An exciting new look at Jesus the man. I like Barton’s radical take.

Barton was one of the giants of the fledgling advertising industry when he wrote this portrait of Jesus to counteract what he experienced as a sentimentalized distortion of the presentation in the four Gospels. His take on Jesus is well-summarized by setting a quotation from the Gospel of Luke at the beginning of the book: "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" The result can be imagined by the chapter titles: The Executive; The Outdoor Man; The Sociable Man; His Method; His Advertisements; The Founder of Modern Business; and The Master.

Some readers may conclude, as I did, that Barton's Jesus is a much a distortion as the Sunday School picture he reacts to, nevertheless, an interesting counter-balance. ( )

Finished and reviewed 09/05/04
This was quite a disappointment.

I pulled it out of my cataloging stack because it sounded so intriguing. "What a good idea, " I thought. "The Gospels are so familiar, to read them as a 'modern life' will be very refreshing."
And sometimes the author approached the potential -- a few paragraphs here and there really did cast light on Jesus as an actual human being.
However, Mr. Barton evidently decided to ignore His divinity. That's just as unbalanced as the too reverential tomes which ignore His humanity. Barton mentions healing, feeding the 5,000 etc., but never acknowledges that He is actually working miracles.
Further, he implies that it was the strength of Jesus' message which caused it to last for 2,000 years, rather than its being the actual, living Word of God, straight from His Son. Barton seems to think it's like something from Karl Marx or Charles Darwin, or even Aristotle and Plato.
And finally, he ends with the crucifixion, ignoring the Resurrection altogether. Jesus was not just a magnetic preacher or an inspirational teacher. Either He was God in the flesh, or, as Lewis so aptly points out, He was a lunatic who claimed to be God.
If He was God, his humanity and His divinity should be equally acknowledged and enjoyed. That is not the case in this book. ( )