Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Volume 2) [Paperback]

N. T. Wright (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1997 | Series: Christian Origins and the Question of God (Book 2)

N.T. Wright brilliantly surveys the field of Jesus scholarship in the twentieth-century, presenting Jesus firmly within the political and social setting of the first-century--as a Jewish apocalyptic prophet.

Product Details

• Paperback: 741 pages
• Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Pub (August 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0800626826
• ISBN-13: 978-0800626822
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (42 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #42,840 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

N.T. Wright is Bishop of Durham and was formerly Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey and dean of Lichfield Cathedral. He taught New Testament studies for twenty years at Cambridge, McGill and Oxford Universities. Wright's full-scale works The New Testament and the People of God, Jesus and the Victory of God, and The Resurrection of the Son of God are part of a projected six-volume series entitled Christian Origins and the Question of God. Among his many other published works are The Original Jesus, What Saint Paul Really Said and The Climax of the Covenant. He is also coauthor with Marcus Borg of The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions and the volume on Colossians and Philemon in The Tyndale New Testament Commentary series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

140 of 150 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good British Common Sense!!, December 3, 2000

By 

peculiar "andrew_eccentric" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Volume 2) (Paperback)

Is it coincidence that it falls to a British scholar, Tom Wright, to be, arguably, the major stumbling block in the way of an ever-active Jesus Seminar with its witty, aphorism-producing Jesus? British scholarship has always been more conservative than that produced in the States and this is shown here in Wright's argument for a Jesus who sees himself as a representative both of God and of Israel, one who is seen as releasing Israel from exile and the power of her enemies (spiritual and temporal) and "reconstructing Israel around himself".

Wright's thesis, for all his conservatism, is both bold and distinctive. He holds to an "eschatological" Jesus, one who has a future aspect to his theology and also one who, in Crossan-like ways, has compassion for the poor and the outcast of Palestinian society in his acts of healing and eating. Wright though, in distinction from Crossan and the Jesus Seminar, is, it seems, looking to give an historical account of the historical Jesus which can dovetail nicely with a more traditional reading of the Synoptic Gospels and the New Testament more generally. In this book you will not find a plethora of references to either the Gospel of Thomas or to the Q Gospel. Instead, you will find historical argument, replete with numerous biblical and extra-biblical Jewish quotations and texts, which aims to build up a picture of a Jewish prophet and more than a prophet. This does not, in my opinion, spill over into worship or sycophancy but the argument is carefully pitched so as not to upturn too many applecarts. One might almost call it "historical evangelism" but I hope that by using that term readers wil not think that this book is either crassly evangelistic or proselytizing; it is neither. But Jesus is clearly here a hero of sorts and someone who, for the writer, answers questions of deep and meaningful significance which can only be understood by present readers within the matrix of Christianity (though Wright goes out of his way to show Jesus off as a Jew in every sense of the word).

I really liked this book and valued its argument. I think Wright procedes along the correct line of interpretation to view Jesus as eschatological(in a future sense, though not simplistically so) and I think he argues correctly for a Jesus who saw himself connected both to the Jewish God and to Israel. I also think that Jesus fits into the paradigm of "leadership prophet" and I think that he had a distintive "prophetic consciousness". So I think that on a number of things Wright is right. But the reason I would recommend this book is because it offers a coherent and cogent opposition to a nascent belief in the Jesus of the Jesus Seminar. That Jesus has many aspects which I would disagree with, and disagree with on historical grounds. This book critiques and causes damage to the arguments of the Jesus Seminar ON HISTORICAL GROUNDS and if that is where the battle takes place then Wright's book should be welcomed and read by all who have an interest.

51 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wright paints a brilliant picture of the Synoptic Jesus, September 11, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Volume 2) (Hardcover)

N.T. Wright, in this exhaustively documented work, sets the standard for Historical Jesus research. By virtue of his explicit agenda to set forth a portrait of Jesus based on his understanding of a parsimonious hypothesis which situates Jesus between 1st century Judaism and the early church, Wright brilliantly examines every aspect of his model for doing history-praxis,story symbol,questions and beliefs- which makes his Jesus historically credible. The portrait which emerges is a Jesus who is an eschatological prophet/messiah whose mission is to proclaim, implement and embody YHWH's Kingdom program, climaxing in the establishment of a new covenant for the renewed Israel he is forming. What is so impressive about this study is the detailed arguments advanced which make his portrait of Jesus plausible in terms of his fit within his socicultural context and, at the same time, shows how Jesus' work was the root of, yet different from the early church's interpretation of him. Finally, one outstanding,yet underemphasized, aspect of this book is Wright's attempt to ground Christology in the life of Jesus, the 1st century Jew. His novel thesis, that Jesus' prophetic/messianic vocation led him to attempt certain tasks that were ascribed to YHWH in the OT, sets the stage for further fruitful research in both biblical studies and theology, at a time when the Church needs to develop Christologies grounded in the "Jewishness" of Jesus. These aspects of this work, along with a scholarly and theologically insightful survey of previous Historical Jesus research, makes this the premier work of this kind available today. It is a must read for any serious student of Jesus-whether believer, non-believer or agnostic!

