Peripatetic New Testament scholar Darrell Bock, professor at Dallas Theological Seminary and senior editor at Christianity Today, has a new book out this fall. Apparently, Bock travels the country for three months touting one book, then nine months later gives birth to another one. That’s a heck of a pace.
The new book is called Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture’s Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ, and it's sort of a follow-up to Bock’s 2004 bestseller Breaking the Da Vinci Code. In that tome, he took time from his scholarly research -- he’s known as perhaps the world’s preeminent expert on the Gospel of Luke -- to, as he puts it, “engage the culture.” The new book tackles what Bock and co-author Daniel B. Wallace call the clash between Christianity and “Jesusanity,” a view that rejects the divinity of Jesus but respects the Jesus of Nazareth who is primarily a teacher and guide.
Bock's never one to let a trend go untouched: During the first half of 2006, four books from the Jesusanity school landed on The New York Times bestseller list -- among them, Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, which landed the author on both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert's Comedy Central shows. Indeed, it was Ehrman who prompted this quote from Colbert: "So you're an agnostic? Isn't that just an atheist without balls?" Jesus. --Glenna Whitley
