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Dec 27, 2017
This material adds some interesting background commentary to the life of Jesus and the times he lived in, but the authors took quite a few liberties in filling in details that are unknowable, like what was going through people's minds, etc. After listening to the book on tape I came away questioning how much Bill O'Reilly contributed to the book, as his narration of the book was somewhat awkward at times. Granted, there are a lot of unusual people and place names in this narrative, but Bill seemed to ramrod his way through them, with lead-in hesitation at times. I wonder if he had been closer to the material if he would have researched and practiced the pronunciation of these names instead of trying to record the book in one take. In general I found his performance on the Lincoln and Kennedy books to be much better, which is understandable since these stories are more known to us. In this book he (or the author) switches between "John the Baptizer" and "John the Baptist" several times. At first I thought that the first one was somehow more historically accurate, but after Bill switched back and forth I came away feeling that his religious knowledge leaves something to be desired (he talks about his Roman Catholic upbringing in the forward to the book). He also stumbled on words like "magi" and "basalt", which is a common volcanic rock. I would suggest reading the book to broaden your knowledge about Jesus (and following it up with more reading from experts on this topic), but skipping Bill's reading of it.