Not long ago one of the friendlier skeptics around recommended Jesus the Healer as a sterling example of how it was reasonably possible to construct a "naturalistic" Jesus. I ordered it at once, but it sat on my floor for a while as I attended to other matters. Now I am tempted to put it back on the floor, and train my little dog to chew on things he finds on the floor. Davies offers just another in a long line of naturalized Jesuses assembled via the buffet table method and the tried and true practice of hammering square pegs into round holes.

Davies' central thesis is that what we had in Jesus was one who was "possessed" by the Spirit of God, and that within Jesus we had two distinct personages: Jesus of Nazareth and the Spirit/Son of God, the latter of which "took over" when it was time to say something divine. From that Davies liberally applies insights from cultural anthropology to make Jesus out to be just another of those shamans or holy men possessed of Booga the Lord of Roads and Streets, delivering his message any time a quarter was inserted. And so, likewise, Christians later on. Among the texts indicative of possession experiences and altered states of consciousness among Christians are Gal. 2:20 ("I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me..."), Mark 13:11 ("But when they shall lead you, and deliver you up, take no thought beforehand what ye shall speak, neither do ye premeditate: but whatsoever shall be given you in that hour, that speak ye: for it is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost."), and Rom. 8:26 ("Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered."), which is likened to the "powerful groans, shouts, barks and other inarticulate sounds" uttered by the possessed (I guess Davies missed that "cannot be uttered" part, and that "groanings" is the word meaning "sigh," not very powerful anyway.)

The well-read student will immediately recognize the surd in this equation: Jewish prophesying was typically not a matter of "possession" where the "real" person was shoved aside while the spirit spoke, but a matter of inspiration. Right? Davies actually admits this point [164-5], but the incongruity does not bother him in the least. To solve it, he quotes a similarly persuaded writer who reasons that, well, that's how other peoples and their shamans did it, so why should Israel have been any different (reasoning marginally akin to Paul Seely's fallacious "the ancients all thought the earth was flat so the Bible writers did too" shebang). What of that Jesus showed no typical signs of one spirit-possessed (i.e., abnormal motor behaviors)? Pouf! Blam! There is a "high probability that if there ever were such reports, they would not have been transmitted to us by the evangelists." [102] (They would not have engendered followers of Jesus, either, who would not have connected such abnormal behavior with the spirit of God, despite the previous begged question.) Beyond that Davies' only "direct" evidence for Jesus speaking via possession is Luke 10:21 ("In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth...") -- in that case, Matthew 5:12 says, "Rejoice, and be exceeding possessed: for great is your reward in heaven..." That there is no evidence that the church experienced such possession is excused away by the usual means of dating the relevant sources very late (Luke 60-100 years later!) and begging the question ("The novelty wore off, the initial members grew older, the intracult social circumstances changed." [176]). It's just too bad for Davies that all the best evidence is missing, isn't it?