Customer Reviews

Jesus after the Gospels: The Christ of the Second Century

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This is a difficult book to evaluate. Its author is obviously a bright scholar, and the book itself comes from an invited memorial lecture at the Seabury-Western Theological Seminary in 1989. There is lots of good material here about 2nd Century Christian beliefs, and quotations from many sources that can be hard to track down.

BUT, it is difficult to know what the author is up to. There is no apparent structure nor theme. He seems to jump from one topic to another with no segue. Each pericope is perfectly good by itself, but there is no cumulative effect. Even more problematic, the documentation is poor and the bibliography is incomplete.

This book may have made a very good lecture, but it doesn't survive as a meaningful book. Nonetheless the material herein is very valuable and the book may be of interest to scholars of early Christianity who are interested in the works of Marcion, Valentinus, Ignatius, Irenaeus, etc.