Friday, April 10, 2015

The Most Underrated or Overlooked Book on the Historical Jesus?—Chris Keith

Readers of the Jesus Blog, I put to you this question:  "What is the most underrated or overlooked book on the historical Jesus, new or old?"  I was wondering this the other day as I was thinking about a book that I do not think has received the attention that it rightly deserves.  Once I hear what others think, I'll say more about that book.
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20 comments:

  1. Robert CromptonApril 10, 2015 at 3:05 AM

    For anyone who thinks it helps, as I do, to jump out of the tramlines of unchallenged assumptions, I would recommend Hyam Maccoby's, "Jesus the Pharisee." (SCM Press, 2003)

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  2. Mike GanttApril 10, 2015 at 7:05 AM

    Take your pick: Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John.

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  3. Jonathan BernierApril 10, 2015 at 7:49 AM

    My candidate will probably come as little surprise: Ben Meyer's "Aims of Jesus."

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    1. Daniel N. GullottaApril 10, 2015 at 7:54 AM

      I think Wright made Meyer really popular again.

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    2. AnonymousApril 10, 2015 at 10:18 AM

      "Aims of Jesus" is too mainstream, man. My vote for the most overlooked books on the hipstorical Jesus (see what I did there?) is Meyer's "Christus Faber."

      Something probably also should be said for the work done by Dodd and Manson during the so-called "No Quest" period, since they so often get left out of accounts of the history of scholarship.

      - Jordan Ryan

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    3. Jonathan BernierApril 13, 2015 at 9:46 AM

      Christus Faber IMHO is most useful for its sections on the study of early Christianity more broadly.

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  4. Michael PahlApril 10, 2015 at 8:02 AM

    Meyer's Aims of Jesus came to mind, as does Harvey's Jesus and the Constraints of History. (Fun side note: I own E. P. Sanders' copy of Harvey's book - marginal scrawls included.)

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    1. Chris KeithApril 10, 2015 at 8:18 AM

      Michael, you should definitely do a guest post for us on what Sanders thought of Harvey. What do you think?

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    2. Michael PahlApril 10, 2015 at 2:06 PM

      Great idea, but no time. I also have Sanders' copy of Jeremias' Unknown Sayings of Jesus. Curiously, there are almost no marginal comments, only a few underlined sentences...

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  5. Daniel N. GullottaApril 10, 2015 at 8:05 AM

    Mine seconds Robert. Mine was "Jesus the Pharisee." I first read it when I was starting to come to grips with the gravity of the "Gentile issue" within the Pauline corpus, especially at the Jerusalem council and the Antioch dispute. If Jesus was okay with no Torah, including Gentiles, and all that jazz, why would Peter and James be against it? They knew Jesus right? So yeah, Maccoby's study really eyed my eyes to that drama within the Gospels and the Pauline corpus.

    Seeing as Robert picked my answer, my second choice would be Robert M. Price's "Incredible Shrinking Son of Man: How Reliable Is the Gospel Tradition?" While I think Price goes to far with some of his criticisms and arguments, especially when it comes down to Jesus's existence. Price has been a long critic of Jesus historical methods and I think his criticisms need to be engaged with (mind you, most of his criticisms are the same ones noted up by Keith, LeDonne, Crossley, Crook, Goodacre, and co.), but still Price was an early figure saying that this Historical Jesus Quest might be built on a house of cards. Well worth reading in my opinion.

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  6. Anthony Le DonneApril 10, 2015 at 8:21 AM

    The Quest for the Plausible Jesus: The Question of Criteria by Winter and Theissen is underrated in my opinion. We've given this book a nice platform on this blog in the last three years, but I don't see it used widely elsewhere.

    -anthony

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  7. AnonymousApril 10, 2015 at 3:10 PM

    Bockmuehl, This Jesus (1996).

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  8. AnonymousApril 11, 2015 at 1:46 AM

    The question may also differ from country to country, continent to continent. On a couple of occasions in Oslo, I was quite surprised to find that Vermes was not deemed significant whereas in the UK he is one of the main figures, certainly in the presentation of the history of the field. Also, there are some C19 HJs (esp. radical ones) that don't get placed in the official histories of the field but were serious works at the time.

    James

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  9. DeaneApril 11, 2015 at 3:50 AM

    Catherine M. Murphy, Historical Jesus for Dummies. Never gets cited by biblical scholars, strangely enough.

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  10. AnonymousApril 11, 2015 at 11:16 AM

    Marinus de Jonge, God's Final Envoy: Early Christology and Jesus' Own View of His Mission, 1998.

    Nice and methodologically careful. Is already critical of the criteria approach far before the current criticisms.

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  11. John C. PoirierApril 13, 2015 at 4:19 AM

    David Flusser, *Jesus*.

    Has some quirky views, but overall very helpful.

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  12. LolloApril 13, 2015 at 7:08 AM

    Per Bilde, "The originality of Jesus".

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  13. Hilde B. MøllerApril 13, 2015 at 1:49 PM

    Overlooked: Franz Delitzsch: *One Day in Capernaum*

    A conservative and 'romantic' portrait of Jesus the Jew.

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