Brooke Koppenhaver Fisk Final Thoughts

After finishing A Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jesus, I left with many new ideas that I had never even thought about considering previously. Growing up going to Church and hearing about Jesus and his life and role in one way my entire life, I’ll admit at times reading this book was challenging and bothersome. However there are many ideas that this book helped me look at in different ways. I had never even considered intertextuality between books of the Bible; I just simply thought they had similar ideas because that was the truth. Although I still believe that the gospels are true, it makes me consider that some of the details may have become fuzzy over time, and that the gospel writers may have used other documents in order to clarify what they were trying to say, or fill in gaps within the story. I really liked how Fisk set up the Bible verses from each gospel in order to show the similarities and differences a lot more easily, it helped with understanding the intertextuality. Another idea that Norm introduced to me was the embarrassment theory. It makes a lot of sense that the stories in the Bible that were the most embarrassing or in a sense, nonrealistic to what the son of God should be feeling or going through, were the ones that are most likely to be true and without embellishment. The gospel writers main purpose and goal was to try and make the general public believe in Jesus and his divinity, if this were the case they would not make up stories that would make Jesus look inferior to other humans.

            This book also brought up many topics that were disturbing to me and I had a hard time wanting to finish some of the chapters. Fisk questioning Mary’s virginity, and whether or not Jesus really did rise from the dead were the two most challenging topics for me to read about. Although my views had not changed on these topics, it was interesting to see what other people thought about what I have believed without question my whole life. Over all the book opened my eyes and mind and has given me some insight I would have never otherwise gotten.