Book Review

I found out about the Thomas Nelson Booksneeze programme through Chris Kidd. Basically, they send you a book which you get to keep in exchange for writing a review of the book on your blog. The first book I received from them was The Jesus Inquest by Charles Foster. This book is an investigation into the ressurection of Jesus. Charles Foster is a lawyer and approaches the book as if it were a court case with two lawyers arguing the facts. The two protaganists are named X, who is the sceptic and tries to disprove the ressurection and Y who wants to prove it, or at least support it.
The first thing I noticed is that the writing style is very relaxed and easy to get along with. There is a slight irreverence to his tone which is quite enjoyable and certainly helps with the tremendous amount of detail which brings me to the second thing I noticed. Foster has written what can only be described as an exhaustive study of the subject. For me he shed light on many of the facts surrounding the death and ressurection of Jesus as well as introducing me to many facts and therories I had never heard of before. The arguments are well balanced. X tended to begin a subject i.e. the burial and go through all the reasons why it did not happen as the Bible describes it to have happened then having rested his case Y takes over and seeks to address and dismantle all of X's points which he tended to do very well.
The down side of the amount of detail is that it can make it at times a tiring (though never tiresome) read as fact after fact and argument after argument is thrown at you, though to be fair to Foster I am not sure how else he could have done it. The book has very good appendicies and the the bibliography and notes at the back attest to how well researched this book is.
The brief epilogue leaves you wondering on which side of the debate Foster falls as he leaves all decisions to the reader, my feeling was that he was at the very least sympathetic to Y if not firmly on his side.
A terrific book highly reccomended.