Our Man in Judea: The Secret World of the First Gospel

A.J. Pell is rector of Christ Church in Hope, B.C., editor of the
Canadian Evangelical Review, and an instructor of Liturgy, Anglican
Studies Programme at Regent College in Vancouver, B.C.

The warnings come early, in the preface: “I am not concerned … about
the sanctity of academic ‘method’”; “This is a detective story
of sorts ... an investigation of what might have happened.” Then there
is the extensive use of italics, from the preface to the epilogue, as a
device to ensure that the reader gets the author’s point of the
moment.

Janet Tyson has come up with a complicated series of interrelated
hypotheses. Included in these are the ideas that (i) the Fourth Gospel
(as John’s gospel is generally known) is really the First Gospel (or
“FG,” as she calls it), written before the Synoptics and before the
Roman destruction of the Jerusalem temple; (ii) the epistles of Peter
and James are the products of a community associated with the author of
the “FG”; and (iii) the author of John’s gospel is actually the
Lazarus of John 11.

To assemble these hypotheses, Tyson relies on the meanings of names, on
coincidences, and on a reading of meanings back into Old Testament
texts. She throws so many small details into her text that the reader is
at first dazzled by her mental dexterity. But on sober second thought,
it becomes clear that she never quite proves any of her points, major or
minor. The result is much like Nino Ricci’s novel Testament—a
somewhat interesting piece of speculation.