Customer Reviews

The Christology of Jesus

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Witherinton is good at what he does--plays the historial critical game and uses it against them.

Here his aim is clear: "I intend to state as much as I think is plausible about how Jesus viewed himself, particularly with respect to christological matters, in an attempt to associate Christian faith with the life of the Jesus of history."

He concludes that Jesus thought of himself as having a unique relationship with God, his Son and anointed with the eschatological Spirit, above all humans and angels. He saw himself taking on Isaiah's prophecy of Israel's representative suffering servant. Especially does all this tie in his title "son of man." When he comes to the question of deity, he hedges and waffles a bit.

Interesting read in the continuing search for the historical Jesus.

The author sets forth a new interpretive entry into the mind of Christ through both his words and his relationships. He dialogues with major scholars from the New Quest for the Historical Jesus, as well as Biblical theologians using the form criticism criteria. He sets forth a connected thesis in his exegesis of representative texts from Mark and Q. This is a new landmark in Christology.

A very sound book. Clearly demonstrates that there is enough biblical evidence to suggest that Jesus saw himself as the Messiah. He defends the historical integrity of key verses and does a good job of explaining the use of the title "Son of Man." An excellent book!

Ben Witherington is one of the most important New Testament scholars of our time. He is well on his way (or perhaps already completed) his goal of writing "socio-rhetorical" commentaries on all the books of the NT. Perhaps because his word processor is so productive, some of his more recent books have a rather unfinished feel.

Witherington's approach is moderately conservative. He embraces many of the assumptions of centrist NT scholars, but reaches more conservative conclusions.

His earlier study THE CHRISTOLOGY OF JESUS is one of my favorite Witherington books. What just did Jesus think of himself and his mission? As against the trend to make Jesus a cynic or a prophet, Witherington shows that Jesus' opinion of himself was considerably higher. Time and again the Gospels show Jesus saying and doing things that are inconsistent with being merely a prophet or religious reformer. With great skill Witherington demonstrates that much of this material likely goes back to Jesus himself.

Traditionalists might be unhappy that Witherington makes minimal use of John's gospel and hedges a bit on Christ's consciousness of his own divinity, but these don't detract from the value of this work.