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Why are scholars so prone to fabricate a new Jesus? Why is the public so eager to accept such claims without question? What methods and assumptions predispose scholars to distort the record? Is there a more sober approach to finding the real Jesus? Craig Evans offers a sane approach to examining the sources for understanding the historical Jesus.
The first part of this book attempts to situate Jesus in his historical and cultural context through comparisons with the prayers, parables, prophecies, and miracles attributed to various Jewish figures of Palestine who are Jesus' near contemporaries. It is concluded that Jesus' teachings and activities do not represent a radical break with the piety and restorative hopes of many of his contemporaries. This conclusion stands in tension with some of the recent Jesus research, especially emanating from the Jesus Seminar, which tends to view Jesus as a Stoic or Cynic philosopher with little interest in the restoration of Israel and the fulfilment of prophecy. The second part of the book explores the aims of Jesus and the factors that led to Jesus' death. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.
The most comprehensive volume ever produced in defense of the Gospels and Acts The four Gospels and the book of Acts tell stories of Jesus’ life and the birth of Christianity. Are these stories true history or just religious fiction? Christians accept the stories as true and say that the entire Bible is a reliable communication inspired by God. Against this, non-Christians have argued that the Bible is a book of legends, myths, and historical inaccuracies—just another example of human religious endeavor. In this volume, four world-class New Testament scholars address challenges to the reliability of the Gospels and Acts. In order to identify the most important challenges, the authors dre...
Prominent scholars in the fields of Archaeology, New Testament Studies, and the Dead Sea Scrolls have come together in "The World of Jesus and the Early Church" to focus on early Jewish and Christian communities of faith and their impact on the collections of texts that were their scriptures (and would become, in due time, part of their various canons). Professors, students, and pastors who are interested in how these communities lived--how they developed, what they believed, and how they regarded and preserved the written documents that were their scripture--will be interested in this comprehensive volume drawn from presentations made to key conferences on the subject. This book's emphasis on a variety of communities of faith (not just Christian) and their early (and critical) influence on the development of religious canonical materials sets it apart from others on New Testament-period culture.
Evans concludes his volume with a measured consideration of the historical value of the archaeological data afforded by the several inscriptions.
One of the daunting challenges facing the New Testament interpreter is achieving familiarity with the immense corpus of Greco-Roman, Jewish, and pagan primary source materials. From the Paraphrase of Shem to Pesiqta Rabbati, scholars and students alike must have a fundamental understanding of these documents' content, provenance, and place in NT interpretation. But achieving even an elementary facility with this literature often requires years of experience, or a photographic memory. Evans's dexterous survey-a thoroughly revised and significantly expanded edition of his Noncanonical Writings and New Testament Interpretation - amasses the requisite details of date, language, text, translation...
In his recent book How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher From Galilee historian Bart Ehrman explores a claim that resides at the heart of the Christian faith— that Jesus of Nazareth was, and is, God. According to Ehrman, though, this is not what the earliest disciples believed, nor what Jesus claimed about himself. The first response book to this latest challenge to Christianity from Ehrman, How God Became Jesus features the work of five internationally recognized biblical scholars. While subjecting his claims to critical scrutiny, they offer a better, historically informed account of why the Galilean preacher from Nazareth came to be hailed as “the Lord Jesus Christ.” Namely, they contend, the exalted place of Jesus in belief and worship is clearly evident in the earliest Christian sources, shortly following his death, and was not simply the invention of the church centuries later.
This study traces the tumultuous history of the very first followers of Jesus. Specifically, author Craig A. Evans looks at how a chain of events from 3-7 CE--beginning with Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem and subsequent crucifixion and ending with the destruction of the temple—led to the separation between the followers of Jesus and other Jews. Topics include the following: 1) whether Jesus actually intended to found the Christian Church; 2) the ways in which Jesus’s proclamation of the “Kingdom of God” relate to the Christian Church; 3) the role of James, brother of Jesus, in the new movement in Jerusalem; 4) the tension between James and Paul in the matter of law and works; 5) the conflict between the families and followers of Jesus and those of the high priest Annas before the destruction of the temple; and 6) the aftermath of the Jewish rebellion, whereby the Church moved away from its Jewish roots. An appendix further explores the reasons behind the rift between the Jesus movement and the synagogue.
Unfortunately, achieving even an elementary facility with this literature has in the past depended on either years of experience or a photographic memory. Now Craig A. Evans pulls together the essentials of date, language, text and translations, and general bibliography. He also evaluates the material's relevance for interpreting the NT.
This Encyclopedia brings together the vast array of historical research into the reality of the man, the teachings, the acts, and the events ascribed to him that have served as the foundational story of one of the world's central religions. This kind of historiography is not biography. The historical study of the Jesus stories and the transmission of these stories through time have been of seminal importance to historians of religion. Critical historical examination has provided a way for scholars of Christianity for centuries to analyze the roots of legend and religion in a way that allows scholars an escape from the confines of dogma, belief, and theological interpretation. In recent years...