Back in March, Jonathan Dean emailed me to make me aware of his book Salt & Light the complete Jesus. Interestingly, this book is comprised of 32 chapters. Thirty-two is said to be the number of Covenant which serves as a foundation for the story of God's people.

This book is deemed to be created for all readers who wish to find the real Jesus’ complete story. There are preliminaries and references for further reading and appendices with side discussions.

I was pleased the book began with the analogy of a picture, taken from the house church in Dura-Europos, Syria; paired with Jesus obscured. I started reading this ebook on Sept 11th and on page eight, in my reader, I saw a reference to this date.

The first chapter begins with noting the questioning, confusion, and considerations of different faiths /opinions of Jesus. Applying four rules to filter many hundreds of potential sources appeared to be a logical and necessary step though one might question persuasive interpretation in that the four rule filter selected would promote pure intellectuality and perhaps suppress the pure emotion and sensation that many of us use to react to certain stimuli.

This book does speak of skepticism of the “almost indisputable facts” about Jesus. We are informed Jesus' followers spread the story of Jesus through preaching and teaching. And more than factual history followers were glancing at the opinions of their authors. Accordingly, I relied on the appendices to gain a more comprehensive understanding of occurrences.

Moving on, the uncertainty in how to go about identifying “authentic” information is understood. We are aware of the destruction of historical records throughout history- be it by fire or an act of war where one must recognize cause and effect happens in our daily lives as it did in history. Destruction leaves holes in the collective historical records and a myriad of methods are used to recover it. Thankfully, collaborative programs have been created to help store historical records through libraries and historical connections.

Overall, this book does read like an academic reference book filled with analysis, and discernment. Scholars' date deductions were challenged citing the author's own research and analysis. I appreciate that he wrote about the complications he ran into while striving to find sources. He recognized and made us aware of the number- play distorts and the importance of looking at the context of a fragment. There were many intriguing images included that were new to me. Furthermore, he reminds us there were manuscripts found that were bundled and unrecorded for 1,500 years.

In closing, I admire the passion and dedication Jonathan Geoffrey Dean had in creating this book and recognize Christian belief in God and His Son Jesus is often a reliance based on faith's spiritual beauty rather than proof. ( )