Desire of the Everlasting Hills

There have been quite a few books written of late trying to explain how a simple Jew of the 1st century and the rag tag group of followers who remained after his death could have changed the world so radically. Thomas Cahill has now joined the list.

I enjoyed the combination of poetic prose and scholarship of Cahill. His scholarship, in particular, is impressive. Regarding the content, Cahill provides a very readable and respectful version of modern scholarship's interpretation Jesus. Cahill also provides a good review of the impact Jesus and the movement that followed had upon world history, ending with a wonderful description of the Trastevere community in Rome. (The latter is a great model for all who want to develop a missional church today.)

Though I enjoyed the book and found it thought provoking, I can't, however, fully recommend it. I feel Cahill misses the point too often when it comes to the nature of Jesus and the nature of the New Testament documents. Regarding the documents, his approach is humanistic. He regards the writings as purely the work of men and controlled entirely by the context from which they arose. There seems no room for inspiration in the sense that Evangelicals would use that word.

Regarding Jesus, Cahill's dismissal of John's gospel as being the interpretation of a late 1st century author (and then deeply edited by a later editor) eliminates the idea that Jesus was the Son of God in any sense that Evangelicals would use that word today and understand it in the context of the Gospel of John. Simply put, for Cahill Jesus is not divine.

That begs the question of how Jesus and the movement that grew from his memory came to change the world so radically. Cahill's answer is that "Anyone on earth could do what they (the Trastevere community) have done," and, I would infer, that Christians have done. I think that conclusion is seriously lacking in rational.

So read with your mind in gear. If you do, you'll find the read worthwhile.