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Title: The Changing Faces of Jesus by Geza Vermes ISBN: 0-14-219602-9 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: March, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.4 (20 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Thorough examination ...
Comment: This is the third book I've read on the historical Jesus, beginning with Paula Fredriksen's "From Jesus To Christ," and just recently E.P. Sanders' "The Historical Figure of Jesus."
While I have more titles on my list, I highly recommend the three I've read, especially Geza Vermes more theological study, "The Changing Faces of Jesus."
Vermes begins with the Gospel of John, contrasting the most recently composed "Gospel" of Jesus, written sometime around 100-110 A.D., with the earlier writings of Paul, the Acts of the Apostles, and the image of Jesus consistent with the contents of the the three Synoptic Gospels, beginning with Mark, probably composed sometime after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in 70 A.D.
The author concludes with two short chapters, "Beneath the Gospels" (The Real Jesus) and most thought-provoking "The Real Jesus at the Dawn of the Third Millennium." These summary essays along with the equally interesting Prologue are important reading for the "thinking" Christian.
Between the Prologue and two concluding Chapters, the author thoroughly examines the "changing/evolving" face of Jesus in the New Testament.
The author, born in Hungary, had a Catholic education and was ordained as a priest shortly after the Second World War. He later returned to his Jewish roots, becoming a Biblical scholar, publishing "The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls" in 1997.
The author's scholarship and research expertise adds to the impact of this historical and theological study.
Rating: 5
Summary: Powerful but nonpolemical
Comment: This is a wonderful book. Although I think Ed Sanders's _The Historical Figure of Jesus_ is probably the best single volume on the "Jesus of history," Geza Vermes is perhaps my favorite writer on the subject.
In the present work he continues his project of reclaiming Jesus as a (solely) human being and a Jew of his own time. Here he tackles a topic he has not treated in his previous three volumes: the Christian New Testament's presentation of Jesus outside of the three synoptic gospels. He also gives the synoptics themselves another look after he has dealt with John and Paul.
His theme here is that Christian understanding(s) of Jesus have been colored heavily by the New Testament's portraits. Vermes wants to recover, as far as possible, the human being behind the theology. The portrait Vermes presents here will hold no surprises for readers of his other works: he regards Jesus as a charismatic Galilean holy man with an emphasis on God as father, a somewhat "individualistic" approach that decentralized the importance (though not the necessity) of the social/communal aspects of Torah observance, and the occasional touch of chauvinism.
There is much to accept in Vermes's portrait, and I am in essential agreement with most of it. My worries are about what he omits; as with his earlier work, I am simply unconvinced by his claim that Jesus was crucified simply for doing the wrong thing in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I also do not see that he has adequately dealt with the possible historicity of Jesus's resurrection. (I would supplement Vermes's account on these points by, respectively, Hyam Maccoby's _Revolution in Judea_ and Rabbi Pinchas Lapide's _The Resurrection of Jesus: A Jewish View_.)
But in its positive aspects, Vermes's portrait is compelling on the whole. And at the end of the volume, he shifts out of "historian" mode to provide a short fantasy about what Jesus might say if he returned today. I will not spoil it by giving away its content, but it's very nicely done. (Okay, I'll give away a _little_ bit. Vermes's Jesus is pleasantly surprised by all the attention he's gotten from non-Jews, especially after the mean things he occasionally said about them. But he suggests that some Christians ought to be a little less devotional and a little more self-reliant.)
Beyond strictly historical interest, it has long been one of Vermes's main concerns to present the figure of Jesus as an offer of hope to those outside the fold of organized religion. His previous works have, I think, been successful in this regard; the present volume is, if anything, more so.
Rating: 5
Summary: An extraordinary book
Comment: This book in written in a lively style, and with deep insight into New Testament studies. The most striking perspective in the book, to me, is the progressive divinization of Jesus. Geza Vermes (writing from a Jewish perspective) thinks that Jesus did not think of himself as divine, but that his resurrection led his disciples, and specially Paul to reach the conclusion that he was made a divine being after his death. The Gospel of Mark belongs to that period, since it gives no account of a divine conception of Christ. The later gospels, Matthew and John do, and in the second century the Gospel of John established the divine pre-existence of Jesus before the creation of the world. Geza Vermes' view that Paul did not see Jesus as God is also shared by leading Catholic scholars like Jerome Murphy-O'Connor.
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Title: Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels by Geza Vermes ISBN: 0800614437 Publisher: Fortress Press Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: The Religion of Jesus the Jew by Geza Vermes ISBN: 0800627970 Publisher: Fortress Press Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: Jesus in His Jewish Context by Geza Vermes ISBN: 0800636236 Publisher: Fortress Press Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
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Title: From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Jesus by Paula Fredriksen ISBN: 0300084579 Publisher: Yale Univ Pr Pub. Date: November, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews : A Jewish Life and the Emergence of Christianity by Paula Fredriksen ISBN: 0679767460 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 05 December, 2000 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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