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I'm going to encourage you to buy this book with the same caveat as another I recommended earlier this year with a similar title (Reinventing Jesus): Buy it not because it has a lot of new material in it (for veteran readers of this site, it will not; for new readers, it will), but becauase if you don't, the tide of Hostess Ding-Dong publishing will continue.
Evans covers some of the same territory as that prior book, but he covers a lot of different ground too. The one regret I have is that Evans did not cover some of the nuttier sorts in depth. (Such as Tom Harpur, who gets a scant few paragraphs.) One senses that Evans, as a serious scholar, preferred not to do this as opposed to tearing his hair out. I can't blame him.
Still and all, there are many gems here and "aha" moments, as when Evans looks at the likes of Ehrman and Price, and his descriptions will bring to mind the concept of "fundy atheist" we've seen here more than once. The parody of the opening page of The da Vinci Code is a howl. Some of the topics covered are passe' in the popular lit (such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Cynic sage thesis) but they're still floating around, so don't think this is out of date. It isn't. I also have never seen some of the claims addressed ever made (such as, "Jesus was not interested in Scripture," which seems remarkably inane) but yes, they were. Pick it up and add it to your library.
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