Tim LaHaye, Jerry B. Jenkins
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 37
Average rating: 3.0 of 5
Hardly Can Be Considered A Novel 1 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.
Let me first preface by stating that I am a Jerry Jenkins fan. I have read and truly enjoyed the entire Left Behind series, the Soon series, the instructional book "Writing For The Soul" and some of Jenkins' biographical work. There were certainly a few books that didn't pique my interest as much (The Regime, Kingdom Come), though even those I still considered well done overall, with good use of imagery and storytelling.
None of this was the case with "John's Story," the first book in the Jesus Chronicles series. This series was portrayed to be one which took us back in time to give us a fresh (yet understandably fictional) perspective of the day-to-day life of Jesus, his disciples, and the goings on of that time period. I, like many others, assumed this was to be a novel that read between the lines of scripture (as the Bible gives us many accounts, but doesn't provide every detail of everything that happened during Jesus' 3 years of public ministry), as well as a novel that provided vast accounts of interesting historical research not known to the average citizen. But I guess that is why we are taught never to assume anything.
Instead, the book portrays John as a rather cranky 90 year old man who tries to do things himself, but is getting old and feeble. Cerinthus, a heretic, is starting his own gnostic church in Ephesus where John lives, and it's up to John to counter him before his imminent death. Hence, his decision to write his personal account of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Later, John is captured, sent to Patmos, writes Revelation, comes home, reads Revelation to his church, writes the books of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd John with the help of his protege Polycarp, and finally dies. There's your story in a nutshell. If that sent chills up your spine, then you need to get out more.
The ONLY positive feedback I can provide for this book is for the first chapter when John is awaiting his execution in Rome via being boiled in oil. While we know from history that John died a natural death and would certainly not die in the boiling oil, it was interesting to see where Jenkins and LaHaye were going with this turn of events and I was eager to find out where they were taking the story. However, after reading the next dozen chapters or so, I was fighting a game of willpower just to finish the book. The bulk of the entire story is John regurgitating his gospel almost word for word to his young disciple Polycarp, the future bishop of Smyrna. Most of the dialogue involves nothing more than fillers such as "Excuse me master, what did Jesus mean?" "Well son, he meant..." The dialogue also seemed very formal and fake. It was as if Polycarp always walked on eggshells while brown-nosing John, and John always seemed to be chastising Polycarp.
Now, I understand that we're not always going to like everything that even our favorite authors, musicians, and actors release. (I don't care for every Beatles song, though one can't deny the band's level of talent and its place in history). However, I can hardly even recognize "John's Story" as a fictional novel with any sort of creativity due to its immense volume of scripture quoted verbatim. As if simply hearing John explain his gospel to Polycarp for the bulk of the novel, while providing us with nothing else of significance were not bad enough, John's exile to Patmos and his prompting to write the book of Revelation were handled extremely pooly, as we know nothing of what John actually experienced. All we know is that the guards saw him and thought he was dead. It would have been nice to have been WITH John as the reader, to see what he was seeing and hear what he was hearing as he was caught up to heaven and given his divine revelation. (This sort of thing was done well in the Left Behind prequel "The Rapture" via the viewpoints of those who were taken up to heaven). The final blow to this disasterous account occurs when John returns home from Patmos and attends the Lord's Day service and we are forced to hear much of the book of Revelation read aloud and verbatim by Polycarp and John to the congregation. People cry and fall to their knees and occassionaly someone asks "What did that part mean?" but again, like in the writing of his gospel, John offers us nothing truly insightful that we didn't already know.
All in all, this was a book with zero plot, next to no constructive dialogue, no character development of any kind (except that John grew steadily weaker physically) and worst of all, a book that quoted so much direct scripture that barely one quarter of it (if that!) could be considered actual fictional writing. If one would like to call "John's Story" a vague study guide for the books of John and Revelation, then that's one thing, but term "fictional novel" hardly applies here.
While I have always respected Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins as men of faith who try to promote the gospel and help people make decisions for Jesus, I can't say I truly respect this Jesus Chronicles project as I have an ethical problem with people pretty much printing down scripture (with a few weak filler words in between), printing out several books of the Bible as the last 100 pages of the book, calling it a novel, and getting paid for each copy that sells. I think most would agree that if not for the authors' name power, this book would not even have a chance at getting published as is, let alone a chance at selling tons of copies. While I have always supported the work of these men, I will not be reading the next book in the Jesus Chronicles series. I would truly hope that Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins consider abandoning this project before the third book even has a chance to be written.
Editorial Review:
Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins team up again for the first time since their phenomenally successful Left Behind series. Each book in this series paints a vivid picture of Jesus, told in the voice of his apostles Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
Unabridged CDs - 8 CDs, 9 hours
