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A full table of
contents
Who on
Earth was Jesus?
is divided into
three parts.
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The first
part, SOURCES, begins by setting out the ‘road map’ for the book’s
journey, then tells the story of the quest up to modern times, before
setting out over four chapters a comprehensive list, with analysis, of
the textual sources available to scholars – Biblical, non-Biblical,
Jewish and secular. The main text is punctuated by ‘cameos’ – short
essays on such subjects as
The invention of the
narrative gospel,
Q revealed,
‘pious forgeries’,
Essenes and the
Jesus movement,
and
Did Jesus have a love life?
The
second part, INTERPRETATIONS, explains over five chapters how different
schools of modern critical scholarship have interpreted the sources to
discover or reconstruct a plausible historical Jesus. Beginning with the
‘Jesus Seminar’ group of scholars, who find a non-apocalyptic Jesus (a
Jesus who did not prophecy imminent divine intervention to bring
the world as we know it to a sudden catastrophic end), it moves on
to their critics who do see Jesus as an End-Time prophet. |
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Further chapters
look at the ‘Jewish Jesus’, and at some of the more sceptical
scholarship that differs from the mainstream, or positions Jesus in myth
and legend rather than history. There are more cameos, including key
excerpts from the scholars under discussion, and
Jesus, the
prostitute’s fee and the High Priest’s privy
Part
three, CONSEQUENCES, summarises what most mainstream scholars agree on,
and what disagreements remain unresolved. A final chapter takes a fresh
look at the origins of the notion of an apocalyptic End Time, and makes
a passionate argument for the importance in our own time of determining
whether the historical Jesus was an apocalyptic doomster or a utopian
visionary.
The full Table of
Contents is as follows:
Foreword by Richard Holloway
(click on
RICHARD HOLLOWAY’S FOREWORD to read]
Author’s Preface
Part I:
Sources
CHAPTER 1. WHY
SEARCH FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS?
The
road map
Seeking a pure Jesus and finding a congenial one
Cameo: The quest for purity and truth
CHAPTER 2. THE
LONG SEARCH: QUESTING OLD AND NEW
1
Gospel harmonies
2. A
kosher Jesus
3. A
Jesus within
4. A
rationalized Jesus
5. A
humanist Jesus
6.
Dumps in the sands
7.
The end of the ‘Old Quest’
8.
Between quests
9.
Back on the trail
Notes to Chapter 2
CHAPTER 3. THE GAP
Chinese whispers: the oral tradition
Jesus
reconstructed, or Jesus remembered?
Notes to Chapter 3
CHAPTER 4. GOSPEL
TRUTH
1.
Paul’s letters
2.
The non-Pauline letters
3.
The biblical gospels
Cameo: The invention of the narrative gospel
(click on
EXTRACTS to read)
Mark
Cameo: Sex, lies and fraud in
Secret Mark
Matthew
Luke
John
Cameo: Jews? Israelites?
Judeans?
Notes to Chapter 4
CHAPTER 5. JESUS
BEFORE CHRISTIANITY
1. Q,
M and L
Cameo: Q revealed
2.
Thomas
Cameo: Thomas without doubts
3.
Signs
4.
The Didache
5.
Peter: the first passion story?
Cameo: ‘In the know’: Gnosticism and the gospel of Thomas
Notes to Chapter 5
CHAPTER 6. THE
UNOFFICIAL FACES OF JESUS
Digression 1: the game of the name
Digression 2: “pious forgeries”
1.
Buried treasure: the Nag Hammadi hoard
The Secret Book of James
The Dialogue of the Savior
The Gospel of Philip
Cameo: Did Jesus have a love
life?
2.
Finds before and after Nag Hammadi
The Gospel of Mary
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas
The Infancy Gospel of James
The Gospel of Judas
3.
Fragments
4.
Jewish-Christian and other gospels
5.
More buried treasure: the Dead Sea Scrolls
Cameo: Essenes and the Jesus movement. Any connection?
6.
Early Jewish references to Jesus
‘Yeshu the Nazarene’
Jesus written in stone
7.
