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Summary: I had to read it but I really liked it and got alot from it.
Review: In the book, "The historical figure of Jesus", E.P. Sanders sets out to understand who Jesus was and what he did by examining his life from a historical perspective. Sanders accomplishes this in a methodical way by outlining his study with as to eliminate as much of bias as possible that would contribute to our distorting the view of the historical Jesus. These factors of bias that Sanders points out are significant to consider when developing the history surrounding Jesus as a historical figure. 1. Introduction of the Common Era In Sanders' introduction he explains the complexities involved in writing about Jesus as a historical figure as compared to writing about other historical figures. He points out that there is a lack of sources that are available to us that would have enabled us to explore some of the more personal aspects of Jesus life. For instance, the fact that Jesus had never written anything down or that those who did write about Jesus had had virtually no contact with Jesus himself. This explains why Sanders and many others have chosen to study Jesus as a human being in the historical perspective. As a man that lived in a particular place and time, rather than discussing him as a theological figure of the First Century. In this way, Sanders and other scholars' hope that information on Jesus' life from a historical perspective will give us more insight into his thoughts as a man and allow us to consider it in a proper context. By examining the responses of Jesus' followers and outsiders who had heard about him some scholars think that you can, by a process of analysis and text comparisons, figure out what Jesus said. Throughout his book, Sanders uses standard methods of historical research in laying out what is known about Jesus' life.2. An outline of Jesus' life Beginning in chapter two, "An outline of Jesus' life", Sanders uses a preliminary sketch of events to describe the general course of Jesus' life, such as: when and where he lived, approximat! ely when he was born and things that he did during his public life. In this outline of Jesus' life Sanders uses facts about Jesus that are undisputed amongst believers and non-believers alike. In order to give us a basic framework of what is accepted about the basic history behind what Jesus was known to have done during his lifetime. 3. Political setting To give us a broader perspective of the Jesus' life Sanders chooses next to look at the political setting of first-century Palestine. This would be around the twenties and the thirties of the Common Era, when Jesus would have been conducting his ministry in the areas of Palestine known as Galilee and Judaea. There were at this time, different political and judicial arrangements in Galilee and Judaea that would have influenced the way that Jesus lived and conducted his ministry. At this time, Rome governed over Palestine through a resident governor, who in turn utilized a high priest to govern over the Jewish people. This means that Rome for the most part did not actually govern over these city-states of Palestine. On a day to day basis, Jews were free to practice there own religion and go about there lives. Sanders points out that, "In general, there had not been any substantial revolts during Jesus' lifetime." Josephus, a Jewish scribe, who was employed by the Roman governor Antipas, had recorded no instance in which the governor had to resort to force in order to suppress an uprising. This is important because many of the scholars of the New Testament seem to imagine Jesus living in a context where the population was daily oppressed by Roman soldiers and officials. This was not at all the case in much of the areas in which Jesus conducted his ministry. 4. Judaism as a religion In discussing Judaism as a religion Sanders points out the basic beliefs and practices which were common in Jewish Palestine during the first century. Much of what was believed by other religions was also believed by the Jewish religion.
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Summary: Our Saviour investigated
Review: Let's face it: we'll never know if Our Beloved Saviour Jesus was married ( maybe at Cana ?) or if he ever appointed Peter as His Successor.This book is very profound and interesting, though I maintain that what matters is Jesus' teachings, not Levi and Matthew being the same person or not, or if Jesus had brothers (of course he had !)
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Summary: It increased my understanding of Jesus.
Review: Sanders painstakingly introduces the reader to first century Palestine, and the cultural significance behind much of what Jesus said and did. With this, one can read the New Testament with much more clarity and understanding. He doesn't go out on any theological limbs, but rather presents the facts in a scholarly and cautious manner, leaving much for the reader to think about and decide on their own where Jesus fits in God's design.
Rating:
Summary: It increased my understanding of Jesus.
Review: Sanders painstakingly introduces the reader to first century Palestine, and the cultural significance behind much of what Jesus said and did. With this, one can read the New Testament with much more clarity and understanding. He doesn't go out on any theological limbs, but rather presents the facts in a scholarly and cautious manner, leaving much for the reader to think about and decide on their own where Jesus fits in God's design.
