Review of JESUS: A THEOGRAPHY by Frank Viola and Leonard Sweet

Rating: 4 out of 5

JESUS: A THEOGRAPHY by Frank Viola and Leonard Sweet is a unique approach to telling the story of Jesus. Viola and Sweet seek to combine Scripture and findings in historical Jesus studies to create a reader-friendly biography (or theography) of Jesus' life. The main thrust of the book, however, is to show that all of Scripture centers on Jesus.

The book begins before the beginning, describing Jesus as the second person of the trinity in eternity past, before the creation of the world. The authors seek to reveal Jesus as the infinite hero of the story God is telling through creation. The rest of the book looks at key moments in Jesus' life as recorded in the gospels.

The strength of this book lies in its Christocentricity. The book is truly about Jesus and about illuminating Scripture's comprehensive focus on Christ.

Some concerns I had with the book were areas where the authors seem to allegorize Scripture, finding Jesus in areas of the Old Testament that clearly aren't about him. For example, the authors compare the creation narrative to Jesus' life in a way that is merely speculative. There are other areas of speculation throughout the book, but overall it's a good illumination of the life of Jesus.

Review copy provided by Thomas Nelson as a part of their BookSneeze reviewer blog program