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Rome reserved this means of execution particularly for political insurrectionists; and the Roman charge posted at the head of the cross indicted Jesus for claiming to be King of the Jews. To reconstruct the Jesus who provoked this punishment, Fredriksen takes us into the religious worlds, Jewish and pagan, of Mediterranean antiquity, through the labyrinth of Galilean and Judean politics, and on into the ancient narratives of Paul's letters, the gospels, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Josephus' histories. The result is a profound contribution both to our understanding of the social and religious contexts within which Jesus of Nazareth moved, and to our appreciation of the mission and message that ended in the proclamation of Jesus as Messiah.
CHRISTIANITY HAS always been concerned with the historical Jesus. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index
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In many ways this book owes to E.P. Sanders' reconstruction of Jesus the eschatological prophet obedient to Torah, but while for Sanders Jesus was killed for acting against the temple, Fredriksen believes he was executed because Caiaphas was nervous about Pilate's itchy trigger-finger when dealing with popular prophets. This is a sound contribution to historical-Jesus studies and should be read by anyone remotely interested in the field.
A key and noteworthy aspect of Fredriksen's work is the insight that the itinerary of John, as against the Synoptic Gospels, may be closer to the truth. That is, Jesus was known in Judea and Galilee rather than just Galilee. This allows her to say that Jesus, being known in and around Jerusalem, could be seen as a one man threat in a sense, rather than the leader of a revolutionary movement or army. Thus, when the time came to do away with Jesus his followers were left alone since they were never perceived as the threat Jesus was. This threat was due to Jesus ability to galvanise the crowds with his imminent eschatological message, a message which at his final Passover may well have been tinged with a crowd more and more convinced of his possible messianic credentials. Thus Jesus was executed by Pilate as a political insurrectionist.
So what other examples of scholarly common sense might we find in this book? Well, the insight that searching for the historical Jesus now requires knowledge of the historical Galilee and historical Judaism. Further, the suggestion that Jesus is not the all-seeing, all-knowing individual some scholars (and many readers) assume him to be. Why can't Pilate's action against Jesus have caught him by surprise, for example? Further, but by no means finally, that Jesus' messianic identity might well be in some way concretised in the consciousness of those following Jesus before the crucifixion and, indeed, act as a fatal impetus towards it.
So here we have a book of eminent common sense which attempts what was seemingly becoming thought impossible - a reasoned and reasonable view of the historical Jesus which attempts to make sense of our historical evidence without fuss, bluster or fanfares of publicity. I judge that Fredriksen has done as good a job as we can expect against the current background of research - and in a way that is both readable and enjoyable. As a current postgraduate student specialising in the historical Jesus,I recommend this book to every reader interested in the subject.
To say that I was impressed with her even-handed academic approach would be a gross understatement. With the care and meticulousness of an anthropologist at dig site, Fredricksen excavates for the historical Jesus working from a premise that denies the all too obliged notions of the "apocalyptic messiah" or Gallelian sage.
It is with this approach that she acquires the foundation for a clear and bias-free perspective( or at least as bias-free as it it possible to get). She treats the historic record with the exacting precision and care of a surgeon, and arrives at the historical Jesus not through the prizm of the narratives (the Gospels) or through that of his proverbs, but through the seemingly inexplicable occasion of his death.
Frederiksen is perhaps most to be complimented on her evaluation of the variations of Jesus depicted between the Gospels; not using these inconguencies to dismiss them, but offering them as items to be used to juxtapose against other documents that reflect the 1st century Jesus (the dead sea scroll for example). This is an impressive technique, which has the result of more accurately capturing the historical Jesus.
Above all of this, the book is very cogent and not a difficult read. This is perhaps its best quality.
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