Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort The Gospels - Softcover

Evans, Craig

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1844741729 ISBN 13: 9781844741724

Publisher: IVP, 2007

Synopsis

The Da Vinci Code. Misquoting Jesus. The Jesus Papers. The Gospel of Judas. New portraits of Jesus continue to stir up interest and debate. The more unusual the portrait, the more it departs from the traditional view of Jesus, and the more attention it receives in the popular media. Critical study of the Gospels has often shed light on the Jesus of history - but has also distorted the Gospels and rendered Jesus unrecognizable. Why are some scholars so prone to fabricate a new Jesus? What methods and assumptions predispose them to distort the record? Why is the public so eager to accept such claims without question? Is there a more sober approach to finding the real Jesus? Craig Evans offers insights into the methods and biases of modern interpreters, whether scholars associated with the Jesus Seminar or popularizers like Michael Baigent and Dan Brown. He examines how we got today's New Testament text, how ancient historians did their work, what second-century Gnosticism was all about, and the way first-century Jewish and Greek culture informs scholarly study of the Gospels. Readers will come away with a new appreciation of the value and limits of contemporary biblical research.

About this title

About the Author

Craig A. Evans is Payzant Distinguished Professor of New Testament and director of the graduate program at Acadia Divinity College in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

From the Back Cover

'The Da Vinci Code'. 'Misquoting Jesus'. 'The Jesus Papers'.
'The Gospel of Judas'.

"New portraits of Jesus continue to stir up interest and debate. The more
unusual the portrait, the more it departs from the traditional view of
Jesus, and the more attention it receives in the popular media. Critical
study of the Gospels has often shed light on the Jesus of history - but has
also distorted the Gospels and rendered Jesus unrecognizable.

Why are some scholars so prone to fabricate a new Jesus? What methods and
assumptions predispose them to distort the record? Why is the public so
eager to accept such claims without question? Is there a more sober
approach to finding the real Jesus?

Craig Evans offers insights into the methods and biases of modern
interpreters, whether scholars associated with the Jesus Seminar or
popularizers like Michael Baigent and Dan Brown. He examines how we got
today's New Testament text, how ancient historians did their work, what
second-century Gnosticism was all about, and the way first-century Jewish
and Greek culture informs scholarly study of the Gospels. Readers will come
away with a new appreciation of the value and limits of contemporary
biblical research.

"The quest of the historical Jesus has been seriously misled by much poor
scholarship and distorted almost beyond recognition by recent
pseudo-scholarship. But now Craig Evans out-skeptics the historical
skeptics, demonstrating from his own intimate familiarity with the biblical
texts and his mastery of ancient sources how unfounded are many of the
claims made and how ridiculously bizarre are the hypotheses thought to give
some support to The Da Vinci Codeand its like. The mature judgment of such
an accomplished and front-rank scholar cannot be ignored or lightly
gainsaid--a welcome draft from a clear spring after all the muddied waters
of recent years."

--James D. G. Dunn, Lightfoot Professor of Divinity Emeritus, University of
Durham, and author of 'Jesus Remembered' and 'Christology in the Making'

Edition details

• Publisher: IVP
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 1844741729
• ISBN 13: 9781844741724
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 294