I recently read a new book from IVP Academic entitled “Rediscovering Jesus: An Introduction to Biblical, Religious, and Cultural Perspectives on Christ” by David B. Capes, Rodney Reeves, & E. Randolph Richards. Let me begin this review by putting my cards on the table: I am a fan of David B. Capes. He was my professor at Houston Baptist University and was also part of my master’s thesis defense panel. Thus, my original interest in reading the book was due simply to his participation in the project (plus, it’s hard to pass on a book with positive reviews from Michael Gorman, Nijay Gupta, and Scot McKnight). However, as I read the book I quickly forgot about my personal connection to one of the authors and found myself deeply engaged in a beautifully written, biblically sound, and theologically informed book on the person of Jesus.

The premise of the book is that we all have an idea of Jesus’ identity that is partially formed by many factors: different parts of Scripture, certain traditional teachings, and even our own personal biases. As the subtitle suggests, the authors attempt to introduce the reader to the various unique biblical, religious, and cultural perspectives of Jesus of Nazareth. The genius of this book is found in its three-fold structure for each perspective. First, they look at each book, religious, or cultural perspective as an individual work and ask “What does this picture of Jesus look like?” The explicit goal is to not let other texts or theological commitments influence the observation of the image of Jesus presented in these unique perspectives. Second, they expand on how each particular portrait of Jesus is different than other images of Jesus. Third, and perhaps most interestingly, they ask “Who would we say that Jesus is if this were the only picture of Jesus that we had?”

I found this third task to be the most illuminating part of the book. While I am committed to understanding Jesus both canonically and theologically, I have always believed that there is so much more to learn about Jesus if we would just let certain texts stand by themselves first, before we try to make a composite image of the person and work of Jesus.

The book is divided into two parts: Jesus in the Bible (Mark’s Jesus, Matthew’s Jesus, Luke’s Jesus, John’s Jesus, Paul’s Jesus, The Priestly Jesus, The Jesus of Exiles, and The Apocalyptic Jesus) and Jesus outside the Bible (The Gnostic Jesus, The Muslim Jesus, the Historical Jesus, the Mormon Jesus, The American Jesus. and the Cinematic Jesus). Each chapter ends with a bibliography for further reading and a handful of discussion questions. The bibliographies are typically top-notch, but I found some of the discussion questions to be lacking.

Bottom line: there is a lot to like about this book. The treatment of the four Gospels is a fine example of excellent scholarship communicated at a popular level. However, as the authors got into the other New Testament literature, I sometimes felt as if they let a surface-level reading of the text overly emphasize differences between pictures of Jesus in the Gospels and other books. For Paul, I couldn’t avoid feeling that the authors sometimes let a simple reading of the text highlight differences that perhaps are not as significant as they first seem. (I would recommend Daniel Kirk’s “Jesus Have I Loved, But Paul?” as a resource that reconciles the apparent “differences” between the Pauline literature and the Gospels). I had the same feeling for their treatment of Jesus in Revelation, again thinking that they sometimes overplayed the difference between the Jesus of the Gospels and the Jesus of Revelation. To be fair, this is an explicit part of their project (highlighting certain differences), but I think the differences between the pictures of Jesus are still significant enough even with recognizing scholarship that undercuts some of the “apparent” different pictures of Jesus throughout the New Testament. Let me be clear, these criticisms are the result of an intentional attempt to find something lacking in this excellent work. The book is consistently engaging and always well-informed. I found the second part of the book just as fascinating and imagine that for many lay-people these would be the most impactful chapters. It is easy to disregard how much our view of Jesus has been influenced by American values and various forms of art.

I highly recommend this book for audiences of all sorts. I can see myself using it as a supplementary textbook to a course on Jesus or the Gospels. I can also see this material being implemented in a local ministry setting at a book study or Bible study. Do yourself a favor and go order a copy while I leave you with a short video of the three authors discussing their work:

Note: I received this book from IVP Academic in exchange for an unbiased review.