The Challenge of Jesus

by N. T. Wright

Publisher:

IVP

, 1999

Overview

This text answers the skepticism about the need for a historical understanding of Jesus and shows how this can affect Christian discipleship today. It explores Jesus’ preaching, his Messiahship and death, and his self-understanding in relation to God. The book goes on to ask: What does this imply? What should this mean for us? What, in fact, is the mission of the church grounded in this Jesus and this resurrection, to our postmodern world?

Product Details

• Title: The Challenge of Jesus
• Author: N. T. Wright
• Publisher: SPCK
• Publication Date: 2000
• Pages: 173

About N. T. Wright

Nicholas Tom Wright, commonly known as N. T. Wright or Tom Wright, is Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Andrews University. Previously, he was the bishop of Durham. He has researched, taught, and lectured on the New Testament at McGill, Oxford, and Cambridge Universities, and has been named by Christianity Today a top theologian. He is best known for his scholarly contributions to the historical study of Jesus and the New Perspective on Paul. His work interacts with the positions of James Dunn, E. P. Sanders, Marcus Borg, and Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Wright has written and lectured extensively around the world, authoring more than forty books and numerous articles in scholarly journals and popular periodicals. He is best known for his Christian Origins and the Question of God Series, of which three of the anticipated six volumes are finished.

Sample Pages from the Print Edition

Contents

Top Highlights

“Thus, though some of them had returned from geographical exile, most believed that the theological state of exile was still continuing.” (Page 36)

“Scripture is not ‘we believe the Bible, so there is nothing more to be learned,’ but rather ‘we believe the Bible, so we had better discover all the things in it to which our traditions, including our ‘protestant’ or ‘evangelical’ traditions, which have supposed themselves to be ‘biblical’ but are sometimes demonstrably not, have made us blind.’” (Page 17)

“The kingdom of God, he said, is at hand. In other words, God was now unveiling his age-old plan, bringing his sovereignty to bear on Israel and the world as he had always intended, bringing justice and mercy to Israel and the world.” (Page 37)

“The worst thing was that the foreigners were pagans. If Israel was truly God’s people, why were the pagans ruling over her?” (Page 36)

“All the evidence suggests that at least the majority of the Pharisees, from the Hasmonean and Herodian periods through to the war of a.d. 66–70, had as their main aim that which purity symbolized: the political struggle to maintain Jewish identity and to realize the dream of national liberation.” (Page 56)

Product Details

• Title: The Challenge of Jesus: Rediscovering Who Jesus Was and Is
• Author: N. T. Wright
• Publisher: IVP
• Print Publication Date: 1999
• Logos Release Date: 2011
• Language: English
• Resources: 1
• Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
• Subjects: Jesus Christ › Historicity; Christian life
• ISBNs: 9780830822003, 9781596444119, 0830822003, 1596444118
• Resource ID: LLS:CHALLOFJESUS
• Resource Type: Monograph
• Metadata Last Updated: 2022-09-29T22:36:09Z

About N. T. Wright

Nicholas Thomas “Tom” Wright (1948–) is a New Testament scholar, Pauline theologian, and Anglican bishop and currently Research Professor Emeritus of New Testament and Early Christianity at St. Mary's College in the University of St Andrews and Senior Research Fellow at Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. Christianity Today named him one of today's top theologians. 

Wright was born in Morpeth, Northumberland, and recounts an awareness of God's presence from a young age—and that relationship with God ever since is reflected in his life and work. He's a prolific author; one of his most popular books, Surprised by Hope, frames the resurrection of the dead as the appropriate hope for all believers rather than an overemphasis on just "going to heaven when you die." He's among the leading theologians in the New Perspective on Paul debate. Wright has several honorary doctoral degrees, and in 2014, the British Academy awarded him the Burkitt Medal "in recognition of special service to biblical studies." In 2015, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Wright served as chaplain at Cambridge from 1978 to 1981, then as assistant professor of New Testament language and literature at McGill University in Montreal. Before becoming a chaplain, tutor, lecturer, and fellow at Oxford in 1986, Wright served as dean of Lichfield Cathedral, canon theologian of Westminster Abbey, and the bishop of Durham from 2003–10. In addition to the entire New Testament for Everyone Series, some of N. T. Wright's books include The New Testament in Its World: An Introduction to the History, Literature, and Theology of the First Christians, Who Was Jesus, The New Testament and the People of God, God and the Pandemic, Evil and the Justice of God, Surprised by Hope, and Simply Christian. He coauthored Jesus the Final Days with Craig A. Evans.