Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jesus: Reading the Gospels on the Ground

Fisk’s othering obsession with Jewish villainy is a central feature of his 2011 book, A Hitchkihker’s Guide to Jesus: Reading the Gospels on the Ground published by Baker Academic Press, a division of Baker Publishing Group, a publishing house that caters to Evangelical Protestants in the United States.The text, which is used in a number of college level classes in Christian schools throughout the U.S., offers a fictionalized account of a recent college graduate’s visit to the Holy Land and his search for the historical Jesus in the land. Fisk reports that many of the protagonist’s “exploits are adapted from my own (mis)adventures in the Middle East,” and that “Others are made up.” The goal of the trip to the Holy Land described in the protagonist’s voice is “to get close to the sources of a religion and perhaps rescue my own faith from the ashes of modernity.”The search for the historical Jesus is the overt narrative in Fisk’s text, but there’s another subconscious and pernicious narrative present in the book. It’s the story of a young, innocent, and naïve Christian coming face to face with evil Jews in the Holy Land just as Jesus did in first century Jerusalem. When Jews appear in Fisk’s narrative, they almost invariably come off as bad, powerful people who do mean things to Palestinians for reasons that Norm, his literary alter ego, can’t seem to fathom.For example, Fisk’s book opens with Norm being told to lower his trousers by El Al security before getting on the plane in an unnamed city in the United States. No context is provided as to why El Al would subject Norm to such intense scrutiny. The fact is that a planeload of Jews returning to Israel presents an attractive target for a hijacking or other terrorist attack.And when Norm arrives in Israel and walks in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City on Friday afternoon, he sees a group of religious Jews walking toward their homes for Shabbat dinner. They remind him of his dog, named after the dwarf Gimli in Tolkein’s Lord of the Rings. Here is what Fisk writes:Friday afternoon found me in the Jewish Quarter. I surveyed the sea of men bobbing in prayer at the wall and then explored a maze of tidy stone alleyways where tidy families marched in tidy processions toward the homes where they would share a Shabbat meal. Reminded me of Gimli circling the carpet before her nap. [Note: This passage is accompanied by a photo of Orthodox Jews walking in the Old City.]It beggars belief that a passage comparing a group of Jews in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem to a dog — named after a dwarf no less — got past the editors at Baker Publishing Group, but it’s not the only unfortunate comparison that made it into Fisk’s text. Toward the end of the book, Fisk describes an Israeli settler pacing like a “caged ferret.” (More about that below.)The beginning of Norm’s quest to find the historical Jesus is delayed by “unrest” in Bethlehem, which he describes as follows:In a military operation to arrest “wanted” Palestinians, Israeli forces had killed an eighty-three year old woman. Next came street protests, rock throwing, and tear gas so Bethlehem was placed “under closure,” meaning none could enter or leave. I wonder if Herod imposed a curfew on Bethlehem when his troops entered to find the “wanted” newborn who threatened his rule.Here Fisk is deploying the “Israel as Rome” trope he used in the blog entry described above. Fisk’s use of scare quotes around the word wanted seems to convey a sense that the Israelis are being irrational and evil in their desire to capture the Palestinians, just as King Herod was in his desire to kill the infant Jesus, which led him to murder dozens of young children in Bethlehem. The implication of Fisk’s narrative is that the Palestinian that Israelis were trying to capture were as innocent, powerless and benign as the infants Herod had killed.Instead of providing readers with information regarding the circumstances surrounding the elderly woman’s death, Fisk introduces the image of King Herod to make the Israelis seem evil and malevolent, just like the man who sent Roman soldiers into Bethlehem to kill all the infants in the city. What Fisk has done is place real people — modern-day Israelis — into a reenactment of Christianity’s founding narrative that highlights their allegedly malign and evil nature. The Jewish victims in the Gospel of Matthew have been transformed into executioners into Fisk’s book.Fisk uses the Slaughter of the Innocents to highlight Jewish villainy when he describes the Siege of the Church of Nativity that took place in Bethlehem in April 2002. He describes Franciscan monks who: “were trapped in the church compound—“voluntary hostages,” they called it—with about two hundred Palestinian militants for some forty days back in April of 2002. Rather gutsy those Franciscans. Nonviolent. Nonpartisan. Ready to die to protect a holy site. They went without food, water, medicine, and electricity, hoping to prevent what some might call another “slaughter of the innocents.” It worked.”Fisk’s suggestion that the gunmen who took refuge in the Church of the Nativity qualified as “innocents” is simply an insult to the Israeli and American Jews who were murdered in the attacks organized or perpetrated by13 terrorists who took refuge in the church during the siege. Given the presence of members of Hamas and Fatah’s Tanzim Brigade in the group of 200 gunmen who took over the church, it is simply irresponsible for Fisk to unreflectively pass on the notion to his readers that the Franciscans stayed in the church “voluntarily.”What Fisk has done in his description of the siege is to affirm the moral superiority of Christians in the Holy Land by portraying Israeli Jews as the modern-day equivalent of the Roman Empire and portraying Palestinian terrorists as akin to innocent Jewish babies slaughtered by King Herod.The question Fisk’s Christian readers need to ask themselves is a simple and stark one: Is this the proper use of the Gospel — to demonize modern-day Israelis and downplay the horror of Palestinian terrorism, all in an effort to make Christianity and its adherents look good? Does casting religiously-motivated settlers into the frame of the “repugnant other” qualify as peacemaking?

Here's a snippet of my book review:Overall, I enjoyed the reading of A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jesus. There are several strengths to this book worth noting: (1) I loved that it was more of a conversational read as opposed to an academic. (2) The storyline was witty and entertaining, as I found myself chuckling in my encounters with the chapters. (3) The charts, pictures, graphs and sticky notes that were embedded throughout the book exposed me to historical sources and allowed for side-by-side comparison of Scriptures. (4) The introduction to the vast amount of theories regarding the Jesus depicted in the Gospels from birth to death to resurrection.My main reservation about the book was that it could be considered to be a little confusing and misleading for students entering religious studies. Fisk states in the preface that some of the stories are from his own adventures, while others are made up. Confusion can enter the minds of young theologians due to the necessity of trying to “decide when history stops and legend begins” (7). The fact that Fisk admits “shamelessly” placing words into the mouths of contemporary figures in the book can make one question its authenticity. In addition, the book does not reach any solid conclusions to the integrity of the Gospels.As previously mentioned, I enjoyed reading this book. It was engaging, entertaining, exposing and insightful. I would not recommend this to newcomers of religious studies; however, I would recommend this book to those who have engaged a more thorough study of the New Testament gospels.

An appealing book - witty, readable, often heart-stopping. And a unique genre, I believe, with its journaling/ criticism/ theology. I like it very much and would recommend it highly on those levels. The author's personality is always in play and contributing to his adventure in "the Land called Holy." Prof. Fisk is a graduate of Duke, and I was introduced to his work through "See My Tears," one of the best essays in The Word Leaps the Gap (festschrift for Dean Richard Hays).

An absolutely wonderful book. Highly recommended.

Could have been less of a notebook format, but it was relevant for the course that was taken. Good comparisons and insights. Would give a 4.5 if it was available.

An interesting book about the efforts of an individual to determine the historical validity of the Gospel stories. A different, light-hearted approach.

By far one of the most insightful study's on the life of Jesus, Bruce is not leaving information out! Really glad I read this, if your a doubter like me read this.

This was actually an excellent read. I personally loved the narrative that the author used to convey content.

excellent

I chose this rating because of the presentation, content and ideas put forward in this publication. A very good read.

I've no idea why this book is published.