The greatest story ever told was honed like any good performance, on the road in front of audiences. Acclaimed scholar L. Michael White challenges us to read the gospels as they were intended—as performed stories of faith, not factual accounts—and illuminates the agendas that motivated each of their authors. A fresh account of the gospels that have shaped centuries of Christian belief, Scripting Jesus offers important insight into how we can understand Jesus’s story today.
Award-winning religious scholar Richard Bauckham here explores the historical figure of Jesus, evaluating the sources and showing that they provide us with good historical evidence for his life and teaching. To place Jesus in his proper historical context, as a Jew from Galilee in the early first century of our era, Bauckham looks at Jewish religion and society in the land of Israel under Roman rule. He explores Jesus' symbolic practices as well as his teachings, looks at his public career and emphasizes how his actions, such as healing and his association with notorious sinners, were just as important as his words. Bauckham writes that Jesus was devoted to the God of Israel, with a special focus on God's fatherly love and compassion, and like every Jewish teacher he expounded the Torah, but did so in his own distinctive way. After a discussion about the way Jesus understood himself and what finally led to his death on a Roman cross, Bauckham concludes by considering the significance Jesus has come to have for Christian faith worldwide.
New Testament scholars have long debated the historical identity of Jesus and the development of Christology within the church's history. In Who Is Jesus? Carl Braaten reviews the various historical Jesus quests, arguing that it is time for the current ("third") quest to admit failure. Against the implication that "the real Jesus has been lost and needs to be found," Braaten maintains that the only real Jesus is the One presented in the canonical Gospels and that "any other Jesus is irrelevant to Christian faith." He draws on a wealth of historical resources to address such contentious questions as these:
What can we actually know about Jesus of Nazareth?
Did Jesus really rise from the dead?
Is Jesus unique -- the one and only way of salvation?
"Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps." 1 Peter 2:21 What must it have been like to draw near to Christ as he drew near to the cross? Reflecting on Michelangelo's majestic Pieta, in which Mary gathers the suffering Jesus into her arms, Ken Gire offers seven meditations on a costly discipleship that invites us to take up our cross and follow our Savior--through death to life everlasting.
With The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ Philip Pullman issues a serious challenge to the reader to look again at the Gospels, and ask whether or not it is reasonable to believe what the New Testament and the Church teach about the founder of Christianity. In Philip Pullman's Jesus Gerald O'Collins takes up that challenge with authority, passion and flair.
Here at last is a reissue of Kasper's major work with a brilliant new introduction surveying recent developments in Christology. Kasper assesses the Christological enterprise in the Church from the earliest down to the most recent times which can be recommended without hesitation to teacher and serious student. The book also provides a solid theological basis for preaching.
This may also be described as a work of Christian serenity, but one which is not indifferent to current problems. It is the fruit of the deep peace which all men can gain from contemplation of Jesus the Christ.
As Karl Rahner has said - this book is 'modern' in the very best sense of the word. Synthesising biblical, philosophical and traditional material, the book remains essential reading for specialists and is used widely for courses on Christology - the very basis of Christian theology itself.
Drawing from the best contemporary scholarship, bestselling author Diarmuid O’Murchu deconstructs the history of Christianity, and specifically the life of Jesus Christ, as it has evolved over the past two thousand years. With rich language and clear metaphors, O’Murchu speaks to every Christian who is fed up with a revisionist Christian doctrine based on banal ideas and who desperately seeks affirmation that the Christian faith is a much bigger, deeper, and more challenging institution than churches have ever acknowledged or proclaimed. According to O’Murchu, Jesus was never an earthly prince, but rather the first rebel, a countercultural outsider who sought to empower the oppressed and marginalized while questioning the core beliefs of longstanding institutionsand ultimately paying a mortal price for his convictions. Using this portrait of Jesus, each chapter addresses a range of common human problems that Christ himself overcame, such as understanding others, resolving hostilities, discovering empowerment by suffering, and preserving personal identity in a globalized world. O’Murchu’s stunning conclusions serve to reintroduce the world to the revolutionary Jesus, giving His story new life and relevance for the modern age.
