Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture [Paperback]

Jaroslav Pelikan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 19, 1987

A critically and popularly successful interweaving of history, culture, and religion, providing a thorough exploration of the changing images of Jesus. Illustrated.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Writing for the general reader, eminent church historian Pelikan proposes that, while the figure of Jesus provides the chief continuity in the history of Christianity, each age has depicted him in accordance with its own character. He demonstrates this in 18 brief yet magisterial essays, each describing an image of Jesus and its significance for a period in the history of the church. The gospels present Jesus as a rabbi; understanding Jesus as lord first produced tension between Christianity and the Roman Empire and later fostered the development of a Christian empire; an ascetical understanding of Jesus underlay monasticism; incarnational theology was a factor in the Renaissance, etc. History Book Club main selection. Terrance Callan, NT Studies Dept., Athenaeum of Ohio, Cincinnati
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

A celebratory study of Jesus' impact on Western art, thought and culture over the last 2,000 years. -- New York Times Book Review --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (February 19, 1987)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060970804
• ISBN-13: 978-0060970802
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,593,373 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A classic., January 11, 2007

By 

David Marshall (Seattle area) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (Paperback)

This is not a devotional work, it is an insightful and valuable slice of intellectual history. Pelikan is a Christian, but distances himself from those he describes. I think the combination of sympathy and critical distance helps the reader have his own conversation with the persons described. Pelikan bites off more than he can chew. How can there be room in one readable, coherent and reasonably short book for Augustine and Blake, Renan and Ricci, Constantine and Gandhi? But Pelikan pulls it off pretty well, summarizing the history with interesting anecdotes, and making reasonable comments. Not all of which I think are correct, though.

"It is not sameness but kaleidescope variety that is its most conspicuous feature." Pelikan includes a great deal of evidence for both, though. Early Christians attempted to translate Jesus as "logos" to relate to Greek thinking. Modern Christians in India and China undertook a similar task of describing Jesus as the "fulfillment" of the deepest truths in those great cultures. (Work I have studied quite a bit.)

I give the book five stars, because it is brilliant, fascinating and informative. Nevertheless, Pelikan's position seems to soak up some of the subjectivm he chronicles.

It is important to distinguish between images that are arbitrary, and those that depend on a reality that can be referred to. One could write a book called "The Moon through the Centuries." But that would be a different kind of book from "Martians through the Centuries," because in the first case, we just need to look up to be corrected. Pelikan does not take sufficient account of the fact that Jesus is more like the first than the second case. Kaleidescope is a mosaic of splintered reflections. But the image whom these reflections reflected, like the moon, is still before us, in the Gospels. Pelikan tells us we are "dependant" on "oral tradition" that was "eventually deposited" in the Gospels, but in fact they were written within the lifetimes of the first Christians. Rather than "tradition," they could have relied on memory.

Pelikan does not distinguish between birds that settle in the nest as they find it, and birds that steal twigs to built their own. He weakly justifies the fantastic subjectivism that goes into revisionist historical Jesus studies. Pelikan is like a conscientious objector from the argument over what really happened. In a preface to a recent edition he admits, a bit coyly, that he doesn't buy the arguments of the "historical Jesus" crowd. Well and good: but this excellent book might be even better if the fascinating and fruitful subjectivism he chronicles were balanced with an occasional reminder that in the end, portraits are not about those who take the picture, but him whose portrait is taken.

Still, a deserved classic, and a wonderful way to look at history. Highly recommended.

14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very good survey, but not great or inspirational, July 28, 2004

By 

Nicholas Dujmovic (Vienna, Virginia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (Paperback)

This is a very useful, well researched, largely descriptive survey of how Western culture has viewed Jesus Christ. It's not a work of theology, it's not an inspirational work--it is what it is, interesting with its limitations. There's much that Pelikan faithfully records that's nonsense, such as Thomas Jefferson's breathtakingly vain and obtuse pronouncements about what Jesus really said. There are also some staggering transitions, such as the discussion on Emerson that suddenly veers into Dostoyevsky's The Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov (the greatest novel ever). It's worth a read, particularly in paperback, but understand that it won't bring you much closer at all to an answer to Jesus's own question, Who do men say that I am?

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Jesus Through 2,000 Years, January 9, 2001

By 

Dan Hayward (Ottawa, ON Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jesus Through the Centuries: His Place in the History of Culture (Paperback)

Pelikan's book looks at how Jesus has been viewed over the last 2,000 years, beginning with Jesus the Rabbi during his lifetime in Galilee and Judea. The author chooses to devote each chapter to an aspect of Jesus' place within the culture of a specific period, so the discussion can be somewhat restrictive - for example, the overview of "just war" theory within Christianity is conducted only in the context of the medieval and Reformation eras and ignores the many later theological developments. It is, however, a rich and enjoyable work, tracing the evolution of how Jesus has been seen from Jewish rabbi to deity to liberator.