The above image is the cover that probably most every one who’s actually read James E. Talmage’s Jesus the Christ is most familiar with–not the fine, ornate hardback versions that sometimes appears on Deseret bookshelves, but the cheap-paperback version that, again, actually gets read.

It’s the cover from the “Approved Missionary Reference Library”®; there is, you see, an incredibly narrow number of non-scriptural books (like, 5 of them) approved for LDS missionaries to read on their very limited downtime.  Various other books have been added to and dropped from said list over the decades, so Jesus the Christ‘s persistent presence thereon is, all things considered, frankly impressive.  To this day, it’s practically a rite of passage for young missionaries to write home about how much they loved and adored and were enthralled by Jesus the Christ and admonish everyone to go read and re-read it, in ways that would only make us chuckle and cringe years later–I was that way, too.

Which is why I was a little trepidatious to revisit it after all these years–would it hold up?  How would my experience be different now than as a teenager?  What if it sucked?  Sometimes the kindest thing we can do for the authors of our youth is to leave them alone.

Nevertheless, I forged ahead anyways. Here’s some of my semi-organized thoughts after finally re-reading it for the first time since a greenie:

First, the book is before all else a harmonization of the four canonical gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.  That’s it. These are Talmage’s primary texts, and though he brings in some outside scholarship, the text still by and large germanes strictly to the four gospels, specifically the KJV English translation.  Those who, say, are seeking linguistic analyses of the original Greek or Hebrew must needs look elsewhere (it does not appear that Talmage even knew Greek). 

So must those seeking the most cutting edge Biblical scholarship, since this book came out clear back in the scholarly stone age of 1915. (Though that lack of engagement with major scholarship is also ironically what probably keeps the book from becoming dated; the KJV text is the same today as it was 100 years ago, while scholarship is constantly overturning itself).

Yet those also hoping for some discussion of the various non-canonical gospels left out by the Counsel of Nicaea will likewise be disappointed; this extra-canonical exclusion is especially perplexing, given how loudly and repeatedly Talmage condemned the Counsel of Nicaea in his book The Great Apostasy, and as well as his endorsement of a famous edition of The Apocryphal Books of The New Testament. His book really is just an attempt to corral together the Gospels’ disparate story-threads into one coherent narrative–nothing more, nothing less.

On the one hand, this can be a helpful approach, since it saves the casual, non-professional reader (like, say, teenaged missionaries) precious time and energy from trying to compare and contrast all four gospels on their own. But on the other hand, this approach severely limits the book’s scholarly scope–there’s only basic historical analysis, little linguistic, and hardly even any literary analysis going on here, mostly just literary recap, as though this book were the world’s longest wikipedia article on the Savior. Most of his commentary is the basic scholarly equivalent of saying “This is a thing that happened.”

Frankly, all these reasons are probably why young LDS missionaries love Jesus the Christ so much: it saves them the hard work of having to master the New Testament themselves.  I don’t mean that disparagingly–like I said, missionaries’ downtime for study is severely limited, we were not graduates of rigorous professional seminaries (at least, not in the Catholic/Protestant traditions), most of us had hardly read the entire New Testament once before our missions, and besides, conversion comes about by the Holy Ghost and love and kindness, not complex Biblical exegesis.  For kids like we were, still trying to marshal a basic command of the synoptic gospels, Jesus the Christ was a godsend.

Talmage’s Jesus the Christ, then, is a great primer for reading in depth the four gospels.  The problem then becomes when one goes on to actually read and study the four gospels for one’s self.  Most missionaries, if they read Jesus the Christ at all, read it while still greenies, but afterwards they do actually read the New Testament quite regularly.  I knew a missionary who was hardly an aspiring scholar or intellectual, who nonetheless finished the N.T. six times during his two-year mission alone, and I think I finished it at least four times myself–and I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve re-read it since.  As such, when I finally re-read Jesus the Christ, I found myself constantly saying with a sigh, “Yep. Yes. I know. I know.” There were precious few insights to revisit.

Furthermore, his hermeneutics is unapologetically LDS, and while I have no problem with that (who doesn’t have a hermeneutic, and why should Talmage apologize for his?), that approach does result in the text mostly just reflecting my own opinions back at me, without adding to or challenging them, which gets old fast–again, that approach may be useful in keeping young missionaries on message, but not particularly helpful for expanding one’s understanding of the New Testament.

