The Jesus Inquest

My latest book from booksneeze.com is called The Jesus Inquest, written by Charles Foster. If you decide to pick up this book, be prepared with your Bible, a dictionary, some bookmarks, and possibly Google. There are big words, lots of cross referencing, and some things you might want to do research on yourself.

Charles Foster delves into the historical accuracy regarding the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Instead of finding a knowledgeable atheist to debate with, he decides to research what others have said, and present the case against the Resurrection himself. Then, he turns around and presents the case for the Resurrection. Basically, Mr. Foster is talking to himself. I don't know if this is because he can't find anyone worth debating, or if he is scared to debate with an actual person, but it may have been more interesting if there had been another person to argue the other side. 

The way the author presents this debate is very interesting. He separates the Resurrection into eight chapters, and each chapter is divided into two: "X", the atheist in the debate, presents his side first, then "Y", the Christian, follows up with a rebuttal. Each argument is divided up into smaller sections of the overall theme of the chapter, so when you get around to "Y's" point of view, you may have to flip back to "X's" comment on that particular subject.

This outline means that "Y" is constantly trying to play catch-up to "X", and there is no deviation from this. Which can be quite tiring.

Besides flipping from one point of view to the other, you also have the footnotes to reference. All 632 of them...

Overall, I would recommend this book to someone interested in the historical and archeological aspects of the Bible, but from a faith perspective, it's not very enlightening. Umm, I'll say 3 out of 5 stars, and I probably won't recommend it to any of my friends, unless they are looking for something scientific.