Recommended BOOK Review: Bock

Bock, PH.D., Darrell L., The Missing Gospels, Unearthing the Truth Behind Alternative Christianities, Thomas Nelson Pub, 2006, pb, 229, pp, I# 9778-0-7852-8906-7, 14 chapters, foreword by Dr. Edwin M. Yamauchi. 

                Bock seeks to carefully show the weakness of the popular ideas that other Christian faiths developed parallel to orthodoxy but simply orthodoxy won out!  He counters ideas of the ‘new school’ of Walter Bauer, and modern popular writings of Bart Ehrman and Dan Brown, etc. He proceeds by examining a large sampling of the new materials, especially those like the Gospel of Thomas found at Nag Hammadi and a sampling of the Bible early church fathers like Ireneaus, Justin Martyr and Clement, etc.  I enjoyed finding many of these traditional texts also on the CCEL site in the Anti-Nicene Fathers of Philip Schaff, and reading the contexts.  The so called new materials took further seeking out. Bock seeks to show the origin and nature of the gnostic materials and how the Bible philosophy is not at all like that, but better.   

This work is parallel to that of Dr. R Price’s Searching for the Original Bible, too that I’m also currently reading.  McDowell’s Evidence that Demands a Verdict also has much from the early fathers but it was written before current claims about alternative Christianities.

Gift from P Siebert, 2011, read May 2012 in Senegal.J 

Recommended Book Review: McConnell

         McConnell, D R, A Different Gospel, A Historical & Biblical Analysis of the Modern Faith Movement, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Pub, 1998, pb 195 pp, I# 0913573-78-7, 10 chapters in 2 sections of Historical Analysis and then Biblical Analysis and a good bibliog.  

             McConnell, an insider Pentecostal writer (ORU, YWAM, BPC), seeks to show the fallacies of the popular teachings of the charismatic faith healers, revelation knowledge, identification, & the popular prosperity gospel, & he strongly critiques the modern Faith Movement of E W Kenyon (d 1948), and Kenneth Hagin (1917- ), & Kenneth Copeland, John Osteen (father of Joel), Robert Schuller, Jimmy Swaggart, & even Oral Roberts, & Pat Robertson, etc.  Classifying the movements as a new Gnosticism, dualistic, & cultic, he also exposes the corruption, plagiarism, and nepotism that such teaching inevitably leads.  Well documented.

Found at UWM-Phare, once Jose Oliveira’s, May ’12.  It was worth reading to get a better distinction of charismatics and faith healing movements and to see the weaknesses of such prevalent ‘Christianity,’ especially the Prosperity Gospel.