New Testament scholar James D. G. Dunn has written numerous commentaries, books, and essays sharing his thought with the world. In this small, straightforward book designed for a lay audience, Dunn focuses his fifty-plus years of scholarship on the central question posed by the New Testament—who is Jesus?
Dunn surveys the New Testament books from Matthew to Revelation, exploring and unpacking what they actually say about Jesus. Dunn’s Jesus according to the New Testament points to the wonder of those first witnesses and enriches our understanding of who Jesus is to us today.
“With James in the New Testament, however, Christians can never forget that they belong to an ancient tradition of Jewish wisdom, and that love of neighbor is as fundamental to the Christian life as any theologizing about Jesus and the creation of humankind.” (Page 162)
“Not least amazing is the fact that we can discern Jesus’s own understanding of his role, and can do so quite clearly behind what the first Christians subsequently thought of him. Of course, the Gospels portray Jesus as he was seen in the light of all that happened in the climax of his ministry and thereafter. But we have already seen how much of what the first believers said regarding Jesus’s mission can be realistically explained only in terms of the impact Jesus made on his disciples during his mission. And so it is when we ask what we can know with confidence about Jesus’s own self-awareness. The evidence can be listed quite concisely.” (Page 18)
“Jesus was remembered as a storyteller in a way that is not true of any other figure in the New Testament and that is rare among his Jewish contemporaries.” (Page x)
“What must have been going on in the life, and indeed in the mind, of Jesus for any of the New Testament texts to have been possible?” (Page ix)
“the teaching of Jesus has been absorbed and become in effect an integral part of the Christian paraenesis” (Page 162)