<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Not without its own flaws
Review: A psychological study of Jesus is certainly a worthwhile endeavor. However, some of Miller's methods seem questionable. For one thing, he relies pretty heavily on Freud for his psychology. Also, he bases some of his conclusions on iffy biblical passages. For example, the account of Jesus teaching in the temple when he was twelve is found only in Luke and is regarded by many scholars as a Lukan creation. The book is worth reading - with a grain of salt.
Rating:
Summary: Psychobabble meets the quest for the historical Jesus
Review: In Jesus at Thirty, John W. Miller attempts to psychoanalyze Jesus and explain His state of mind when, around the age of thirty, He began His public ministry. It is a solid, well-organized attempt to do just that. Miller looks at Jesus' relations to His earthly family (the item of interest which drew me to this book), His father and mother specifically, Satan, and by implication God. He also expounds upon the subject of Jesus' sexuality before bringing all of his observations together to offer ideas about if not a full-fledged portrait of Jesus the man on the brink of His public ministry.
While the book represents a noble effort on Miller's part, I find the whole study highly flawed. I have never cared for psychohistory and feel it is essentially wrong-headed and heavily influenced by the supposed researcher's own ideas; the very method is best described as psychobabble. Miller is particularly influenced by Freudian analysis, expressing more faith in psychoanalysis than I thought existed in this day and age. This book rests on yet another flimsy foundation, I feel - the modern historical search for Jesus. This is problematic on two levels. For one thing, the author looks upon major portions of the Gospels as fictitious and thus historically useless. I as a fundamentalist Christian cannot possibly embrace Miller's grand theories for this reason alone (and it turns out there are many additional reasons why I cannot embrace it). More importantly, this viewpoint allows the author to basically pick and choose the Biblical passages he uses to make his arguments. If you are going to reject the very foundation of the Gospels, you can't convince me of anything by arbitrarily using Biblical sources to make your argument. Here is the problem in a nutshell - in my humble opinion. The Jesus scholars of today with all of their heretical ideas condemn evangelicals for losing themselves in the divinity of Jesus and ignoring the human Jesus. For their own part, they concentrate on Jesus as a man and deny His divinity. I do not think you can produce a definitive study of Jesus Christ without fully embracing both His humanity and His divinity.
Miller starts out by denying the Virgin birth, denying Jesus' identity as the Messiah, denying His complete lack of sin, and denying basically everything Christianity teaches about Him. He seizes upon tiny bits of information from arbitrary passages in the Gospels to delineate his own psychohistorical image of Jesus as a man. He puts great emphasis on Jesus' alienation from His family at the time of His ministry. Certainly, there is a sense of such alienation in the Gospels when Jesus refuses to see His mother and brothers when they come to see Him at Capernaum and even earlier, when His family sought to bring Him home for fear He was "beside himself." Miller, to his credit, does not see Jesus as insane or delusional (as a number of modern scholars have suggested); rather, from this beginning he puts forth a sensible argument to explain Jesus' attitude in this regard. Miller assumes that Joseph died while Jesus was in His early teens, making Jesus the ipso facto head of the household. The death of His father at such an age can explain why Jesus did not marry in His early twenties, as was the custom. It can also explain the estrangement that developed when Jesus set off on His own course over a decade later. It is Jesus' baptism, in Miller's opinion, that caused the break between Jesus and His strongly dependent mother. Only now, according to Miller, did Jesus find a purpose in His life, only now did He suddenly look upon Himself as the Son of God.
Miller's interpretation of Jesus' trials in the wilderness is particularly interesting (and, in my opinion, quite wrong). He sees Jesus being tempted, not as the Messiah, but as a man by the very thoughts of Messianic grandeur. He continues in this vein by arguing that Jesus never saw Himself as the Messiah. I can't deny the methodical nature of Miller's analysis, although I clearly think it is essentially baseless. His discussion of Jesus' teachings and maturity are equally well-presented. It is the inner conflict with hubris and Messianic grandeur that lies at the heart of Miller's Jesus, as he sees Jesus as emerging through the Oedipus complex in good fashion but then dealing with a number of family-related pressures and emotional issues brought about by the death of Joseph before breaking away from His family to discover His own purpose in life.
Jesus at Thirty does deserve credit and attention, no matter how much I disagree with all of this psychobabble, because it does represent one of the few rigidly psychohistorical analyses of Jesus' life. This is a study that can and probably will be built upon by other scholars in the years ahead, and the relative shortness of this book begs for a more detailed, comprehensive thrashing out of the issues Miller raises. He provides detailed footnotes and an impressive bibliography that helps pave the way for others to walk the same road after him.
Rating: 
Summary: Provocative, well-grounded study of Jesus and his family
Review: Most psychological studies of Jesus have been fatally flawed either by lack of attention to historical accuracy or by a tendency to "pathologize" Jesus. Miller presents a carefully worked-out thesis, grounded in developmental theory, that seeks to explain some troubling factors in Jesus' relationship to his family. The appendix, tracing the history of psychological treatments of Jesus, is worth the price of the book alone for anyone interested in psychology and the Bible.
Rating:
Summary: Not without its own flaws
Review: Most psychological studies of Jesus have been fatally flawed either by lack of attention to historical accuracy or by a tendency to "pathologize" Jesus. Miller presents a carefully worked-out thesis, grounded in developmental theory, that seeks to explain some troubling factors in Jesus' relationship to his family. The appendix, tracing the history of psychological treatments of Jesus, is worth the price of the book alone for anyone interested in psychology and the Bible.
<< 1 >>
|
