The Didymus Contingency, a Review

The Didymus Contingency by Jeremy Robinson

3 1/2 of 5 stars

Christian Fiction and time travel themes--OK you've got my attention! I love time travel stories and enjoy stories with strong believable Christian characters and Christian themes. The quality of Christian fiction is all over the map, usually at the poor to fair end of the spectrum but has been rapidly improving. I would put this book in the fair category but I elevate it to good because of the audacity of the subject matter and the no holds barred presentation of the gospel the author puts forth.

Tom Greenbaum is a quantum physicist that has been working on a time travel device for the past 20 years. He's also a non-practicing Jew that is angry at God because his Christian wife Megan was brutally killed in Africa while on a missions trip back in 1985. He blames Jesus for her death since she was a believer and was working to further his kingdom here on earth. If she didn't believe in Jesus she would still be alive today, he reasons. Once he gets his time travel device fully functional he decides to go back in time to crucifixion week and see for himself that Jesus died on the cross and was never resurrected. He's determined to find out Jesus was not God, he stayed in the grave, and his wife's beliefs were all wrong.

Along with his colleague, David Goodman, a messianic Jew, they activate the device and instead of finding themselves about to witness the crucifixion they find they've landed in 28 AD. This is a problem for them because they fear the longer they are in the past the more likely it is they will do something that will cause changes to the future (as they know it.) They happen to meet up with Jesus just as he's choosing his disciples and Jesus picks Tom to be one of his followers. Tom complains that he doesn't believe that Jesus is God but being the pragmatic scientist, he decides to follow Jesus with the hopes of exposing his miracles as sleight of hand magic tricks or some other trickery, and not authentic miracles.

This is where the story diverges for the reader. You're either going to like it or probably hate it, depending on your attitude to Christianity. The plot is basically lifted right out the Bible but told from the perspective of the two time travelers. For me, this was an interesting take on familiar Bible stories. For unbelievers this may seem preachy. There is a sub plot concerning power plays amongst the scientists back in the future but mostly it is about Tom and David walking with Jesus throughout the New Testament, mostly from the book of John. This type of storytelling device has problems--how do you portray events in the Bible outside of what is recorded in the Bible? The solution was safe but somewhat disappointing: follow the Bible as closely as possible, even down to having dialogue lifted from the Bible. In fact, I looked up some of the events in the book and compared them to the Bible and the dialogue read practically the same as the NIV translation.

We experience some of the miracles in the Bible: the healings, the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus walking on water, casting out of demons (this was one area where the author deviated from the Bible, providing a sort of back story of the demon possessed man of Gadarene, which was fascinating) raising Lazarus from the dead, all the while Tom is providing credible scientific explanations as to how Jesus performed these "tricks".

Character descriptions have problems too--how do you portray Jesus apart from what is written in the Bible? What kind of a person was he? And what about the other disciples? The author portrays Jesus as a happy, confident, enigmatic, intelligent, and one who enjoys practical jokes. To David, the Jewish convert to Christianity, Jesus seems too human, and not as divine as he had imagined. At times he has doubts that Jesus is God and even wonders if Jesus committed sins. Matthew is a big, jolly, gregarious sort of fellow; Judas is a smallish, sniveling, cowering figure. There isn't much character development in this story, which is always a weakness, however, I can see the problem facing the author with trying to come up with something that won't shatter the readers pre-conceived ideas of these characters. Still, he did a good job of humanizing Jesus and making him seem like a normal guy you'd like to hang out with and follow around to see that he does next.

This is a plot driven story, with little character development. Most characters are barely names with a rudimentary motivation. This is especially true of the characters in the time travel laboratory. It is a major weakness of the story, but then again, I'm not reading it to find out about the laboratory's directors life story, I'm reading to find out what happens to the two time travelers that are walking with Jesus. There are a couple of plot twists, one I saw from a light year away, and another that sneaked up on me. Finally, both Tom and David are there to witness the crucifixion.

The author's prose lacks polish, there are numerous editing errors, dialogue is stilted and awkward at times, little character development, but the book is a page turner and the author knows how to describe an action scene. There are a couple of "damns" in the book, a couple of "WTH?" but no flagrant cursing. In the past month I had read a couple of his books that were written years after this one and they are action packed, well written, and have hints of his Christian background. I actually wondered: "Is this guy a Christian"? That led me to search his other books on Amazon and that's where I found The Didymus Contingency.