L. Michael White's "Scripting Jesus"

I was asked to check this one out, and I’ll sum it up by saying it’s just your Ordinary Liberalism from the looks of it. I didn’t read the whole thing – just 5-6 chapters – because I had read one of White’s earlier works (a highly forgettable one) and didn’t see anything in it but regurgitated liberal thought, with no sustained argument being made for it. I figured if a selection of chapters here was the same, then there’s no need to read the whole 500 pages. I’m probably right anyway.

White does go into some depth on topics you might not expect, like Wisdom Christology and oral tradition, but nowhere near the depth he should. It is hard to see, for example, why White discusses the former while neglecting to discuss allusions to the Wisdom tradition in Paul. The oddity of this volume is illustrated by the section on the Lukan census, in which the recommended further reading offers no source dated later than 1982, and that being the Anchor Bible Dictionary. The oldest source recommended is from 1963. Huh? Nothing’s been done on the issue since 1982? To be fair, though, White is at least aware of some more up to date scholarship from conservatives in other chapters.

There’s not much to say otherwise. It’s all stuff we’ve seen before, though done better and in more detail by others. I might as well put that on a T-shirt as often as I’ve had to say it.