Edwards offers a mixed appraisal of Jesus Christ Superstar, complaining that the play is willing to "raise hard questions while refusing to supply simple answers"; the critic also assesses the play as a new gospel for the counter culture of the late-1960s and early-1970s.

[In Superstar the] Christ of faith gives way to the Jesus of history. Rice and Webber have acknowledged modern scholarship's discovery that the New Testament picture of Jesus is colored throughout with propagandistic interpretation more intent on convincing the reader that Jesus is the divine God-man than in giving an historically accurate picture of the flesh-and-blood man of Galilee. (p. 218)

Rice and Webber attempt to dramatize the lifestyle of the historical Jesus in the midst of the lifestyles and forces at work around him.

Is there any value in bypassing ecclesiastical propaganda to seek out this life-style? To an emerging culture...