Roman references to Jesus
The Mara letter
Pliny the Younger, Tacitus and Seutonius
Josephus
8.
Postscript: another Jesus?
Notes to Chapter 6
Part II.
Interpretations
CHAPTER 7. THE
JESUS SEMINAR
Cameo: Robert Funk on “The
Aim of the Quest”
1.
The method: beads and ballots
2.
Rules of written evidence
3.
Rules of oral evidence
4.
What did Jesus really say?
Cameo: The Red and Pink Jesus
5.
What did Jesus really do?
6.
Jesus and Apocalypse
7.
The Seminar and its critics
Westar as “destroyers of Christianity”
James Dunn: What the Seminar missed
Thomas Altizer: No Christ, no passion
Liberal apostasy or group experiment?
Notes to Chapter 7
CHAPTER 8.
DIVERSITY IN UNITY: A RANGE OF JESUS SEMINAR PORTRAITS
1.
Robert W Funk’s Jesus as stand-up comic
Cameo: Funk on “Demoting Jesus”
2.
Bernard Brandon Scott’s Jesus as visionary poet
3.
John Dominic Crossan’s Jesus as social revolutionary
Cameo: Crossan on Jesus as “permanent performance”
4.
Marcus Borg’s Jesus as revolutionary mystic
Cameo: Borg on “ecstatic religious experience”
5. A
less congenial Jesus
(i) Kathleen Corley’s Jesus: “A foundation myth for
Christian feminism”
(ii) Gerd Ludemann’s Jesus who got it wrong
6.
Jesus and “The Powers that Be”
(i) Roy W Hoover: Q’s Jesus “as good as it gets”
(ii) Walter Wink’s non-violent Jesus
Notes to Chapter 8
CHAPTER 9. JESUS
AS PROPHET OF THE APOCALYPSE
1. E
P Sanders: Jesus and the end of history
2.
John P Meier: Jesus as mentor, message-bringer and miracle-maker
3. N
T Wright: Jesus as son of Israel’s god
Cameo: Wright on Jesus as embodiment of the kingdom
4.
Joseph Ratzinger: a Pope’s Jesus
Notes for Chapter 9
CHAPTER 10. A VERY
JEWISH JESUS
1.
Geza Vermes: Jesus as charismatic holy man
(i)
Galilee in the age of Jesus
(ii) Popular religion in the age of Jesus
(iii) Models of charismatic holy men in the age of Jesus
Cameo: The Mishnah and the
Talmud
Cameo: Vermes’ Jesus as
“highest and holiest”
2.
Hyam Maccoby: Jesus the Pharisee
Cameo: Jesus, the prostitute’s fee and the High Priest’s privy: a dirty
joke
3.
Robert Eisenman: Jesus the brother of James
Notes to Chapter 10
CHAPTER 11.
HISTORY, MYSTERY AND MYTH: AN IRRETRIEVABLE JESUS
1.
William Wrede’s Jesus as Mark’s own creation
2.
Alvar Ellegard’s Jesus one hundred years before Christ
3.
G.A.Wells: Jesus as myth and legend
4.
The gospel according to Mack
Notes to Chapter 11
Part III.
Consequences
CHAPTER 12. REDS
AND BLACKS
1.
Bare bones
2.
Not proven
3.The
problem of Apocalypse (again)
Pro-apocalyptic: waiting for God to act
Anti-apocalyptic: waiting for
us to act
Both/and: God and humanity act together
Notes to Chapter 12
CHAPTER 13. WHICH
JESUS?
The “Making Wonderful Time”
“Showers of blessing”
“The vision of the Time of the End”
The dream of “the Day of the Lord”
Payback time
“The Biggest Evil around”
“The utopia that sets history in motion”
(click on EXTRACTS to read)
Notes to Chapter 13
Bibliography
Index
‘If you know anything about David Boulton you will know how
lightly he wears his erudition, and with what wit.’ ANNE ASHWORTH,
Editor, ‘The Universalist’
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