Rating:
Summary: worthwhile
Review: Sanders' book is a worthwhile read. Sanders states his presuppositions up-front and attempts as much as possible to stick with the historical evidence, though he is occasionally speculative at times. Nevertheless, this is a refreshing change from the highly speculative work of the "Jesus Seminar." Like other "historical Jesus" works, this one must be read critically and not all of Sander's arguments are convincing. But, on the whole, this is a thoughtful, scholarly look at what we can say about Jesus of Nazareth from a historian's point of view.
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Summary: Authentic scholarship
Review: The Jesus Seminar (Crossan, Borg, etc...) has attracted a lot of press coverage and given historical research a bad name. Their scholarship is poor, their motivations clearly political and their conclusions as biased and unfounded as any faith-perspective has been. But quality reserach has been done in the search for the historical Jesus, and E. P. Sanders is in the front of the march. Sanders is most famous for his "Paul and Palestinian Judaism" which is the most significant study of Paul in the last fifty years. He is a scholar of the highest caliber, even if his publicity is not as great as the JS. Certainly, no one is more qualified to write on this topic. "The Historical Figure of Jesus" is a lay-level introduction to the topic. Sanders does not cover all the issues in the greatest detail, but he economically makes his case in 281 pages. He does neglect some evidence in order to keep it brief. But he does not neglect evidence that would seem challenging to his view, only that which would make his points stronger. In other words, he is a confident scholar, not overly concerned to press an agenda. Sanders' view is that Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet, originally a follower of John the Baptist, who was executed because of Caiaphas' fear that he could cause an uprising. This (and the preceeding discussion) may be his only (relatively) direct reference to the Jesus Seminar: "Jesus the thoughtful social and economic planner, who has again become popular, simply cannot be found in the gospels." Sanders spends several chapters introducing the setting of Jesus' life, and several introducing the sources. About half the book is directly concerned with Jesus' life and teaching. He has an excellent epilogue about the resurrection, and helpful appendices about the chronology of Jesus' life and about his disciples. Sanders knows far more about this topic than he presents here. If you want more depth, consider his "Jesus and Judaism" or "Judaism: Practice and Belief, 63 BCE - 66 CE." Of course, I recommend his work on Paul even more highly. For evangelical Christians struggling to reconcile their faith with historical scholarship, I recommend the work of N. T. Wright. For Catholics with that problem, Luke Timothy Johnson. Another enlightening book somewhat related to these issues is Jaroslav Pelikan's "Jesus Through the Centuries."
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Summary: An island of sanity in an ocean of lunacy
Review: Tired of books on the "historical" Jesus that reconstruct him as a "peasant Jewish cynic" or a first-century proto-Marxist? How about the ones that tell us the New Testament canon is historically useless, but the gospel of Thomas provides reliable insights into the esoteric Buddhist teachings Jesus learned during his lost years in India or Tibet? Or how about the ones that tell us Jesus never existed in the first place, or the ones entitled "Jesus the ________" (fill in the blank with your favorite) that tell us the key to understanding him is to interpret/reduce all his words and deeds according to the item we filled in the blank with? Really? Me too. You'll get none of that from E.P. Sanders. This book is, for my money, _the_ best single volume currently available on the historical Jesus. (It may be the most readable, too. I taught a short course out of it five or six years ago and we all had an easy time with Sanders's clear, crisp expository prose.) Sanders's view is that we actually have quite a bit of information on Jesus -- not, perhaps, as much as we might like and not in as much detail as we would probably prefer, but quite a bit all the same. And in this book, he sorts through it carefully and summarizes what he thinks we can know on the subject. He is careful with his evidence and doesn't put too much weight on any single item. For example, he is doubtful that we can learn much from the "titles" Jesus supposedly applied to himself, partly because it's awfully hard to tell whether he _did_ apply them, and partly because even if he did so, we'd still have to determine exactly what _he_ meant by them. Either way, we have to look at the broad outlines of Jesus's life and career, so that's just what Sanders does. And he is eminently well qualified to do it. Sanders is of course the author of _Jesus and Judaism_, a delightful work that utterly demolishes