189 of 216 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Is There a Historian in the House? Right Here., July 6, 2001

By 

David Marshall - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jesus and the Victory of God (Christian Origins and the Question of God, Volume 2) (Paperback)

When I read A. N. Wilson on Jesus, I closed the book and thought, "That's a pretty good book, about Wilson." When I read Crossan, I thought, "Here is the man who should have written the Book of Mormon." Wright first suggested to me the hope that historical criticism might actually have something of value to say about Jesus.

Wright's approach has many virtues. He is intimately familiar with an incredible amount of scholarly literature on the subject, and refers to it in a way that is always thoughtful. He seldom arbitrarily discards evidence merely because it doesn't fit his theory, as many do. His favorite critical device is what he calls the principle of "double similarity, double disimilarity." He shows that, while most of the synoptic material makes sense both within the Jewish community, and as the template for the new Christian religion, it also differs from both traditions in ways that strongly suggest the marks of individuality, that neither ordinary Jews nor Christians would have invented for Jesus.

This is a helpful approach, in my opinion, though not so unique as Wright seems to think. Readers with literary or psychological sensitivity have been making similiar, less systematic but sometimes even more insightful, observations for a long time. See, for example, G. K. Chesterton (Everlasting Man), Philip Yancey (The Jesus I Never Knew), M. Scott Peck, Per Beskow (Strange Tales About Jesus) or C. S. Lewis (Fernseeds and Elephants -- an essay Wright scoffs at, but that grows in my estimation the more I read of modern Biblical criticism). I think any reader can discern the unique style of Jesus in the Gospels. To a certain extent, Wright is just approaching the unique character of Jesus' sayings in a more formal, and less intuitive, manner.

As a scholar who studies the (often amazing) ways in which Christianity fulfills Asian cultures, I especially appreciated Wright's deep insights into the relationship between the Jewish tradition and the life of Christ. Wright argues that these elements were not retroactively inserted in the narrative, but most probably derive directly from Jesus. I don't recall that Wright places much emphasis on it, but in a sense, much of the argument here could be summarized by Jesus' statement: "Don't think I have come to do away with the Law and the Prophets . . . I have come to fulfill them." I believe that applies to more than Jewish culture, but that is another story.

The greatest drawback of this book is that Wright takes himself and his colleagues too seriously, in my opinion. When Wright says, "All agree that Jesus began his public work in the context of John's baptism," he means, "all we scholars." The fact that billions of other readers usually come to the same conclusion, is, to Wright, irrelevent. The same, when he tells us, "It is apparent that the authors of the synoptic gospels intended to write about Jesus, not just their own churches and theologies," (really!) that "one of the chief gains" of the last 20 years of scholarship has been to link the crucifixion of Jesus to his cleansing of the temple, (my grandma could have told them that) and that when Jesus cursed the fig tree, he was acting out a parable against the Jewish religious rulers. Biblical scholars resemble the emperor's fashion experts, who, after decades of involved debate, and several fads in nudity, make the astonishing discovery that the emperor has no clothes. They pat themselves on their backs and complement one another for their brilliance, as the little boy, who first made the observation decades before, rocks in his chair in a retirement home nearby.

Chesterton said, one of the ways to get home is to stay there. Wright allows that Biblical criticism is taking a more circuitous route, (he himself uses the metaphor of the Prodigal Son), and he almost makes me think the view along the way might be worth it. But if he choses to lecture about the layout of the family farm when he returns, he ought to acknowledge that some of his hearers have been on that ground for a while already. Wright seems less kind to his conservative Christian "elder brethren" than to younger (separated) brethren still sowing wild oats in the far country of historical speculation. This attitude troubles me.

After hundreds of pages of argument, Wright rather abruptly asserts that "Jesus did not know he was God," at least not as one knows one "ate an orange an hour ago." He thinks such self-knowledge would be unbecomingly "supernatural." (Though he doesn't quibble with multiplied loaves or the resurrection.) At this point one gets the feeling that Wright's conclusion (or guess) is based less on historical evidence (which, as another reader points out below, ought to include John, Paul, and other Jewish Christians), but on a desire to keep a souvenir from the far country -- perhaps to show other scholars. Or maybe he just doesn't want to sound too conventional -- publish novelties ("discoveries") or off with your academic head. In any case, one wonders if his own dogmatically expressed opinion about Jesus' sub-divine mode of consciousness itself has a supernatural origin. He offers no other sources, in this case.

There seem to be two ways to "see" Jesus. One is the scholar's approach, which is that of blind men touching an elephant -- each connecting with that which communicates, with special vividness, a focused reality. The other method is that of the unwashed masses, who see the whole, though dimly at times, as through a fog. To see Christ as he is, yet without reductionism, has not proven an easy task for anyone. I do not know if it is the holiest, wisest, humblest, or just the most desperate, who come closest. Wright shows that, if a blind man touches the elephant in enough places, and takes scholarly theories for the narrow simplifications that they tend to be, he may begin a fairly recognizable and systematic mapping of the shape before us, which, in the end, may help see the elephant once again. It is a brilliant and insightful work. And, I am beginning to think, one very patient elephant, to put up with modern criticism, and not step on anyone.

Pardon the long review. The book is longer. Be warned....