A Review of the Book "The Doctor and the Apostle" by Jeffrey A Nelson

Title: The Doctor and the Apostle

Author: Jeffrey A Nelson

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Year: 2020

124 pages

From the Back: What could a first-century church planter and tentmaker who helped forge the earliest years of a new religious movement possible have in common with a British time traveling alien who first appeared in the 1960s to teach children about history?

    Doctor Who has been a beloved science fiction franchise for over fifty years. Paul's letters have been around for quite a while longer, with the earliest ones that he wrote dated less than a generation after the life of Jesus. Both have inspired and instructed people on how to live and have stoked the imagination for what individual and communal life can be in their own way. And both were or are deeply flawed, sometimes struggling against their own tendencies or those of others in order to help bring about something greater for their respective worlds.

    The Doctor and the Apostle explores the similarities and differences between Doctor Who's title character and Paul of Tarsus, comparing and contrasting the stories of each. Whether a fan of one or the other or both, the reader will gain a greater understanding of the possibilities of a life of faith, as well as a deeper appreciation of how pop culture and Scripture may help inform one another.

Personal Thoughts: Pop culture plays an important part in our lives, and often it is used to teach us lessons that perhaps we wouldn't have learned any other way. It wouldn't take much thought to call up in our memories television episodes, movies, or songs that carried a heavy or important message, or both. Using pop culture to study scripture seems to help makes sense of things.

    I'm a big fan of the original showing of Doctor Who, although I have yet to watch the reboot of it. I have read many articles, however, about the powerful lessons found within the episodes. This small book does an excellent job of comparing and contrasting The Doctor and Paul with brief descriptions of episodes and little snippets of scripture. Which means you don't have to have ever watched the show to understand the lessons that Jeffrey Nelson is teaching us. It was an easy read and I highly recommend it. It's made me ponder whether or not I could write something similar using Star Trek, especially Deep Space Nine.