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(More customer reviews)Since the overwheming response to Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, the real mystery is why there has not been more authors duplicating Brown's commercial success with their own "Jesus du jour" efforts. It seems we should by now be inundated with best sellers that create their own Brand X Christ by inventing a "history" to suit their needs, declaring it as fact in the preface, setting it in a halfway decent page turner, and then watching the cash roll into the coffers. Thankfully, the lucrative payoff for Brown has not been that easy to duplicate.
Yet since the potential payoff is so high, the unique success of Brown's venture does still draw authors to try their hand at catching lightning in a bottle. A new contender is Ronald Cutler's The Secret Scroll - a novel with all the usual ingredients: secret societies, architectural referneces, cloak-and-dagger priests, any Jesus but the orthodox one, corrupted scriptures, a coming restoration of the truth, and a few plot twists thrown in to try to keep it interesting.
Unfortunately, Cutler has little of the talent for keeping the reader's attention that Brown possesses and the story contains so many inconsistencies and asbsurdities that the reader is often forced to stop and stare blankfaced in wonderment. This "huh?" factor turns up again and again as ad hoc plot developments are introduced for no other reason than because the author could not find a creative bridge to the desired end - a result that makes the book's twists and turns little more than pulling rabbits out of hats.
Yet it is not only at the literary level that this book fails. While he makes none of the obvious historical gaffes that made Brown's book so frustrating, the Jesus who emerges from The Secret Scroll could hardly have drawn followers in such troubled circumstances as faced first century Judea - much less have them continue their allegiance after his execution. Cutler's Jesus is one custom made for a shallow consumer culture - a post-modern messiah for Oprah viewers who makes no demands but on his followers apart from an occasional hug. Such a bland vanilla Jesus would hardly have troubled religious leaders much less given the world's then superpower reason to execute him.
A serious problem Cutler faces is that he really is trying to "be fair" to those with whom he disagrees without actually understanding what they really believe. It is admirable that he does not wish to repeat Brown's caricatures of orthodox belief but he simply doesn't grasp it well enough to make his efforts believable. For example, when an orthodox Catholic priest is confronted by "The Master" - the leader of the secretive Guardians - he rebuts the latter's anti-Semetic views by stating that Jesus' mother and father were Jewish. Apparently, Mr. Cutler has not grasped the "Son of God" ideal well enough to fully comprehend that orthodox Christians do not consider Joseph to be the father of Jesus. In another noticable error, an orthodox Protestant clergyman defiantly states to the Master that God will judge him by his deeds - a point that would seemingly make sola fide and the Reformation a moot point.
Overall, The Secret Scroll had some potential as an idea but quickly lost its flavor in execution. A combination of poor writing and editing, deficient understanding of the subject matter underlying the topic, and an apologia for the worst form of cafeteria religion makes this book a mess best left unread despite its initial potential.
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Josh Cohan, a work-obsessed archaeology professor, has a recurring dream about a great secret. He follows his instincts to the Judean desert, where he makes a fantastic discovery an ancient scroll which seems to have been written by Jesus Christ. The Israeli Antiquities Authority has a claim on the scroll, but another, more sinister organization wants the scroll as well. The Guardians, members of an ancient extremist religious sect, are willing to kill to get what they want.Josh joins the government-sponsored team of translators who believe the scroll might be genuine, and falls in love with Danielle, the fiery daughter of one of the translators. When a friend turns up dead and Danielle goes missing, Josh realizes that the scroll might be more powerful and controversial than he had ever imagined. Will Josh be able to prevent something terrible from happening to the woman he loves without giving up the most important discovery mankind has ever made?
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