popular and scholarly misconceptions about Jesus's relationship to Judaism; his work on the Judaism of the Second Temple period is well known and well regarded. In this volume he puts all of that work to good use and carefully locates Jesus within the Judaism of his time. His conclusion is that Jesus understood himself to be acting in some manner in God's stead -- as God's "viceroy," Sanders puts it using his own preferred term, since Jesus regarded God Himself as "King." For Sanders's Jesus, the "kingdom" was partly a present and partly a future affair; Jesus expected God to do something novel in the relatively near future, and he thought he himself was in some manner its harbinger, even to the point of being able to offer a place in the "kingdom" to sinners who had repented but not fully returned to the observance of Mosaic law. His actions in the Temple were a prophetic demonstration of the coming kingdom, and it was this action that led to his execution by crucifixion. All in all, a refreshingly sane historical account (although I personally think it de-emphasizes the "political" character of Jesus's words and deeds just a wee bit _too_ much). And it concludes with an appendix in which Sanders looks over the accounts of the "resurrection appearances," recognizes that they can't be harmonized, concludes that these appearances were in some way historical, and admits candidly that he doesn't know exactly what happened though he's convinced that something did. The entire volume, then, is a solid piece of historical inquiry -- neither making too much stew from one oyster in the manner of those who seize on a single word or phrase and make it the key to everything else, nor erring on the side of skepticism in the manner of those who forget that in some respects we have much better historical sources for Jesus than we have for, say Julius Caesar. Highly recommended both in its own right and as an antidote to quite a bit of Third-Quest lunacy.
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Summary: Conentional review
Review: Unlike the work of some other scholars, such as Crosson and Meier, E. P. Sanders has written a conventional survey of the main themes of the gospels. His treatment of the historical background contains no surprises or controversies. His review of other topics such as the chapter on the Kingdom of Heaven is a mainstream exegesis. Therefore, while this book may not have enticing bon mots, Sanders' work can safely be part of a homilist's research or incorporated into the teaching of a catechist. The book is far more readable than others that treat the historicity of the gospels. Yet scholarship does not get short shrift to this readability. A good read.
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Summary: Authentic scholarship!
Review: What, if anything, can be known with certainty about the life and work of a first-century itinerant preacher named Jesus of Nazareth? Since the 19th century, scholars have attempted to answer that question; and out of their studies, Jesus has emerged variously as a Cynic philosopher (Crossan), a ``marginal Jew'' (Maier), an apocalyptic preacher (Schweitzer), a teacher (Robbins) and a magician (Smith). Sanders (Jesus and Judaism) portrays Jesus as a miracle worker and eschatological prophet whose deeds point to a coming Kingdom of God where good will reign over evil. Sanders's book is a masterful historical reconstruction of the political, social and theological context of the life of the enigmatic Nazarene. The first half of the book provides a detached examination of late Judaism and the Hellenic world into which Jesus came, as well as an exploration of the authenticity of the gospel accounts of Jesus's life. Following such introductory matters, Sanders recounts the gospel narratives in an attempt to separate myth from history and to determine how much we can actually ``know about the historical figure of Jesus.'' The result is a thorough, accessible and conservative study that should have a wider appeal than other recent work on the historical Jesus.
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Summary: Interesting portrait of a difficult subject.
Review: Whether you are a believer or not, Jesus must be considered one of the most important persons who ever lived. However, our historical record of Jesus is sparse -- it is generally agreed that the gospels were not written for many decades after Jesus's death, and thus the authors probably did not have direct knowledge of Jesus, but were relying on a lost source known as "Q." Sanders does a good job of providing a background for what Palestine was like during Jesus's lifetime, and while he must engage in some speculation about his life, he does so in a judicious way and his assumptions seem reasonable. He also is respectful of Christianity and does not engage in the kind of attacks unsupported by the historical record that anti-Christians can do. This book is a remarkable of work of scholarship.
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