims of early dates and authentic history that have been made on behalf of Gnostic works that post-date the life of Jesus by two centuries or more, and then takes modern scholarship to task for ignoring the Jewish roots of the four Gospels and imposing their own modern values and agendas on these two thousand year old works. One emerges from reading this book with a greater sense of certainty about the historical value of the Gospels, and a greater sense of skepticism about the qualifications and understanding of those scholars who have tried to dismiss them or question their credibility. Format-wise, this book originated as a compilation of blog posts, and as a result, it does occasionally come across as a bit disjointed and lacks a certain amount of cohesion, but these are stylistic rather than substantive criticisms. Craig's work deserves to be read and studied by anyone who has questions about the authenticity of the Gospels or the competence of modern New Testament criticism.

Several years ago I encountered claims of other gospels, that what we know about Jesus from the Bible is probably not all that accurate, even propositions that Jesus was a Jewish version of a similar god-man myth found in pagan religions. When I was faced with these challenges to the Jesus of faith and history I was defenseless. I had no reference for refuting these claims. It made me uneasy when I turned to read the New Testament. It made me question the validity of my faith. If only I’d known Craig A. Evans wrote Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels, I would have been saved a lot of confusion.This book was intended for a variety of readers; some merely interested in Jesus, some confused by the theories that contradict the Bible, some wanting a defense of the New Testament, and some who are delving into the scholarly realm. In Fabricating Jesus Evans does a masterful job of presenting the material in a thoughtful and concise manner. Anyone interested in learning more are pointed to his section for further reading.The first couple of chapters deal with Evans’ brief background, how he came to faith, and how he pursued both Old and New Testament Studies. These chapters also deal with New and Old skeptics. What ideas have they put forward, and what seems to have caused them to come to their beliefs? I love that Evans offers a conservative rationale for not needing the scriptures to be inerrant in order to believe the reliability of the New Testament documents, specifically the four Gospels in the New Testament. I thought playing this card would prohibit anyone from writing him off as an ignorant and bigoted conservative, but after reading the 1-2 star reviews I can see that I was wrong.In chapters 3 and 4 Evans deals with “Questionable Texts”. These include The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of Peter, the Egerton Gospel, the Gospel of Mary and the Secret Gospel of Mark. I think he does a fine job of presenting the questionable material, offering the popular conspiracy theories based on these texts, and then asking simple common sense questions. He does not lead the readers down a path where they have to jump on his band wagon to understand his point; rather, Evans quotes the passages skeptic authors use as their bases for new Jesus stories and simply asks the readers what the most reasonable explanations might be. I particularly liked this: “Indeed. When students ask me why certain Gospels were omitted from the canon of the New Testament and whether some of them ought to be included, I tell them to read these Gospels. They do, and that answers their questions” (pp. 98-99).Chapter 5 deals with “Jesus as Cynic”. Here, Evans refutes claims that Jesus was influenced by Greek Cynics. While Jesus frequently rebuked his contemporary religious authorities, he was very un-cynical in his affirmations of Torah life. This fact alone should lay any claims that Jesus was a Cynic to rest. Perhaps it would have been beneficial to include other “alien context” theories, such as Jesus as a Buddhist. Maybe that one is not popular enough.Chapters 7 discusses Jesus as a Healer and Miracle Worker. Basically, Evans takes a reasonable approach to understanding what the earliest Christians thought about Jesus’ miraculous acts. If Jesus wasn’t doing marvelous (and supernatural) deeds then few people would have taken notice of him. Jesus was not merely a popular teacher; he was clearly demonstrating some sort of supernatural power over demons, sickness, and nature. Otherwise, the crowds would have never grown to the sizes they grew. This chapter continues Evans’ desire to let the readers make the reasonable conclusions on their own, based on the evidences we have.Chapter 8 teaches about Josephus. When scholars pinpoint the later Christian additions to Josephus, it seems all hope is lost of using him as a positive historian for traditional Christianity. The fact is, however, when we look to larger contexts of Josephus and compare his agendas and biases with those of the New Testament authors we find that Josephus helps us affirm the validity of the the New Testament Gospels.Chapters 9 and 10 engage conspiracy theory scholarship regarding the reliability of the New Testament. Chapter 9 deals with the more scholarly approach to other Christianities, while Chapter 10 deals with fiction-scholarship. I wish he had spent more time on Chapter 9 with “Lost Christianities”, perhaps engaging Elaine Pagels’ works, but his response to Ehrman’s logic (on discussing 2nd and 3rd century false Christianities) successfully roots the readers into common sense mode again by restating that all the documents we have about the New Testament era of Christianity support and affirm the New Testament understanding of Jesus. In short, there were no other forms of Christianity in the first century. The discussions of heresy within the context of the earliest church were surrounding the role of Jewish separatism from the Gentile converts. None of these heresies involved believing Jesus was not messianic, nor did they present Jesus as non-human, nor did they think Jesus taught some secret gnosis. They all believed in Jesus’ messianic role, his humanity, his divinity, his death and his resurrection. None of the extra Gospels Evans discusses in the book match the New Testament in historical validity for these reasons: 1) they were written too late and 2) they don’t match the descriptions attributed to those who actually knew Jesus.Finally, Evans offers a firmly orthodox understanding of the Jesus of the New Testament. After successfully refocusing the attention from wishful-thinking scholarship toward historical evaluation of the texts, he offers his own response to Jesus. Here, Evans presents the Gospel of salvation in Jesus as the logical conclusion to an evaluation of the relevant material on Jesus of Nazareth. Again, the author asks the readers to ask the simple question: What is the most reasonable response to the evidence we have?I would be remiss if I did not comment on Evans’ biases. He is a committed Christian. Many people reading this fact will automatically write him off as both unable and unwilling to challenge his own perspective; some may even say he is woefully unacademic because of this particular bias. I say that type of judgment is hypocritical. I agree with the person who said, “Evans out-skeptics the skeptics.” Despite believing the New Testament affirms a particular view of Jesus, Evans has presented the material sufficiently enough for the reader to evaluate it for himself. We cannot say this for some of the authors he refutes in this book.Anyone looking for a defense of the canonical Gospels should read this book. Anyone who thinks there are better views of Jesus (found outside the New Testament) should read this book. Anyone interested in Jesus scholarship should read this book. I heartily recommend this book.

