Paul Rhodes Eddy and Gregory Boyd have put together a substantial volume that deals another hard blow to the critical assumptions of the school of "Form Criticism", but also wages war against the views of hypercritical popular writers and scholars in regards to the New Testament. It was this latter task, in fact, which was the primary target of the authors. In this work Eddy and Boyd provide responses to the likes of Robert Price, Randel Helms, Earl Doherty, and others whose views are not (for better or for worse) taken seriously enough by mainstream scholars for which we are able to find more than a scarcity of resources providing answers to their assertions. In fact, in this sense, it puts one in the mind of the kind of work that James Patrick Holding and Glenn Miller have been performing for a number of years, with some expected overlap of the pertinent material.

The book is divided into 10 chapters, the first of which argues that truly objective historians should be open to the possibility of supernatural explanations for historical data. The second chapter deals with the impact (or lack thereof) that Hellenism had on 1st Century Judaism (and how this may have influenced the formation of a "Jewish legend of Yahweh embodied"). The third chapter deals in the ever-present issue of "parallel legends and/or heroes", with helpful discussions of Sabbatai Svi, Simon Kimbangu, and of course Apollonius of Tyana. Chapters 4 and 5 deal, respectively, with extra-biblical sources of Jesus (including discussions of the two famous Josephus passages and that of Tacitus, plus others), and the alleged problem of Paul’s silence in regards to details of Jesus’ life. Chapters 6 and 7 deal with the reliability of oral tradition and the role of memory and eyewitness testimony as it relates to New Testament studies. Chapter 8 discusses the issue of Gospel genre, which includes helpful discussions responding to such proposals as "the Gospels as fiction" and "the Gospels as ancient romance novels", etc. Finally, chapters 9 and 10 evaluate features of the Synoptic Gospels themselves and how the sum total of the data should give us the impression of their general reliability.

As one might imagine from the above list of objectives, the scope of the book is quite broad and gives, as a spatial necessity, only enough for a general overview of much of the pertinent data. While it is difficult to find fault in any chapter (given the fact that a thorough traversing of all of these issues might require a wheelbarrow full of pages), certain chapters were more compelling than others given the detail that was included. For instance, I thought that the authors made a very compelling case that truly objective historians should consider supernatural explanations plausible if all naturalistic counterparts are found wanting. Particularly poignant in this regard was the authors’ demonstration that the so-called "anti-supernaturalistic bias" is not only limited almost exclusively to modern Western culture, but even the majority of those people within this modern Western culture do not share in this bias. Rather, this bias is largely (though not entirely) restricted to a certain scholarly guild and based on questionable assumptions. The authors provide solid defenses of the much-maligned extra-biblical sources of Jesus (particularly those of Tacitus and Josephus), and also deal adequate blows to many of the assertions made by the aforementioned hypercritical authors. Also valuable was the authors’ refutation of the basic assumptions behind "Form Criticism", the school of thought institutionalized by Bultmann and company, the influence of which is still powerful today (even among many conservative scholars). Eddy and Boyd demonstrate, based on the proliferation of studies of many cultures dealing in aspects of oral tradition that have surfaced over the past few decades, that there is no longer sufficient merit behind form critical assumptions and the resultant skepticism that the Gospel authors could have retained accurate historical information and testimony in a purely oral culture. In fact, this book, along with Bauckham’s recent tome on eyewitnesses, serves as a great 1-2 punch to form-critical judgments (in my view leaving this school of thought on the ground to remain). The authors include a great discussion on the issue of "contradictions", and I think compellingly demonstrate why the presence of discrepancies (even if actual contradictions) should not steer us away from maintaining the general reliability of the New Testament, as doing so would call into question virtually any historical incident for which we have multiple, independent attestation (though for which the historians studying these other incidents do not typically become skeptical of merely because of such discrepancies). They also speak of harmonization and how certain features of oral societies (such as those in which the Gospel authors lived) could contribute to such apparent discrepancies (though are, in fact, merely examples of acceptable variations within ancient oral tradition). The authors give a great overview of certain features within the Synoptic Tradition that suggest their general reliability (e.g. the inclusion of embarrassing details/episodes, the Aramaic substratum detectable from many of the Traditions, the inclusion of incidental details, and archaeological corroboration), though the reader may be frustrated by the lack of examples in some of these subsections. I was surprised, for example, that the authors did not discuss the massive archaeological corroboration for the book of Acts (granted that while the authors’ goal was to defend the reliability of the Synoptic Gospels, Luke’s proven general reliability in one document would give us a priori confidence in that of his Gospel as well). Of course, it is difficult to be too critical in this regard. The book is already 454 pages in text alone, and a wheelbarrow may have been needed to include every possible detail and discuss it in an in-depth manner.

I shudder to imagine the hours of research that must have been poured into this volume by Eddy and Boyd. This is evidenced by the authors’ copious footnotes in each of the diverse sections. In fact, while the material within the book can only give us an overview of many of the pertinent issues, such as why oral tradition behind the Gospels should be viewed as leading to a generally reliable written product penned 40-70 years after the events in question, the footnotes themselves serve as helpful guideposts pointing to locations that serious researchers can go next should they wish to pursue the topic(s) in more detail. As anticipated, we found the book to be a masterpiece, and one that is essential reading for those immersed in popular theories such as "The Christ Myth", "The Gospels as Fiction", and of course the ubiquitous practice of "parallelomania" (to name but a few). However, in the scholarly world, this book should also substantially contribute to the painfully-slow demise of Form Criticism.