Customer Reviews

The HUMAN CHRIST: THE SEARCH FOR THE HISTORICAL JESUS

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
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The book brings together an enormous amount of material as it describes the search for the historical Jesus, not only in serious scholarship, but in novels, and films. It is a marvelous bibliographical resource. And it traces certain fashions in perception of Jesus rather ruthlessly and deservedly. I discovered the great scholar John A.T. Robinson through this book and will always be grateful for that and much more. I very much enjoyed the discussion of the fiction writers Renan, Flaubert, and the author of Quo Vadis, whose name I can't spell, and the further discussion of Hollywood Christians versus lions movies. Excellent and very thought provoking. This is an invaluable survey for its depth and breadth. We must be reminded over and over again that what we think is brand new in Jesus research isn't new at all. It's been done and done. High recommended. Anne Rice, New Orleans, La.

This is a rare treat. Allen combines scholarship, an excellent writing style, deep cultural insight, and fearlessnes to come to terms with the way Jesus has been understood in a huge variety of social contexts through time. Her survey of intellectual history, which debunks the debunkers from the Apostolic age to our own, has predictably raised the hackles of many. Why? Her final message urges intellectual humility, a trait not often found among those who tackle this huge subject. Few have done it so successfully.

Ms. Allen has given us a well-researched and colorfully-written survey of the (largely European) quest to discover the historical Jesus. That she is a 'journalist' and not a professional should not dissuade you from reading her excellent book. On the contrary; so many 'professional' books on this topic are marred by barely concealed prejudices it is indeed a relief to encounter Ms. Allen's ever-cheerful and appreciative study. She understands the quest's importance and its folly; its seriousness and its inanity; and that no matter what this quest proves conclusively or disproves utterly (damn little either way, to date) it is not really about Jesus anyway as much as it is about our millennial deep-bore investigation of ourselves.

Christians, Jews, atheists, agnostics, jugglers and clowns - read this great book!

I've read several books on the search for the historical Jesus, including those by Albert Schweitzer, David Strauss, Renan and A.N. Wilson. But Charlotte Allen;s book, "The Human Christ," is the most deeply researched, lucidly told and even-handed sweep of mankind's quest for the "real" Jesus. Allen is especially vivd about the Palestine & Rman culture of Jesus's era and she'd crafty about presenting the idea and a brief background of all the Jesus theorists since the Middle Ages----up to and including the Jesus Seminar of the 1990's and computered form search of the New Testament writers. My surprise is that this highly readable, fearless book has received so little attention by mainstream reviewers. (I wonder if that's because Mrs. Allen is a highly talented, knowledgeab;e free-lancer instead of an academic with a string of college acronyms by her name.)

Great step by step review of thought concerning who Jesus really was. Lofty thoughts of two thousand years of genius and creativity are made simple and discussed in a straight forward style. Ms. Allen always writes in layman's language but never in a condescending fassion. A wonderful addition to any Jesus library. A reference book that can be read like a novel. Well done.

The first thing you need to know is that Allen can write well, a rarity among biblical scholars. Beyond that, her book is simply the best overview of the search for the real Jesus on the market today. She starts with the death of Jesus, then goes on to trace all the important theological and quests since then to discover the truth about Jesus.

Hundreds of the most recent findings in biblical research are mentioned. Want to know how just how widespread literacy was in Jesus' time? See page 25. Or how normative JEsus' teachings were in his lifetime? See page 32.

Most interesting, however, is the historical background of the search for the real Jesus, and how completely the researchers have failed. Time and time again, they reiterate the same tedious findings and time and time again they are proven wrong.

PLEASE read this book.

My title is not supposed to be in praise of this book. No doubt that is my intellectual snobbery that this book, produced by a journalist on the distinctly academic and professional (though, as Allen shows, not always so professional) study of Jesus as an historical person, rubs shoulders, and criticises, many books produced by those with years of experience in this field. Allen has an eye for the headline ("Avant-Garde Fashions" and "Sex and death for the cinema" being two of her chapter headings) which is not meant to be praise either. For newspaper headlines, like their stories, are meant to be here today, making their impact, and then gone tomorrow. In this respect they are very like this book.

