I read it, and was disappointed. The book could only get so close to Jesus as to speculate what a person living during that time period might have been like, and what some of the prevailing social issues were.
I thought it was a good book, as he says, he's not presenting anything new or controversial to biblical scholars, but I (as a layperson) learned a lot about Christianity, and now understand it better - how it went from being a weird Jewish sect to the imperial religion of Rome.
Just finished The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World by Catherine Nixey, which documents the destruction of statues, temples and artworks by Christians in the years 300-500AD in Europe. Also recommended!
Unfortunately Nixey’s book is terrible. As a classisist she should know better than to regurgitate ideas from Gibbon, ignoring 200 years of scholarship. Instead she goes for sensationalism, “evil Christians destroying classical culture” and links to ISIS and such. Which isn’t needed because the period she describes is interesting enough on its own.
I especially like this article (https://www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2017/10/21/hunting-the-w...), focusing on how she misused a quote from Chrysostom by removing all context, which completely changed the meaning to fit her narrative. Not only that, she clearly didn’t read the original source but borrowed the interpretation from another author, who also misread it.