This work is very interesting and thorough, yet sufficiently popular for a reader who is not a professional Bible scholar. If you need a solid opinion to balance some ultra-critical works by the authors of the Jesus Seminar type, this is a good book for you. The author compiles considerable evidence arguing against the notion (popular among the said critics and the Dan Brown adepts alike) that the Gospels paint an unrealistic picture of the events related to the life of Jesus and supporting the view that they provide the readers with the description of these events that are mostly historically true.

It is interesting how almost anything can be called 'scholarship' these days if one has footnotes and a bibliography. This is a good book for apologists to understand the failed research, logic, and fabrications of many modern "scholars" as they do their best to write something new and controversial so they can be published and perhaps make a living out of their chosen trade. Much of this modern anti-Christ scholarship reminds me of a modern version of 30 pieces of silver, Read the book and decide for your self, i think Evans has done us all a great service.

I loved this book. Craig Evans is a scholar of the highest order. The book is well-researched, well supported, but written in a simple and easy to understand way. I absolutely loved every second of it. I highly recommend it to anyone who's interested in Jesus, the New Testament, and ancient history.

This was a great book,Dr Evans refuted all the false views of few scholars such as the gospels of Mary,Judas and Thomas predate the synoptic gospels,he showed that the criteria of authenticity is reliable,that Paul’s portraits in the gospel weren’t contradictory to the portraits found in Josephus and philo,that the disciples and Jesus himself believed he was the messiah etc.the point this book is a must read for anyone who wants to know if the portraits of Jesus are superior then that of the gnostic gospels.

Critical of the Jesus Seminar!

Good read so far, scholarly and full of historical research and depth.

I loved this book enough to read it again for its many timely observations and insights. I found the reading level inviting even for one who is not an academic in the field.

Bon livre à lire!!!

Excellent rebuttal to many so-called new portraits of the historical Jesus! Well researched. Well written.