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44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Jewish Jesus behind the face of the Christian Christ!, July 31, 2001
By A Customer
This book is absolutely essential--whether you are a historical Jesus scholar, a Christian, and especially if you are concerned with anything Jewish. This is the groundbreaking work which has paved the way for "Meeting Jesus again for the First Time" (Marcus Borg), "Rabbi Jesus" (Bruce Chilton), and Richard Horsley's "Bandits, Prophets and Messiahs". Geza Vermes was/is professor of Jewish studies at Oxford, and his excellent approach in this tome is to avoid both the pitfalls of narrow-minded orthodoxy and the sterile, mechanistic strains of German theological scholarship. Instead, Vermes lets Jesus' Jewishness speak for itself, and letting his Galilean nature breathe like a sea breeze blowing onto Capernaum. Vermes is curious, but never heavy-handed or brow-beating, either as a scholar or a theologian. He rightfully insists that his goal is not Christian or Jewish theology; he is an historian and reads Jesus as such. He delves into the rustic, Galilean strain of charismatic Chasidism for his Jesus, rather than the Hellenic waters of recent scholarship, and through his excellent studies one will be exclaiming "Rabbouni!" in awakened recognition of the Jew Jesus was and truly is. This has long since become a textbook classic of New Testament/Jewish studies, but it is absolutely essential reading for either the Jew seeking to know more about Christ, or for the Christian who might be seeking to know the Jew behind the gospels. Again, this is not theology. For those looking for synthesis of scholarship and theology, Marcus Borg is a better and more current place to start. But to understand Christianity, you must first understand Judaism; and to understand the relationship between the two, you must understand Jesus. This book is definitely a step in the right direction towards understanding the man from Nazareth, but the reader must make his own judgments about the Christ of faith, separate or in addition to this Jesus of history.
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44 of 47 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Know Torah, know Jesus; no Torah, no Jesus, March 28, 2001
Elisabeth Schussler-Fiorenza somewhere tells a cute story about a class she once taught, in which she had the doggonedest time persuading a fine old Catholic gentleman that Jesus was actually Jewish. Finally he admitted that she had convinced him. "But," he added at once, "the Blessed Mother for sure was not!"Well, yes, she was, and so -- of course -- was Jesus himself. This volume, by Jewish scholar Geza Vermes, is probably the single work that did the most to drive this point home to the modern world. There are naturally some difficulties with Vermes's work. One of these is that he relies on Talmudic writings that date, in their written form, from about 500 years later than Jesus; this objection he has dealt with in _Jesus and the World of Judaism_. Another is that he has provided no real reason why his charismatic Galilean hasid should ever have gotten himself crucified; this objection he tries to meet in _The Religion of Jesus the Jew_ (rather lamely and unconvincingly, to my mind; he suggests, at bottom, that Jesus just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time). Then, too, some of his parallels (the main ones being Hanina ben Dosa and Honi the Circle-Drawer) have been questioned for various reasons. Some of these reasons seem cogent to me as well, and I do not think Vermes has provided a _complete_ picture of the historical Jesus. Nevertheless this groundbreaking work is the one that (re)started the conversation in the first place. If Jesus is now recognized by many Jews and Christians alike as having been, as a matter of history, a faithful Jew who in all likelihood did not intend to found a new religion separate from Judaism, this work played a crucial role in bringing that common recognition about. Nor is everything herein merely out of date. Vermes's discussions of -- for example -- the "Son of Man" sayings and the nature of Galilean piety are still cited in the literature, and not always for the purpose of refuting them. Whether complete or not, Vermes's account contains a great deal of truth. At some point anyone trying to cope with the vast array of "Jesus scholarship" of the last three or four decades should get around to reading this absolutely seminal work. _Jesus and the World of Judaism_ is unfortunately out of print as of this writing, but _The Religion of Jesus the Jew_ is also recommended.
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58 of 65 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
UNDERSTANDING JESUS IN TERMS OF HIS RACIAL HERITAGE, January 13, 2000
Modern Christological study and the quest for the historical Jesus owe a debt of gratitude to both Albert Schweitzer and Geza Vermes. Schweitzer showed us that Jesus' thinking was characterized by apocalyptic (eschatology), and Vermes taught us that if we would know Jesus we must understand him within his historical Jewish culture. It is to Vermes' credit, and an indication of the impact of his book, that in current Third Quest Jesus study we take his Jewishness and his Jewish background as basic to any legitimate interpretation of his nature, teaching, or mission.Vermes sets Jesus within a context of the Judaism we know from early rabbinics, and examines various titles and practices ascribed to Jesus against this background. The result is a picture of Jesus as a Hasidic charismatic teacher/healer, in line with the phenomena and other personalities popular in his own day. Vermes approaches many of the vexing issues by viewing them in this context. For example, he argues that the phrase "son of man" is a typical Jewish circumlocution (self-reference) meaning "I" or "man." He also points out that other Jewish Hasidic charismatics performed miracles. As valuable and influential as his book has been, there are some fundamental problems with his work: 1) Vermes tends to rely too much on a historical reconstruction of Jesus based on later Jewish sources. 2) He tends to reduce the portrait of Jesus to what is common to Judaism, discounting the atypical or unique aspects of Jesus. For example, the Danielic use and influence of the "son of man" phrase in 2nd-Temple Judiasm or early Christianity is not given the weight it deserves. 3) Vermes, as the history of religions school before him, tends to credit so-called "higher" Christological forulations to a later Hellenist stage, not properly considering Jesus' own claims, stories, beliefs, and praxis that contribute to them, nor giving due weight to the fact that Paul, the first Christians, and most Christian groups were composed of Jews. I well remember when I first read this book a few years ago. For the first time I saw Jesus come alive--a real historical person who fully shared in his racial heritage. I also remember how it was precisely because he thus became real that God became real to me as well. I think the major fault of Vermes is that he does not see that, for Jesus, YHWH is judging the nations, returning to Israel, and becoming King, in and through his own work. Rather, for Vermes, Jesus is made to fit the, howbeit peculiar, mold of the Jewish Hasidic charismatic. In spite of what I consider to be his weaknesses, I shall remain endebted to Vermes for making Jesus real to me, and setting the course of current Jesus study.
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