During his life Jesus did not view himself as divine, nor did his disciples. In THE CHANGING FACES OF JESUS the great scholar Vermes works back through successively earlier accounts of the life of Christ to finally reveal the true, historical figureof Jesus hidden beneath the Gospels: a Palestinian charismatic convinced he had an essential role to play in bringing about the kingdom of God.
"Does the face of God change? Years ago I would have said, 'No.' Countless hymns, passage of Scripture and confessions of faith assert or imply the changelessness of God. To take issue with traditions that are centuries, if not millennia old, seemed to be daunting and misguided....But when the great professions of confidence in God harden into philosophical propositions, one is bound to ask: What difference would it make to say that God has only one face? Even if true in some sense, the fact of the matter is that features each of us would count as necessary and changeless would be a matter of considerable debate." - From the Introduction In 1998/99 five scholars presented lectures at Washington National Cathedral about our images of God and what difference they make. This book, and its companion videos, will allow parish study groups and individuals to consider and discuss the viewpoints of Marcus Borg, Karen Armstrong, Jack Miles, James Cone, and Andrew Sung Park.
There can be no doubt that Jesus, 'a religious genius' as Geza Vermes describes him, lived and taught in Palestine some 2000 years ago. The influence he has had is incalculable. How though can we distinguish between the doctrines shaped to the needs of the burgeoning Christian church and the original views laid out by Jesus himself? How can we dig back through the additions, misinterpretations and confusions of later writers and two millennia of tradition to get back to the authentic gospel of Jesus? In his new book, Vermes subjects all the sayings of Jesus to brilliantly informed scrutiny. The result is a book of unique value and novelty--scraping aside the accretions of centuries to come as close as we can hope to be to the true Jesus.
This now classic book is a significant corrective to several recent developments in the study of the historical Jesus. In contrast to depictions of Jesus as a wandering Cynic teacher, Geza Vermes offers a portrait based on evidence of charismatic activity in first-century Galilee. Vermes shows how the major New Testament titles of Jesus-prophet, Lord, Messiah, son of man, Son of God-can be understood in this historical context. The result is a description of Jesus that retains its power and its credibility.
This book demonstrates directly from the Gospels that it was not 'the Jews' who killed Jesus and it identifies contemporary (globalised) antisemitism as the unique demonisation of Israel, irrespective of what is happening elsewhere in the world, together with the conflation of the Israeli state with Jews everywhere.
Andrew Chester focuses on Jewish messianic hope, intermediary figures, and visionary traditions of human transformation, particularly in the Second Temple period, and analyzes their significance for the origin and development of New Testament Christology. He brings together five previously published essays on these themes: these include two long chapters, one on Jewish messianic and mediatorial traditions in relation to Pauline Christology, the other on messianism and eschatology in early Judaism and Christianity, plus one on messiah and Temple in Sibylline Oracles 3-5. Two further essays, on the significance of Torah in the messianic age, and on resurrection, transformation and early Christology, have been extensively revised. There are also three substantial new chapters, all of which engage closely with recent scholarly debate. The first, on the origin of Christology, argues for the significance of Jewish visionary traditions of human transformation for understanding how 'high' Christology came about at such an early stage within the New Testament. The second discusses the complex questions of the definition, scope and nature of Jewish messianism, especially in relation to the Hebrew Bible and the more-recently available Qumran evidence, and their significance for the New Testament. The third is concerned with what Paul means by the 'law of Christ', and the wider issues raised by this.
DIV The creation of the Christian Church is one of the most important stories in the development of the world's history, but also one of the most enigmatic and little understood, shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding. Through a forensic, brilliant reexamination of all the key surviving texts of early Christianity, Geza Vermes illuminates the origins of a faith and traces the evolution of the figure of Jesus from the man he was—a prophet recognizable as the successor to other Jewish holy men of the Old Testament—to what he came to represent: a mysterious, otherworldly being at the heart of a major new religion. As Jesus's teachings spread across the eastern Mediterranean, hammered into place by Paul, John, and their successors, they were transformed in the space of three centuries into a centralized, state-backed creed worlds away from its humble origins. Christian Beginnings tells the captivating story of how a man came to be hailed as the Son consubstantial with God, and of how a revolutionary, anticonformist Jewish subsect became the official state religion of the Roman Empire. /div
Since Martin Buber in Two Types of Faith acknowledged Jesus as his "great brother," other Jewish writers have sought to ascertain a place for Jesus within the larger context of Jewish history. In the aftermath of the Shoah, specifically in the afflicted consciousness of humanity, Jew and Christian alike began to ask how this tragedy could have happened, especially among and against people of faith. In an effort to assure that such a tragedy never happens again, the focus of some fell upon Jesus, previously the obstacle to reconciliation, but now perceived as the obvious and most viable bridge to span the chasm and assuage the wound of anti-Jewish and anti-Christian sentiments. Still others chose to join and expand the academic quest for the historical Jesus, adding Jewish voices to the effort to explore more rigorously and objectively the figure of Jesus in historical writing. In this unique and illuminating volume, Father Daniel F. Moore presents the historical identity of Jesus through lens of such Jewish scholars as Schalom Ben-Chorin, David Flusser, Geza Vermes, and Jacob Neuser. A useful book for those interesting in ecumenical discourse and Jesus studies.
Named one of the top religion books of 2002 by USA Today, Philip Jenkins's phenomenally successful The Next Christendom permanently changed the way people think about the future of Christianity. In that volume, Jenkins called the world's attention to the little noticed fact that Christianity's center of gravity was moving inexorably southward, to the point that Africa may soon be home to the world's largest Christian populations. Now, in this brilliant sequel, Jenkins takes a much closer look at Christianity in the global South, revealing what it is like, and what it means for the future.The faith of the South, Jenkins finds, is first and foremost a biblical faith. Indeed, in the global South, many Christians identify powerfully with the world portrayed in the New Testament--an agricultural world very much like their own, marked by famine and plague, poverty and exile, until very recently a society of peasants, farmers, and small craftsmen. In the global South, as in the biblical world, belief in spirits and witchcraft are commonplace, and in many places--such as Nigeria, Indonesia, and Sudan--Christians are persecuted just as early Christians were. Thus the Bible speaks to the global South with a vividness and authenticity simply unavailable to most believers in the industrialized North.More important, Jenkins shows that throughout the global South, believers are reading the Bible with fresh eyes, and coming away with new and sometimes startling interpretations. Some of their conclusions are distinctly fundamentalist, but Jenkins finds an intriguing paradox, for they are also finding ideas in the Bible that are socially liberating, especially with respect to women's rights. Across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, such Christians are social activists in the forefront of a wide range of liberation movements.It's hard to overstate how interesting, how eye-opening, how frequently surprising (and sometimes disturbing) Jenkins' findings are. Anyone interested in the implications of these trends for the major denominations, for Muslim-Christian conflict, and for global politics will find The New Faces of Christianity provocative and incisive--and indispensable.
