The Man Nobody Knows: Book Review 2023
I first learned about this book when I was going through Community College. I had this history professor who said that this was a controversial book and the way he had skewed it was in a light that was sacrilegious. The man nobody knows by Bruce Barton was written in 1925 and for that day it may have seemed sacrilegious.
With the advent of internet creating the rising of “Influence”, this book is more relevant 2023. An amazing introspective book for entrepreneurs. The ideas in the book go against the grain of Baby-Boomer MBA style business philosophy. Instead focuses on the concept of influence as a business model and how Jesus used influence to grow his discipleship and his following. Like they say if you want to learn something new read an old book.
The book is broken down into seven chapters, each chapter articulating the unique picture back to the main theme of Jesus as the greatest business entrepreneur and founder of all time.
Chapter 1: The Executive
Chapter 2: The Outdoor Man
Chapter 3: The Sociable Man
Chapter 4: His Method
Chapter 5: His Advertisements
Chapter 6: The Founder of a Modern Business
Chapter 7: The Master
The motif driven home by Barton is that Jesus has been overly sold as a weak peace-loving hippie ready to welcome deaths sweet release. Barton uses a series of biblical scripture with his own narration as to how the facts occurred. Barton brings light to the fact that Jesus was a Carpenter and was most likely a very strong man because carpenters had to do very hard manual labor.
Barton discusses some key Biblical writing points that would correspond with Orson wells rules for writing 20 to 30 years later. I'm no theologian or scriptural guru but I thought that Bruce Barton's points and his telling of the biblical events really changed my perspective on some stories that I had simply overlooked and just took as “gospel”.
In particular, The Sermon on the Mount. That one made me see that gospel telling in a whole different way. For example, Barton’s reasoning for the sermon on the mount was that Jesus was being chased by an army that was going to make him the King then March on Jerusalem overthrow the Roman occupiers. Which made a lot of sense why Jesus’s sermon on the mount speech was primarily a peace loving speech: focusing on the virtues of humility and meekness in light of a jingoistic Jewish army ready to take it's capital back.
The book highlights similar examples of Jesus giving up positions of power to fulfill his grander vision. All of which leading back to the first quote in the book “waste ye not that I may be about my father's business”.
Chapter five of the book is named his advertisements Focusing on the ninth chapter of Matthew as a short essay. It showcases how Jesus generally spoke in one syllable words- driving home new ideas and provocative points.
Barton alludes to the fact that Jesus 's wilderness excursions of isolationism gave him more visions. With each return to his following he would lose followers after expressing his visions.
Like a casually dressed modern CEO of a major tech company Jesus disregarded rigid adherence to authority.
Even Better: You can listen to the book for Free HERE:
