Interpreting Jesus: Essays on the Gospels
Overview
Interpreting Jesus brings together N. T. Wright’s most important articles on Jesus and the Gospels over the last three decades. Many of the included studies have never been published or only available in hard-to-find larger volumes and journals.
Here is a rich feast for all serious students of the Bible. Each essay will amply reward those looking for detailed, incisive, and exquisitely nuanced exegesis, resulting in a clearer, deeper, and more informed appreciation of the recent advances in Jesus studies, and their significance for theology today.
- Combines Wright’s most important articles on Jesus and the Gospels
- Contains detailed, incisive, and exquisitely nuanced exegesis
- Provides a clearer, deeper, and more informed appreciation of the recent advances in Jesus studies
- Towards a Third ‘Quest’? Jesus Then and Now
- Jesus, Israel and the Cross
- ‘Constraints’ and the Jesus of History
- Taking the Text with Her Pleasure: A Post-Post-Modernist Response to J. Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus
- Jesus
- Five Gospels but No Gospel: Jesus and the Seminar
- Resurrection in Q?
- Introduction to the Second Edition of B. F. Meyer, The Aims of Jesus
- Kingdom Come: The Public Meaning of the Gospels
- Whence and Whither Historical Jesus Studies in the Life of the Church?
- The Evangelists’ Use of the Old Testament as an Implicit Overarching Narrative
- John, Jesus and ‘The Ruler of This World’: Demonic Politics in the Fourth Gospel?
- Pictures, Stories and the Cross: Where Do the Echoes Lead?
- Son of Man–Lord of the Temple? Gospel Echoes of Psalm 8 and the Ongoing Christological Challenge
- Son of God and Christian Origins
- History, Eschatology, and New Creation in the Fourth Gospel: Early Christian Perspectives on God’s Action in Jesus, with Special Reference to the Prologue of John
- Son of Man and New Creation: The Biblical Roots of Trinitarian Theology
Top Highlights
“Jesus did not merely proclaim judgment against the people of God: he identified himself with Israel” (Page 21)
“It is historically probable, then, that Jesus not only proclaimed the judgment of God against Israel, but also, in summoning men and women to follow him and in his healing miracles and table-fellowship with outcasts, enacted the inauguration of the reconstituted Israel of the new age, an idea and an entity which only attains coherence if he in some sense represents or embodies Israel in himself.” (Page 25)
“I was increasingly recognizing that the divisions in the church between those who wanted to save souls for heaven and those who wanted to bring God’s kingdom here and now reflected only too well the different ways of reading the four canonical gospels.” (Page 140)
“My suggestion is that Jesus, as Israel’s representative, took on himself the judgment which he pronounced against the nation.” (Page 25)
“He was to suffer the characteristic fate of those who rebelled against Rome. He was, in fact, to die Israel’s death.” (Page 26)
- Title: Interpreting Jesus: Essays on the Gospels
- Author: N. T. Wright
- Publisher: Zondervan
- Publication Date: 2020
- Pages: 256
- Resource Type: Collected Essays
- Topic: Jesus Studies
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.