Customer Reviews

The Historical Jesus For Dummies

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The Historical Jesus for Dummies is a tour de force of scholarship in history, sociology, and theology. It is not just for "dummies" but for anyone who wants to discover the real Jesus of Nazareth or review some of the best current thinking on the subject. This book is informative, readable, and most of all, accurate. It challenges readers to go beyond what they thought they knew about Jesus and find out what history really tells us.

I have been working for 4 years with a group of very well educated adults who have little or no theological training. We rarely find a text that is as helpful and engaging as Prof. Murphy's text. Too often the texts that claim to help "familiarize" are overly simplified. Murphy's writing is elegantly clear and summarizes complex arguments quite nicely. It is a book for the un-initiated who can think. In addition, it is no small task to satisfy the skeptics and the people who stand firmly in their belief in a personal God. Murphy's book satisfies both.

I love the "For Dummies" series - usually they are clean, objective and unbiased. However in the case of historical Jesus research, it's exceedingly difficult to review the evidence without sneaking into the territory of apologetics. Dr. Catherine Murphy, associate professor of Santa Clara, does a fine job in laying out the evidence for the historical Jesus, and the things that modern biblical scholars belief/infer about him. However in a topic as polarized as "Who was the historical Jesus", it would have been nice to at least point out that many researchers and writers have doubted whether Jesus existed at all, how much of the bible is fact and how much literature, which portions of the gospels refer to Jesus the man and which portions were either copied from Jewish/Pagan traditions or later generated by theologically-specific views of early Christian communities.

Murphy does present an excellent overview of the ground "orthodox" researchers stand upon. Whether or not this ground is as firm as they imply is questionable.

It's often hard to separate fact from fiction when watching cable television PBS specials on religion or reading literature. This book does an excellent job addressing many of the controversial aspects surrounding Jesus and debunking what is supported by historical evidence and what is not. It considers the geopolitical influences, the various cultures, as well as corroborating and noncorroborating literature at that time in history. It was written with insight, balance, and a sense of humor.

I already have a personal copy of this book at home, but purchased another to use in my capacity as Pastoral Associate and Director of Religious Education in a Catholic parish. The Historical Jesus... is easily referenced and understood by teens and adults without speaking down to readers. It has been my experience that teens can come up with questions that I have never even thought of, and I have found this text to be helpful in my search for assisting them in knowing what direction to look for answers without becoming long-winded and "preachy," which normally just turns them off. Dr. Murphy appears to be one of those exquisite rare birds who is easily able to relate to the most highly educated intellectual as well as to us "grass-roots" theologians!!

The author seems to suggest that such a supernatural event might have actually happened. Referring to the story of the resurrection we read on page 240 "--It's traced to many eyewitnesses. Paul, for example, claims more than 515 eyewitnesses (1 Corinthians 15:3-8). --It's embarrassing (consider the divergent stories and women as witnesses, for example). --It's an early tradition on which all the other traditions in the gospels are predicated (no one would have bothered to write gospels if the resurrection hadn't occurred)."
Further down in the page she writes, "Because the story satisfies so many of the criteria of historicity, it seems that something must have happened." I just don't like to entertain the idea of a possible supernatural event without evidence.

I bought this book perhaps foolishly expecting a review of genuine historical research into the life of the man at the center of Christianity. NOT THIS BOOK. This is written by someone deeply invested in the religious view of Jesus, for example, she writes, 'I will take you through the events of the crucifixion and resurrection and tell you what most likely happened'. Good grief; you know? How exactly? I got the strong sense that the author could give no historical evidence that the man Jesus ever existed. Can that be true?