I have just finished Bruce Fisk's enjoyable and fun A Hitchhiker's Guide to Jesus: Reading the Gospels on the Ground (Baker Academic, 2011). I saw the book in a Baker Academic announcement a couple weeks ago, and since I am teaching a course on Jesus and the Synoptic Tradition this coming fall, I thought I should check it out (not to mention that Bruce Fisk teaches at my alma mater Westmont College). After reading the first chapter, I was hooked and knew that I would be placing the book on the required reading list for my course. When my copy first arrived, I read through the comments from an impressive list of academics and was a bit skeptical of what seemed like overly positive praise. Rereading those comments now, they are right on. For example, Gary Burge states: "Bruce Fisk has possibly written the most creative, fascinating, and informed book on the Gospels in a generation..." For me, what makes this book so appealing is the way in which Fisk weaves together ...
Karina Hogan has reviewed Jonathan Moo's Creation, Nature and Hope in 4 Ezra (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011) in RBL. She gives a positive review of Moo's look at 4 Ezra's portrayal of the created order, while also criticizing what she sees as hair-splitting on some occasions. Regardless, Moo's work is worth reading for those interested in Jewish apocalyptic and Jewish understandings of nature and creation at the end of the first-century.
