The Jesus Quest: The Third Search for the Jew of Nazareth - Softcover

Witherington III, Ben

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0830815449 ISBN 13: 9780830815449

Publisher: IVP Academic, 1997

Synopsis

Who is the Jesus behind the Gospel narratives? How would he have been understood by his contemporaries? Did the church transform a charismatic rabbi or a peasant-philosopher into its heavenly, incarnate Lord? Does the key to Jesus' real identity actually lie in the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter or other noncanonical Jesus literature suppressed by the ancient orthodox church? What do the sects, parties and movements of Jewish Palestine tell us about the real Jesus, his words, his actions and his intentions? These are the questions being asked by a new generation of investigators of the man behind the origin of Christianity. Dubbed the Third Quest of the historical Jesus, this renewed effort is a transformation of the first quest, memorialized and chronicled by Albert Schweitzer, and the second quest, carried out in the 1950s and 1960s in the wake of extreme Bultmannian skepticism. Now in the 1990s, with the time, place and social setting of Jesus newly illumined by renewed and vigorous investigation of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other Jewish and Hellenistic sources, there has appeared a surge of scholarly books on Jesus within his Jewish and Mediterranean environment. The controversial works of John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg and Burton Mack, and the results of the Jesus Seminar have been thrust upon the public by publicists and media as the voices of learned consensus. Meanwhile, at the center of the scholarly investigation of Jesus, a less celebrated but certainly no less informed majority rejects many of the methods and conclusions of those who have captured the limelight.

About this title

Review:

"The closest we have to the part played almost 100 years ago by Albert Schweitzer's classic The Quest for the Historical Jesus . . . a worthy guide through the intricate research maze now known as the third quest for the historical Jesus."

Gary Habermas, Themelios

About the Author:

Ben Witherington III (PhD, University of Durham) is Jean R. Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary. A prominent evangelical scholar, he is also on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. Witherington has written over forty books, includingThe Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. His other works include The Indelible Image, Women and the Genesis of Christianity, The Gospel Code, A Week in the Life of Corinth and commentaries on the entire New Testament. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications and is a frequent contributor to Patheos and Beliefnet. Witherington is an elected member of the prestigious Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, a society dedicated to New Testament studies. He is a John Wesley Fellow for Life, a research fellow at Cambridge University and a member of numerous professional organizations, including the Society of Biblical Literature, Society for the Study of the New Testament and the Institute for Biblical Research. He previously taught at institutions like Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. An ordained pastor in the United Methodist Church and a popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings around the world. He has led numerous study tours through the lands of the Bible and is known for bringing the text to life through incisive historical and cultural analysis. Along with many interviews on radio and television networks across the country, Witherington has been seen in programs such as60 Minutes, 20/20, Dateline and the Peter Jennings ABC special Jesus and Paul--The Word and the Witness

About this edition

• Publisher: IVP Academic
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0830815449
• ISBN 13: 9780830815449
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 336