[There] is evidence of imaginative energy in "Man of Nazareth." If the book's portrait of Salome seems a shade lubricous and overelaborate, the portrait of Judas Iscariot (political innocent cynically used by the Establishment) is cunning and provocative. And genuine liveliness breathes in the disciples' often coarse talk among themselves. "I touched him," says Thomas after the Resurrection, "and then he gave me this mouthful about it being better to believe without seeing…. There was no doubt at all about it. Right, Matt?"

In the end, though, "Man of Nazareth" doesn't achieve for this reader its goal of lending solidity to Jesus' teachings. The reason is, I think, that the author is insufficiently concerned with the intellectual dimensions and power of the deeds at the center of the life of Christ. In recent decades writers of many persuasions, not merely crisis theologians, have come to understand this life...