Who on earth was Jesus?: the modern quest for the Jesus of history

Foreword

Author's Preface

Part I. Sources

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

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

3. The Gap

Chinese whispers: the oral tradition

Jesus reconstructed, or Jesus remembered?

Notes to Chapter 3

4. Gospel Truth

1. Paul's letters

2. The non-Pauline letters

3. The biblical gospels

Mark

Cameo: The invention of the narrative gospel

Cameo: Sex, lies and fraud in Secret Mark

Matthew

Luke

John

Cameo: Jews? Israelites? Judeans?

Notes to Chapter 4

5. Jesus Before Christianity

1. Q, M and L

2. Thomas

Cameo: Q revealed

Cameo: Thomas without doubts

3. Signs

4. The Didache

5. Peter: the first passion story?

Notes to Chapter 5

Cameo: 'In the know': Gnosticism and the gospel of Thomas

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

2. Finds before and after Nag Hammadi

The Gospel of Mary

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas

Cameo: Did Jesus have a love life?

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

6. Early Jewish references to Jesus

'Yeshu the Nazarene'

Jesus written in stone

Cameo: Essenes and the Jesus movement. Any connection?

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

7. The Jesus Seminar

1. The method: beads and ballots

Cameo: Robert Funk on "The Aim of the Quest"

2. Rules of written evidence

3. Rules of oral evidence

4. What did Jesus really say?

5. What did Jesus really do?

6. Jesus and Apocalypse

Cameo: The Red and Pink Jesus

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

8. Diversity in Unity: A Range of Jesus Seminar Portraits

1. Robert W Funk's Jesus as stand-up comic

2. Bernard Brandon Scott's Jesus as visionary poet

Cameo: Funk on "Demoting Jesus"

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 "almost ridiculous" Jesus

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

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

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

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

12. Reds and Blacks

1. The Red consensus

2. Mixed colors

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

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"

Notes to Chapter 13

Bibliography

Index