What’s more problematic is how Talmage engages with the KJV text at face value, beginning with the uncritical assumption that the present Biblical text is 100% accurate–that is, “translated correctly” (which is not a part of LDS articles of faith; and since Talmage wrote a book on those, too, he really should’ve known better).  All in all, Jesus the Christ, far from being some profound work of Biblical scholarship and commentary as it is often marketed, is really just the New Testament for beginners, a sort of “Total Idiot’s Guide” to the life of the Savior, a “Jesus Christ 101” textbook.

But then, maybe that was Talmage’s endgame all along (or at least the LDS Church’s in handing it out to missionaries)–Jesus the Christ really is just a primer for the unitiated, an entrance point, some scriptural training wheels, a gateway, to help you feel like you’ve read the four gospels before you’ve actually read the four gospels.

I am obviously far less blown away by the book this time around than when I was 19, and part of me worries that that somehow reveals me as less spiritual now than I was then or something; but another part of me also wonders if that actually makes me Talmage’s ideal reader: you read Jesus the Christ in order to become the sort of person who doesn’t need to read Jesus the Christ.  Far more problematic, perhaps, would be if I was just as enthralled by Jesus the Christ today as I was when I was 19–that would show I’ve learned nothing at all.

But I try not to be a total crank about things, so I have compiled a brief list of things I did find genuinely insightful about Jesus the Christ:

• Talmage’s catalog of the gross legal inconsistencies in the Sanhedrin’s trial of Jesus is thorough, illuminating, and concise.
• I feel like an entire novel could be written (one almost wish he had done so instead) on Talmage’s line: “Mary appears never to have fully understood her Son.”
• And I believe that an entire novel has been written on (and a Martin Scorsese film based upon) the line: “Christ’s realization that He was the chosen and foreordained Messiah came to Him gradually.”
• Talmage also pulls off an intriguing balance between emphasizing both Christ’s humanity and his divinity.
• Talmage’s connection of Satan’s “If thou be the Christ…” in the desert, with the Sanhedrin’s taunts of “If thou be the Christ…” on the cross, is poetic and masterful.
• Boy, does Talmage sure hate Judas Iscariot.  Anyone hankering for a more sympathetic Jesus Christ Superstar-type treatment won’t find it here.
• Yet at the same time, he’s weirdly pitying of Pontius Pilot.
• None of this is to imply that Talmage is illiberal or ungenerous; he says of the parable of the Good Samaritan: “We are not justified in regarding priest, Levite, or Samaritan as the type of his class; doubtless there were many kind and charitable Jews, and many heartless Samaritans.” 
• In fact, when one considers how as recently as 2004, Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ utilized the same old anti-Semitic caricatures that have plagued both Judaism and Christianity for centuries, then Talmage’s fastidious avoidance of even the faintest hint of antisemitism clear back in 1915 is downright refreshing (he’s careful to only implicate the rulers, never the Jews–and even then, only some of the rulers).
• And despite writing in 1915, Talmage could be writing of today’s sexist double standards when he notes sardonically of those who brought the adulteress before Christ: “One may reasonably ask why the woman’s partner in the crime was not brought for sentence, since the law so zealously cited by the officious accusers provided for the punishment of both parties to the offense.”
• “It is noteworthy that the Lord specified belief rather than faith as the condition essential to the case.”  That’s a line that could have used a whole lot more explication.
• Talmage also does an excellent job of unpacking how and why Christ’s declarations of “He who is without sin, cast the first stone” and “render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto God the things which are God’s” were so devastating to his enemies.
• Talmage, an Apostle himself, showed some real chutzpah when he wrote: “Holy Apostleship is no guarantee of eventual exaltation in the celestial kingdom.” (Something to remember for those of us who assume that Church leadership positions are an ipso facto divine validation of one’s goodness).
• Talmage is also good at highlighting how Christ was literally alone, bereft of the sustaining presence of God, when he cried out “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me.” 
• He’s also good at explaining how Christ’s death was a miracle as well, since men were supposed to take days to die after increasing exhaustion, not after a mere 3 hours and then a scream.
• It’s surprisingly moving when Talmage notes that the “mixture of water and blood” that came from Christ’s side is consistent with the medical effects of “a rare heart-valve rupture,” and then says, “The present writer believes that the Lord Jesus died of a broken heart.” 
• Talmage also matter-of-factly assumes that the Book of Mormon takes place mostly near the “Isthmus of Panama.”  Take that, conservative “Heartland” theorists!

Overall, again, you perhaps read Jesus the Christ so you become the sort of person who no longer needs to read Jesus the Christ. That doesn’t mean there isn’t still value in a reread. But especially when there are still so many other studies and commentaries out there, there can be limits even to our nostalgic curiosity.