The Four Witnesses: The Rebel, the Rabbi, the Chronicler, and the Mystic

Griffith-Jones, an Anglican priest who is a chaplain and lecturer in New Testament Studies at Oxford University, makes a rather forgettable entr e into the already-saturated world of Jesus studies. The book begins with the tired observation that the Gospels offer not one, but four portraits of Jesus, and goes downhill from there. Griffith-Jones does little more than trot out the most basic findings of biblical scholarship: Mark was probably the first gospel to be written, while Matthew draws on Jewish traditions, sagely attempting to demonstrate that Jesus fulfilled Jewish prophecy. Matthew also stresses how similar Jesus is to Moses, depicting Jesus' brief asylum in Egypt as an echo of the Exodus story and highlighting the Sermon on the Mount's similarities to the revelation of the Torah at Mt. Sinai. Luke's Jesus is revolutionary, calling for a new order of compassion for the poor, for women and for other downtrodden folk; Griffith-Jones writes that ""there is mercy at work in Luke's Jesus... by which our ordinary categories of rich and poor"" are rendered meaningless. John is the most poetic and mystical writer, emphasizing more than the other evangelists the rebirth and transformation of individuals who knew Jesus. To justify yet another book on the historical Jesus aimed at the general reader, an author must offer either original insights or stylistic flair. Griffith-Jones does neither; skip his book. (May)