Bryan M. Litfin

My main critique of this book is similar to the first: There's too much Christian activity for the level of Christian knowledge they have, and there's too little Christian knowledge for the updated setting. In the first it was somewhat believable that this was the first copy of the Old Testament (NT had water damage) and we were rediscovering from scratch. I got the sense the people lived in new developments and ancient ruins were rare, or avoided, or otherwise not relevant normally. Here though, the worldbuilding has been changed. Other countries still have ruins, and many people live in them. Including Rome, where some kind of church has survived. But somehow they can't manage a single copy of the New Testament. (They have additional OTs, which I'd really like to know how they managed. I've never seen an OT for sale. You want me to believe they all had water-damaged NTs attached?) Somehow that's enough for a mature community of Christians. I'm skeptical that the Old Testament is compelling enough all by itself to bring you remarkably close to adequate doctrine and faith. (And I'm pretty sure there was somewhere in the book where it was heavily suggested that it was enough for characters to receive salvation, despite knowing nothing of Jesus.)

Part of this is supposedly explained by demon-controlled bad guys trying to purge Christianity. (There was a New Testament around a generation ago.) It just strains credulity. I hear stories in the real world of POWs becoming Christians because they started to read the Bible pages being used as toilet paper, for goodness sake. I think the author either needed to go much further and destroy almost all traces of the ancient world, or just give up and admit that a decent number of copies of the most-published-book-of-all-time (both testaments!) have made it through.

I generally enjoyed the story, but the worldbuilding context just isn't quite cutting it for me.… (altro)

Book Description: "If you’ve ever wondered what happened to the biblical characters after Acts—from the well-known Matthew to the lesser-known Bartholomew—then this book is for you. Join Dr. Bryan Litfin as he guides you through Scripture and other ancient literature to sift fact from fiction, real-life from legend. "

Whew! I wanted to finish one last book for June and I've finished this one with 40 minutes to spare!

I was immediately intrigued by the timeline at the beginning of this book, and once I began to read it, I realized this will make a great study book for the teens during our Bible time.

I had mixed reactions to the different stories in this book. The stories of the four gospel writers didn't really contain a whole lot of new-to-me information. Others, like those of Mary, Thomas, and Paul, were really informative and interesting. The report card at the end of each chapter seemed odd and out of place. Why is the author grading the individuals based on the veracity of rumors about them? It was just a weird addition.

Even with the interesting information offered on several of the figures, I didn't feel there were enough answers given on any of the characters to fit the promise on the back of the book, "Learn what really happened to your favorite characters." Something else that drove me mad is the author's use of weird terms like "Johannine", "Marian", and "Petrine." Nobody talks like that in a book written for the average Joe. Because the rest of the book is written for the average Joe, these "scholarly" adjectives were way out of place.

Overall the information was interesting---but don't get too excited. Aside from a couple assumed exceptions, the book doesn't really give any concrete answers at all.… (altro)

I like "what-if" style fiction, and the idea of a future world needing to rediscover Christianity appealed to me. (The romance elements, not so much, but they were fine and didn't get in my way. Kind of sweet actually.) And it did successfully create a world needing to rediscover Christianity, complete with some rather disturbing fake gods, and underpinned by a combo of actual demonic activity and religion-as-political-power. A world just waiting for Christ to reappear.

On that level, this was great. My main critique is that the characters fall for God ("Deu") a little too hard, a little too fast, and a little too perfectly. They're translating one chapter at a time, from the Old Testament only. But they quickly decide God is very forgiving, and interested in your little prayers, and fall into a house church model. I frequently found myself thinking "Yes, you got that right, but you're behaving too Christian" or "How did you get that from just Genesis 1-3 and a couple Psalms (which is all that has been translated so far)?". The author needed to slow down the character development and/or speed up the translation to make it more believable.… (altro)