The Historical Jesus: A Guide for the Perplexed
Overview
This text analyzes key themes in historical Jesus research, such as Jesus’ Galilean origins, the scope of his ministry, and Jewish models of “holy men,” particularly prophets. The text also examines Jesus’ teaching and healing, his trial and crucifixion, his resurrection, and the links between the Jesus movement and the early church. The book explains and discusses the positions of a variety of key scholars such as E. P. Sanders, John Dominic Crossan, James D. G. Dunn, N. T. Wright, and R. E. Brown.
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- Discusses the positions of a variety of key scholars
- Explores links between the Jesus movement and the early church
- Analyzes key themes in historical Jesus research
Top Highlights
“What was striking about Strauss, though, was his application of myth to the entire gospel tradition.” (Page 9)
“In these, Reimarus argued that Jesus was a political claimant who hoped to be made king, but in the end his hopes were frustrated and he died on a Roman cross. The disciples, however, had invested everything in him and, in an attempt to obtain power and worldly esteem, stole the body from the tomb, concocted the story of a resurrection, and transformed Jesus into a universal saviour who would return in glory. Christianity, therefore, was based on apostolic fraud rather than divine revelation.” (Page 8)
“The criterion of coherence suggests that ‘material from the earliest strata of the tradition may be accepted as authentic if it can be shown to cohere with material established as authentic by means of the criterion of dissimilarity’” (Page 17)
“Schweitzer concluded that the historical Jesus was a ‘stranger and an enigma’, a failed first-century Jewish prophet with little to say to the early twentieth century.” (Page 12)
“What was striking about Reimarus’s contribution, however, was that he gathered all of these ideas together into a complete account of Jesus’ life, situating it firmly within a first-century Jewish context, and transforming a story of the supernatural and revelatory into one based on reason, natural origins and, ultimately, deception. Reimarus had cut the link between the historical Jesus and the Gospels; the latter were no longer faithful accounts of their founder’s life, but attempts to propagate the disciples’ fraud.” (Page 8)
Written by an expert in the historical context of the emerging Christian movement, this is a thoughtful, lucid, and intelligent introduction to the historical Jesus, ideal for the new student and the general reader.
—Mark S. Goodacre, author of The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze
This is a gem! Bond manages to canvass an ocean of modern Jesus-scholarship in an impressively concise discussion, clearly and accessibly conveying the basics of each scholar and issue considered, and also crisply representing majority views of scholars on the key historical data and what we can make of them. It is, to my knowledge, the best general-reader-level introduction to the subject available.
—Larry W. Hurtado, co-editor of Jesus Among Friends and Enemies: A Historical and Literary Introduction to Jesus in the Gospels, The Dead Sea Scrolls in their Historical Context, and the author of Text-Critical Methodology and the Pre-Caesarean Text: Codex W in the Gospel of Mark
- Title: The Historical Jesus: A Guide for the Perplexed
- Author: Helen K. Bond
- Series: Guides for the Perplexed
- Publisher: T&T Clark
- Print Publication Date: 2012
- Logos Release Date: 2014
- Pages: 216
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Logos Research Edition
- Subject: Jesus Christ › Historicity
- ISBNs: 9780567456489, 056745648X
- Resource ID: LLS:HSTRCLJSS
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-03-25T20:02:40Z