Book Review: The Antioch Testament

The Antioch Testament by Donald Joiner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ken never expected to take on his wounded brother’s project, but how could he say no when Charles may never recover from his IED injuries during his tour as Army Chaplain? He had the ability to communicate and collaborate with some of the most amazing historical analyst on a manuscript that possibly predates most of our written texts by several hundred years, and may verify some Church history. Unfortunately, he is not the only one interested in this text, and the other guys are willing to die to get it.

The Antioch Testament is written, Epistle style, from the perspective of Ignatius of Antioch, one of the earliest Church fathers. While obviously a work of fiction, it is equally obvious that author Joiner is heavily invested in historical accuracy and evidence. As one who holds a degree in history I loved the retelling of some of the lives of Jesus’ disciples persevering on the mission He gave. While the history was solid, unfortunately the novelization of it was a little flat. Most of the characters were quite one dimensional, and the whole time they seemed to be apologizing for boring us with the history or putting things into context. The wounded veteran/terrorist subplot was nothing more than pretext to get the manuscript read. That’s not necessarily a bad thing but if you are going to have a pretext then it needs to work in harmony with the main plot and it just came out a little disjointed. Still if you are interested in early Church history this is a great read and probably something that could make for some interesting dorm room debates.


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