As someone who has studied the historicity of Christianity and the origins of the New Testament, I was looking forward to an insightful documentary on the subject. Did Jesus Christ exist in history? It's a question historians and biblical scholars have grappled with for decades, even centuries. If Christianity is correct in the fact that Jesus was a real person of history, who lived in the early part of the first century, wouldn't there be historical evidence to that effect? Evidence outside the Bible? The God Who Wasn't There tries to answer the question and almost succeeds.

There's no denying that The God Who Wasn't There is a slick production, and Flemming provides a sort of ironic narration to his film. The film's biggest problem is its brevity: just 58 minutes. Exploration of the Jesus mythos would seem to me to warrant a longer production.

Throughout the film, Flemming loses focuses of his subject and veers off into slightly interesting, but ultimately unnecessary, territory.

Flemming begins promising as he discusses how several hundred years ago, the belief was that the sun revolved around the Earth. He asks: if Christianity was wrong about the solar system, is it wrong about about the story of Jesus? We switch to people offering up comments on what Jesus means to them and segue to a brief look at Christian figures like Pat Robertson, criminals like Charles Manson and a mother who dismembered her son in the name of God. Which, I guess is supposed to illustrate how Christianity has inspired some people in extreme ways, but again, has nothing to do with exploring the historical Jesus. Flemming steps over the line of good taste when he describes the followers of David Koresch, who were killed in Waco, Texas following a weeks-long standoff with the FBI, as "86 crispy fans of...apocalyptic literature." Considering that children died in the fire that engulfed the Koresch compound, calling them "crispy fans" isn't even remotely funny.

There is a sometimes amusing is six-minute overview of the story of Jesus, using old movie clips (including footage from the 1905 French film, Life and Passion of Christ) to tell the story. When it's over, we're at the ten minute mark and still no discussion of the Jesus myth. We do get interviews with people at a Billy Graham crusade, who are asked what they know about the history of Christianity. Is this segment meant to illustrate a point, that followers of a faith are not aware of its history? Or to poke fun at these believers? I'm not sure which.