Jesus After 2000 Years: What He Really Said and Did

Rating:
Summary: Great questions, poor answers
Review: I was happy to hear that Gerd, a major scholar in teh jesus seminar movement, finally came out of the closet to say that he was, in fact, an athiest and not a theist. It was a case of being honest about one's position. (I wonder when Spong will make a similar declaration?)

The authors of this book, leading experts in debunking the Gospels, have not said anythijng really new in terms of their brand of scholarship, but it is a nice synopsis. In my view, they make the same mistake as the Seminar. They decide ahead of time that the gospels are myth (reactions to guilt on the disciples' part, anti-semitism, etc.) and then look for ways to prove it, rather than holding the possibility open that they may in fact be true.

Something that traditional Christian scholars are bad at is making themselves more marketable. Unlike the Seminar folk, they don't use titles like "What Jesus really said" or "Virgin Birth? How Jesus was really Conceived and why the Church is scared of this book". Look at the titles of Gerd's books. They are meant to be sensational appeals to all those people who are looking for reasons to mock Christianity. Not that Christians haven't done many stupid things worth mocking, but the whole exercise is just as silly as the fundamentalist, holy rollers who think that you can claim the name and get rich.

What this book fails to take into account is the massive amount of scholarship that totally disagrees with their own. The authors present their theories as if they were obvious facts that only a stupid Christian could disagree with. The real fact is that these authors start with conclusions and work a theory, weak theories in fact, and then act as if they proved the theory that they only assumed. Just read the other review to see what I mean. He calls attention to the fact that the authors will say,"Such and such a verse is not really a true word of Jesus but only a later addition to the text..." But that is the whole issue. There are thousands of other very compitent scholars who criticize these very authors for such slips in logic, but they don't sell thousands of books because they are not selling new ideas that will revolutionize the faith. The slip in logic is assuming what one was trying to prove. Of course if the Gospels are made up fiction then the faith is a joke, but that is the question. Are they made up fiction? OIs the whole of Church history founded upon a lie?

I would suggest that you read this book along with the works of N. T. Wright. To give you insight into the Jesus Seminar, and the publishing craze behind it, Luke Timothy Johnson's The Real Jesus cannot be overlooked.

Rating:
Summary: Very useful commentary on the ancient gospels
Review: If you liked The Five Gospels, you'll love Jesus After 2000 Years.

Gerd Luedemann is a scholar based in Germany who participated in the Jesus Seminar and recently came out as a non-Christian (explained in his book The Great Deception). Having read five of his books, I must say that "Jesus After 2000 Years" is my favorite and the one that I have found the most useful. It is not more popularizing pablum on the historical Jesus. Rather, it is a critical commentary on the ancient texts: the Gospel of Mark, the Gospel of Matthew, the Gospel of Luke, the Gospel of John (by Frank Schleritt), the Gospel of Thomas, and the Apocryphal Jesus Traditions (by Martina Janssen). As Luedemann says in the preface: "My plan is to offer a new translation of the most important extant traditions about Jesus in the first two centuries and then to investigate their historical credibility, in such a way that educated lay people, too, can follow the argument."

The format of the book is brilliant. Each section begins with a fresh translation of the text; for example, the first is Mark 1.1-8, starting with "Beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." Those portions of the text that apparently belong to the creation of the gospel writer are presented in italic text. Following the translation is a section on "Redaction and tradition." In this section we find commentary on the meaning of the text, such as "This sums up the whole Gospel of Mark, which sets out to be the gospel of Jesus Christ." Finally, there is a section titled "Historical" in which the value of the tradition for reconstructing history is presented, such as, "John the Baptist practised baptism for repentance by the Jordan; by it the sins of those being baptized will be forgiven on the day of judgment, which is imminent." Occasionally there is a section on "Later revision," such as on John chapter 19, "Verse 35 is clearly an addition by the revisers," followed by arguments for that conclusion.

This is not the kind of book that is meant to be read from front to back. As a commentary, it is best used as a reference work whenever you are studying a particular passage in the gospels. This commentary is distinguished by its critical approach and emphasis on the question of historicity.

Rating:
Summary: Cuts through the clutter to the _history_ of Jesus
Review: This book was recommended to me from a friend when I mentioned that I understood that different parts of the bible were written at different times, but didn't know what was added by enthusiastic translators/editors.

This book clearly answers that question.

Jesus After 200 Years is a 700 page tome that is a little intimidating when you first get your hands on it. However, the book is broken down into seven manageable chapters (not including the important-to-read introduction). Basically, it starts with the earliest known written gospel, Mark, and works backwards in cronology to Matthew, Luke, and John. Chapter five examines the gospel of Thomas; six looks at Apocryphal Jesus Traditions and the final chapter is a nine page biographical-summary description of the _historical_ life of Jesus -written as though he were an ancient secular historical figure.

Here is what the book so interesting and valuable. For every bible passage the author indicates which portion is true to the earliest known records/version of the bible, and which portion was added/embellished at a later date. Incredibly insightful!

The book is very "readable" because, as the author explains in his preface, he has not cited every source for every little thing, so you are not bombarded by subscripts and superscripts. To quote, "They say nothing to lay people and specialists know them anyway." (There are plenty of authors cited in the book, just not the particular article or book they wrote that he is pulling from.)

As another reviewer mentioned, this is not a book that you read cover-to-cover. Instead, you should read the introduction to all of the chapters and then reference the book when examining certain sections of the bible.

If you have a bible on your bookshelf, you need to have this next to it.