What Have They Done With Jesus? by Ben Witherington

I picked up Ben Witerington's book What Have They Done With Jesus with a lot of excitement and expectation. There's been a lot of discussion about Jesus and who he was in popular media outlets lately. Most people have at least heard something about the two most influential documentaries of late about the alleged tomb of Jesus and the Gospel of Judas. Dr. Witherington works within the tradition I'm a part of (broadly), and seemed to offer some plain talk on the whole issue.

Witherington's approach is quite different than what I expected. I always viewed the conversation about who Jesus is through the words of ancient texts. Witherington's discussion works along the lines of people, not texts. This approach is probably more relevant to the modern mind, even if it's not the classic way it's been expressed by scholars. Witherington gives a list of people he concludes were a part of Jesus inner circle and provide us with reliable information about him. These members of this inner circle are: Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of Jesus, Peter, James, Jude, Paul, and the Beloved Disciple.

The most interesting discussion, at least on an academic level, is the discussion of the Beloved Disciple. Most lay people and even many ordained ministers don't give much thought to who the Beloved Disciple was. From Sunday School on we've all heard the he was John the Apostle, who was also John the Evangelist, author of the Johanine Epistles and the Revelation. Witherington's hypothesis is the the Beloved Disciple was Lazarus. This explains many of the peculiarities of the Fourth Gospel, the most prominent of which is the geographical setting of the Gospel. Why does the Fourth Gospel place the narratives of Jesus life in Judea, while the other Gospel narratives take place in Gallilee? Answer: Lazarus is the source for the majority of the Fourth Gospel and he lived in Judea! There are many other pillars to this argument which might warrant a whole new post itself.

A diagram in the last chapter of the book sums up the entire work well. In that diagram the name Jesus is in the center of what looks like a circle. Around those names are the names of Jesus inner circle as listed above. There are lines going out from his name (Jesus) to these others and lines from the inner circle to the documents produced by, directly or indirectly, them or their ministry. For example although Paul didn't write Luke-Acts he is connected to those documents by his close association with Luke who authored this two volume work. The illustration shows that the Historical Jesus flows through his inner circle and that inner circle produced what we have as the New Testament.

Obviously some of these members of the inner circle were not producers of documents directly or indirectly, especially the females such as the two Maries and Joanna. One of the strengths of this book is that it acknowledges those who were probably close to Jesus in his lifetime even if they didn't write about it later.

One weakness of this book is that it focuses on them too much. Why use two chapters or about 40 pages talking about Mary and what she tells us about Jesus when everything she's says about him, which is very little, only comes to us in secondary sources? Really those chapters about members of the inner circle are more about those individuals than what they tell us about Jesus. If I ever get a chance to talk to Dr. Witherington this is a question I would like to ask. It certainly makes for an interesting read to hear what he thinks about Mary the Mother of Jesus, but it doesn't contribute to the overall thesis of the book very well.

Despite this the book as a whole offers the average reader with some good plain talk about Jesus and who he really was. In light of all the fanciful theories Witherington ably shows how these theories play on our love for the dramatic instead of our reason and logical common sense in the Introduction of the book. This book would be a good read for anyone interested in who Jesus really was and how we know that. If only National Geographic would do some specials on exegesis that has stood the test of time, then the public can atleast make a decision after hearing both sides.