Recommended Book Review: God Among Sages: Why Jesus is not just Another Religious Leader, Kenneth Samples

 

Living in a polytheistic and religious pluralistic environment, have you ever thought what's so special about Jesus? You might have been taught other deities are simply false gods but this argument cannot hold water in your daily secular life. Have you ever investigated how Jesus stands to be exclusive? We do have Buddha, Muhammad, Ram, Krishna, Mahaveer, Nanak and the list goes on but why do we have exclusive claims and standpoint about Jesus? 

Kenneth Samples has done an excellent analysis on why Jesus is not just other religious leaders. He presents a historic Christian portrait of Jesus and then a comparative analysis of Jesus with Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad and Confucius. 

The basic outline regarding contents of the book goes as:

Part 1: The Historic Christian Portrait of Jesus Christ 

1. Jesus’s Stunning Self-Understanding 

2. The Matchless Life of Jesus 

3. A Historic Christology 

4. Answering Challenges to Jesus’s Historic Identity 

Part 2: Four Major Leaders of World Religions and Jesus 

5. The Prince (Krishna) and the Lord 

6. The Buddha (Gautama) and the Christ 

7. The Teacher (Confucius) and the Savior 

8. The Prophet (Muhammad) and the Son of God 

Part 3: Christianity and the World’s Religions 

9. Truth, Tolerance, and the Plurality of Religious Claims 

10. Biblical Perspective on the World’s Religions 

In Part 1, author starts with amazing exploration with topic: Who do people say Jesus is? 

He then presents a table what different religious sects has to say about him. He then starts with an interesting question whether Jesus claimed to be God by presenting scriptural analysis. 

He discusses matchless life of Jesus exploring his character, personality, morality, miraculous figure, and incomparable teacher.

He discusses Historic Christology such as Christian theistic view of God, Hypostatic Union, kenosis, incarnation, and answers to several critical questions and Jesus' historic identity.    

In part 2, the comparative analysis of Jesus with Buddha, Krishna, Muhammad and Confucius has been done in 8 areas:

1. History

2. Nature

3. Character

4. Mission

5. Role

6. State

7. Life

8. Future 

Each detailed description and a summarized table at end in each comparison. 

In Part 3, he discusses in detail about pluralism, tolerance and Biblical perspective on world's religions with 12 scriptural principles. 

He has provided enough additional resources and discussion questions at end of every chapters that makes this book pretty interactive and fit to be used as apologetics course.  

Also review in Nepali by Nepali Apologist Kamal Adhikari: Here