But this book deserves better than a negative review. Allen gives us reason to praise her book too. Primarily this is in her research which is thorough. General readers will learn much from this book for it offers a wide and varied catalogue of attempts to picture Jesus in a historically relevant way. I fear, however, that the student, academic or professional reader will see in what she has written what amounts to an overly-long newspaper article; thorough and interesting but lacking depth and critical appreciation of the subject matter.

And thats what this book lacks, depth, historical context, critical appreciation. Sure, the opening chapter gives us a chapter on "Jesus' Jewish world" but whole books are written on that alone. Scholars, and more enlightened readers in general, might also see in this chapter that Allen takes sides in an academic debate she is not formally part of, prefering "Jewish Jesus" to "Meditteranean Jesus" (a preference she keeps throughout the book). In that she needs to give a lot more documentation then she is doing here. But I'm being unfair for this book is a journalistic account of "the search for the historical Jesus" and thats exactly what it comes across as. Its all jolly stuff but it doesn't exactly stay with you for very long and it won't jump up and grab you and make you think for very long either.

This book was wonderful. I could not put it down. It is fascinating how we tend to form our opinions of historical figures around what we picture the "perfect being" to be. To little is known of Jesus to speculate on his historicity. We have a choice to either believe the supposed eyewitnesses or look to other forms of history. In other words, we will never know.

This book is mislabeled. It should be called "The Search for the Search for the Historical Jesus" because there is very little in the book about Jesus: it's mostly about the search for Jesus. Unfortunately most of what she does say about Jesus is incorrect. For example...

- "Deuteronomy reminds Jews of the disgrace of being crucified..." (p. 1). Au contraire, Deuteronomy is concerned with hanging, not crucifixion. 21:22 says "If a man have committed a sin worthy of death, and he be put to death, and you hang him on a tree" Hang! not crucify.

- "Jesus of Nazareth who was nailed to a cross..." (p. 2). Jesus did not come from Nazareth. This mistaken belief comes from a mistranslation in Matthew, a fact most scholars are aware of.

- "After Jesus' death his followers...evidenced no shame...they considered it a cause for celebration." (p. 2) That's why they didn't attend the crucifixion and escaped from Jerusalem and returned to Galilee. Because they wanted to celebrate?

- "Jesus was born in Roman-ruled Palestine...a vast empire that completely encircled the Mediterranean." (p. 9) Nonsense. At the time of Jesus the Roman empire, though extensive, did not completely encircle the Mediterranean. Only in the 2nd Century did it.

- "Josephus had little interest in Jesus, whom he referred to briefly..." (p. 9) Indeed, many scholars do not believe Josephus referred to him at all.

- "The catch of 153 'large fish'..." (p. 28). Apparently Allen is unaware that 153 was a magical number, used by Pythagoras to be the sign of the fish, and not meant to reflect a real number.

This being said, there are parts of the book which are quite interesting and informative. Allen is a good writer and her chapters are well organized.

But the inexperienced scholar is at risk here if he/she can't distinguish what is and what is not historically accurate.

This is a useful and entertaining history of the quest for the historical Jesus, a quest whose roots stretch back to the Reformation, but especially to the dawn of the Enlightenment in the seventeenth century. It is remarkable how many of the constant strains in this history surfaced at the beginning, and yet the quest has suffered from the inability of secular thinkers to pin down the mythical figure without projecting their own viewpoint onto a phantom historical void. The legacy of the Christian myth protects itself by keeping all parties guessing, and never quite bringing anything into sharp focus. This account touches the major bases, the material on the period of Strauss and the Left Hegelians, then of Renan being of interest still. It is remarkable how much of the material gets recycled in every generation. One realizes that this isn't a scholarship problem as much as a propaganda problem, and theological disinformation constantly puts the secular critics back at square one.