KELLER, Texas (ABP) — More than a dozen years ago, computer programmer Frank Ball became consumed with a passion — to tell the story of Jesus in a compelling way for a contemporary audience.
“Just tell the story first. It causes people to live the event and learn by that experience,” he said.
So, Ball set out to do exactly that — retell the story of Christ’s life in chronological sequence in a simple, engaging way that would remain true to the Scriptures and serve as an effective evangelistic tool.
Ball’s 12-year project led to a three-year stint as pastor of biblical research and writing at Anchor Church in Keller, Texas, and it resulted in Eyewitness: The Life of Christ Told in One Story, a slim volume Winepress Publishing has produced in multiple editions — paperback, leather-bound, large-print and audio-book.
“I looked at this project with the basic assumption that something happened, we don’t know exactly what, and we’re not going to know by studying just one report,” Ball said.
To a casual reader — and even to the sizeable percentage of churchgoers who don’t read the Scriptures in a serious and systematic way — four accounts of the same story by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John seem difficult to reconcile, he concluded.
Ball consulted every harmony of the Gospels he could find, comparing their similarities and differences, trying to merge them into something understandable. In the process, he decided that rather than contradict each other, the four distinct viewpoints of the Gospel writers add a richness and depth to the story of Jesus when put together.
He spent four years simply compiling a cut-and-paste account of Christ’s life, using the New International Version.
“That was just not good enough,” he concluded. “It needed to read like a novel.”
But Ball wanted to make the story of Jesus more real to a modern audience, not fictionalize it. So, he set out to create his own retelling of the life of Christ — adding nothing, but relying only on the Gospel accounts and about 250 related Old Testament Scriptures to provide background information.
“I didn’t feel qualified,” said Ball, who had no background in biblical languages. “There are a lot of good translations out there, and I didn’t want to recreate the wheel.”
Instead, he wanted to offer something not available elsewhere — a chronological account of the life of Christ told in a way “the average Joe on the street could understand,” he said.
With BibleWorks software and translators’ handbooks from the American Bible Society, Ball worked verse-by-verse through the Gospels. After he finished his book, Ball hired Donald Davis, a retired linguist with Wycliffe Bible Translators, to review and critique his work.
“I shied away from adding words that were not in the original,” he said.
But Ball didn’t hesitate to prune away any perceived redundancy. For instance, his book includes one account of Jesus cleansing the Jerusalem temple. He sets the event at the beginning of Christ’s public ministry as John’s Gospel records it, rather than a few days prior to his crucifixion as presented in the Synoptic Gospels.
Ball builds his whole chronology around the framework of John’s Gospel, assuming since it was the last written that its purpose must have been to clarify previously existing misunderstandings. That’s opposite the approach many biblical scholars take in assuming the primacy of Mark’s Gospel.
Ball readily concedes he lacks any professional credentials as a translator, and he could be mistaken at some points in the details of the way he has retold the story of Jesus. But he’s thoroughly convinced it’s a story worth telling.
“I want people to realize that Jesus was God in the flesh,” he said. “Jesus put a face on God for us. Jesus revealed the character of God.”
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Ken Camp is managing editor of the Baptist Standard.