Reviews of

Archive for the ‘Historical Jesus’ Category


Jesus the Jew in Christian Memory

In Barbara Meyer, Cambridge University Press, Historical Jesus, Jewish Backgrounds, Jonathan Rowlands, Memory, Philosophy on November 10, 2022 at 3:00 pm

2022.11.09 | Barbara U. Meyer. Jesus the Jew in Christian Memory: Theological and Philosophical Explorations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 

Review by Jonathan Rowlands, St. Mellitus College.

Barbara Meyer’s monograph is concerned with “the theological implications of Jesus’ Jewish identity as well philosophical questions raised by the ongoing presence of Jewishness within Christian ethical and dogmatic discourse” (p. 1). Jesus’ Jewishness, and its pursuant theological and philosophical implications, are apprehended by Meyer through the lens of memory. Memory, she writes, speaks of Jesus’ Jewishness “not [as] a new discovery,” but helps to capture what has been “present but dormant throughout Church history … often suppressed, neglected, and overlooked” (p. 2).

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Jesus the Priest

In Baker Academic, Gospels, Historical Jesus, Nathan Charles Ridlehoover, Nicholas Perrin, Priest, Synoptic Gospels on February 27, 2020 at 2:00 pm

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2020.02.05 | Nicholas Perrin. Jesus the Priest. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018.

Review by Charles Nathan Ridlehoover, Columbia International Seminary.

Nicholas Perrin is the president of Trinity International University, Deerfield, IL. Previously, he was the Franklin S. Dyrness Professor of Biblical Studies and associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College Graduate School, Wheaton, IL. Jesus the Priest is the second installment in a planned three-part series. Following the 2010 release of Jesus the Temple, the current volume forms the lynchpin to the expected Jesus the Sacrifice.

Jesus the Priest is Perrin’s argument concerning Jesus’s mission to invigorate the priestly role in conjunction with the predictive prophecies of Ezekiel 36. In so doing, Jesus takes on priestly functions in creating a cultic space of renewal for the final temple where his people will worship. Read the rest of this entry »


Christobiography

In Craig S. KEENER, Eerdmans, Gospels, Historical Jesus, Narratology, Nathan Charles Ridlehoover on October 18, 2019 at 4:00 pm

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2019.10.13 | Craig S. Keener. Christobiography: Memory, History, and the Reliability of the Gospels. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019. ISBN 978-0-8028-7675-1.

Review by Charles Nathan Ridlehoover, Columbia International Seminary.

Scholars in the New Testament guild need no introduction to the work of Craig Keener. Keener has been one of the modern masters of long-form scholarship in the field of biblical studies. Following on the heels of his work on Acts and miracles, Keener returns to the question of the Gospels’ reliability and historical Jesus. The following volume is Keener’s efforts to situate the Gospels more precisely in the ranging spectrum of Greco-Roman biographies. Keener does not view his research as another volume in historical Jesus studies, but rather, a contribution to the epistemology of historical Jesus research. Read the rest of this entry »


Memory and the Jesus Tradition

In Alan KIRK, Bloomsbury, Fourfold Gospel, Gospels, Historical Jesus, Memory, Nathan Charles Ridlehoover, Synoptic Gospels on September 20, 2019 at 2:00 pm

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2019.9.10 | Alan Kirk. Memory and the Jesus Tradition. The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries 2. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. ISBN 978-0-56-768024-2.

Review by Charles Nathan Ridlehoover.

Alan Kirk is Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at James Madison University. Kirk provides the second installment in the newly minted Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuriesseries with Memory and the Jesus Tradition. The following volume is the culmination of 15 years of research concerning the Jesus tradition and memory. Kirk’s work analyzes how memory traces the Jesus tradition from its inception to its codification. Each essay contained in the book is from previously published work, but ingeniously arranged under four rubrics: Part I: “Formation of the Jesus Tradition,” Part II: “Memory and Manuscript,” Part III: “Memory and Historical Jesus Research,” and Part IV: “Memory in Second-Century Gospel Writing.” Read the rest of this entry »


Origin of Divine Christology

In Andrew Ter Ern Loke, Cambridge University Press, Christology, Gospels, Historical Jesus, History of Religions School, Kai Akagi, New Testament on June 12, 2018 at 5:00 pm

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2018.06.08 | Andrew Ter Ern Loke. The Origin of Divine Christology. Society for New Testament Studies Monograph Series 169. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017. 249 pp.

Reviewed by Kai Akagi, Japan Bible Academy.

Andrew Loke’s The Origin of Divine Christology continues the stream of works on early high Christology of the neue religionsgeschichtliche Schule by arguing that divine christology originated in Jesus’ own teaching as his first followers understood it. Loke presents his book as an interdisciplinary piece of historical-critical research in that he uses methods of historical research to argue what, in theological categories, the earliest Christians believed Jesus to have taught. While many of the supporting points of his arguments and responses to alternative positions are not new, Loke brings them together in an original way to make his own contribution. He explains his method as applying the “critical realism” of N. T. Wright and Alistair McGrath for interdisciplinary historical criticism. Read the rest of this entry »


Helen Bond, “Dating the Death of Jesus”

In Edinburgh, Helen BOND, Historical Jesus, Kerry Lee, SEMINAR REPORTS on December 3, 2011 at 2:40 pm

A report on a paper given by Dr. Helen Bond (Senior Lecturer in New Testament, University of Edinburgh) at the Biblical Studies Seminar at New College, the University of Edinburgh, 2 December 2011.

The list of forthcoming papers in the Biblical Studies Seminars at Edinburgh can be downloaded from here. RBECS is also on facebook, here.

Dr. Bond presented a clear and persuasive argument against the certainty with which numerous scholars date the death of Jesus to 7th of April 30 CE. Her paper first set forth the reasons for this consensus, the implications of the date, a reflection on the nature of the chronological data in the Gospel of Mark, and her own suggestion, which affirms the basic historicity of the Gospel accounts but which also detaches the event from the specific date of 7th April 30 CE. She concluded by pre-emptively answering some common objections to her position. Central to her thesis was a contemplation on the nature of human remembrance and its tendency to shift to infuse meaning in subjectively significant events. Read the rest of this entry »