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Jesus: Great Lives Observed
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 27, 2024
A COLLECTION OF TEXTS ABOUT THE JESUS OF HISTORY
This 1967 book contains excerpts from many famed studies of Jesus: e.g., Gunther Bornkamm ['Jesus of Nazareth']; David Strauss ['Life of Jesus Critically Examined']; Ernst Renan ['The Life of Jesus'], etc. Editor Hugh Anderson [who, at the time this book was published, was Professor of New Testament at the University of Edinburgh] provides helpful introductions to each selection, as well as a lengthy introductory essay.
Anderson observes that "Jesus' manner of speech stands in marked contrast to the theological language of the Apostle Paul. Jesus expresses what he has to say about God and man and the world in the common language of everyday... From this we may deduce that, unlike Paul, Jesus had most probably never been through the technical theological training of the rabbinical school." (Pg. 7)
Bornkamm says about the apocalyptic passages in Mk 13, "it is clear that the speech as a whole is an apocalyptic composition, which even betrays itself as a literary production by the sentence 'let the reader understand' [Mk 13:14]. Above all, we see from Luke, who in [21:20] has read into the existing text the events of the Jewish war in the sixties in some detail, that the more and more detailed interpretation of just such speeches during their transmission was especially common." (Pg. 58)
Strauss comments on Mt 17:24-27, "By this miraculous history... all explanations appear to be put to shame. The believers in miracles cannot answer the question when asked, where was the necessity or even the good of so strange a miracle as that of bringing to Peter's hook a fish with a piece of money in its mouth, and how, without a second miracle, the fish, when opening its mouth to snap at the hook, could still have held the coin in it." (Pg. 114)
He adds, "Since the time of Polycrates, it has often happened that fishes have swallowed treasures and kept them in their stomachs; but for a fish, and one too caught by a hook, to have kept a piece of money in its mouth together with the hook, is without example in the history of the world." (Pg. 118)
Thiis is a very useful collection of texts, and will be of interest to those studying the historical Jesus.
This 1967 book contains excerpts from many famed studies of Jesus: e.g., Gunther Bornkamm ['Jesus of Nazareth']; David Strauss ['Life of Jesus Critically Examined']; Ernst Renan ['The Life of Jesus'], etc. Editor Hugh Anderson [who, at the time this book was published, was Professor of New Testament at the University of Edinburgh] provides helpful introductions to each selection, as well as a lengthy introductory essay.
Anderson observes that "Jesus' manner of speech stands in marked contrast to the theological language of the Apostle Paul. Jesus expresses what he has to say about God and man and the world in the common language of everyday... From this we may deduce that, unlike Paul, Jesus had most probably never been through the technical theological training of the rabbinical school." (Pg. 7)
Bornkamm says about the apocalyptic passages in Mk 13, "it is clear that the speech as a whole is an apocalyptic composition, which even betrays itself as a literary production by the sentence 'let the reader understand' [Mk 13:14]. Above all, we see from Luke, who in [21:20] has read into the existing text the events of the Jewish war in the sixties in some detail, that the more and more detailed interpretation of just such speeches during their transmission was especially common." (Pg. 58)
Strauss comments on Mt 17:24-27, "By this miraculous history... all explanations appear to be put to shame. The believers in miracles cannot answer the question when asked, where was the necessity or even the good of so strange a miracle as that of bringing to Peter's hook a fish with a piece of money in its mouth, and how, without a second miracle, the fish, when opening its mouth to snap at the hook, could still have held the coin in it." (Pg. 114)
He adds, "Since the time of Polycrates, it has often happened that fishes have swallowed treasures and kept them in their stomachs; but for a fish, and one too caught by a hook, to have kept a piece of money in its mouth together with the hook, is without example in the history of the world." (Pg. 118)
Thiis is a very useful collection of texts, and will be of interest to those studying the historical Jesus.
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May 24, 2024I can't rate this book. It was well written, academically, but the subject matter was boring to me at times. This book read like each chapter had once been a different lecture in an American college course on the historical figure of Jesus. I'm left with the impression that the very little direct information we have about Jesus has been constructed into the idol we now know first through early members of what would become the Christian church, and then through later cultural interpretations of the gospels. The most interesting chapter was the one on Jewish interpretations of Jesus as a political figure, Rabbinical figure, and apocalyptic teacher of ethics.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews