Customer Reviews

Shadow of the Galilean

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
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In this amazing and enjoyable book, Gerd Theissen (pronounced "Tyson") allows us to experience Jesus the Galilean in a way which demonstrates the manner in which the Christian Testament came to exist. To attempt to understand Jesus is to interpret Jesus, and through the eyes of Theissen's characters we see a theoretical construct at work which is not only insightful, but also faithful to the methods of modern biblical criticism and Christian theology as a whole. I highly recommend this book for those who would like insights into the development of the Christian canon of scripture and for those who wish to better understand the Jewishness of Jesus.

Pastors, lay leaders and religious educators of all types will gain invaluable information from this work. It is both scholarly and easy-to-read and it has been enjoyed and cited by educators and theologians alike.

Wow! This is a super work! Theissen takes the reader to the historical setting and depicts various aspects through the eyes of a fictional character. The main character, who is also a Galilean Jew, makes observations of political and social agendas as he unintentionally becomes submerged in the subjection of these movements. There are plenty of notes throughout the book that gives reference to the historical data that is woven in this work of art. This is a creative reconstruction of emotion and desire from a variety of perspectives in the ancient setting.

In this beautiful, interesting and easy to read narrative, imaginary characters are introduced from around the time of Jesus. In this "story" Theissen creatively allows the parties, issues, concerns, and major characters of Historical Jesus research to arrive within the storyline itself. In so doing he makes them believeable and sympathetic. This is an utterly unique way of beginning the educational journey through Jesus' history and all of the theories and personalities present. I was hooked from the first page. If you are interested in historical Jesus research I recommend this book as an interesting, unusual, and brilliant way to begin the journey.

Gerd presents an excellent fictional representation of what it is to be a Jew during the time of Y'shua. I really don't want to give anything away, but this is a worthy fictional, yet fact-filled, read. Immerse yourself in the land of biblical Israel and see the issues at hand during Y'shua's ministry, to more fully understand the social-economic implications of His revolutionary messages. Be sure to read the after notes as well, so you can see the intensive amount of research involved in this process.

It is told from a very interesting point of view. A person who is seeking Jesus, always one step behind, gets to see the results of Jesus' good deeds along the way. Some of them didn't quite come out as one would expect. Often, chaos fell upon the villages, resulting from the interference of Jesus. It's a different view point of Jesus and his work along the way.

Over the past 19 centuries, there have been many attempts to retell the story of Jesus of Nazareth in ways popular and edifying to the people of the times. Nevertheless, the Jesus story that has hung on the best posits a Resurrected Savior, an anointed Son of God sitting in judgment at the right hand of the Father.

In this story, the body of Jesus arose from the dead after a relatively short preaching ministry in Judea and Galilee. Jesus was taken up bodily into heaven where he remains available to forgive sins for all who repent in his name. This is Jesus the Christ, and his story is familiar to billions; so familiar that it takes a bit of effort to realize that this is just one of many different stories and approaches. The other, lesser know views include early Jewish Ebonite worship, Gnostic mystic interpretations, Donatists, Marcionites, Arians, Monophysitites, Nestorians, etc. Even Mohammad and the Quran offer a Jesus story. (And let's not forget the hippie Jesus of the 60's and 70's, as in Godspell!)

Despite all of these challenges, the orthodox Christian view of Jesus asserted at Chalcedon and Nicea has pretty much held sway. The dawn of scientific empiricism and a philosophic enlightenment in the 16th Century inspired the educated class to posit another kind of Jesus story, one that wouldn't require a string of extra-scientific interventions for credulity. However, the deist authors of the 17th and 18th centuries, including most famously Thomas Jefferson with his Jefferson Bible, were no more able to gain widespread public support for a new Jesus than the heretics of antiquity were.

And yet, the critical thinkers and rationalists did not give up. In the 1800s, a series of scholars insisted that the life and times of Jesus should be open to the same biographical scrutiny as any other historical figure from antiquity. Albert Schweitzer wrote perhaps the most famous Jesus story from the academic perspective of the late 19th century. His works gained much acclaim, but hardly impacted the average Christian priest or preacher asserting the divine life of Christ. Into the 20th century, the crowds in the pews took little notice.

In the 1950s and then the late 1980s, new crops of scholars mined the Gospels and otherwise studied the politics, sociology, archeology and economics of first century Judaism in Galilee and Jerusalem, and brought forth a bumper crop of written works re-telling the Jesus story in interesting and often compelling ways. Again, though, the power and popularity of the orthodox Jesus story has not been seriously challenged, and it remains a strong social and political current in modern America.

Perhaps this is because most of the new academic interpretations of Jesus (including the edgy Jesus Seminar / Crossan stuff) are by necessity devoid of emotional consideration, whereas the Gospels and the religious groups that preach the ancient stories offer a Jesus of passion. The one exception can perhaps be attributed to Gerd Theissen, in The Shadow of the Galilean.

I don't need to spell out what this book is about, as previous reviewers have done a good job with that. I will note that many of these reviewers seemed to have emotional responses to Theissen's work, using words such as amazing, super, beautiful, wonderful and engaging to describe it. I doubt that Shadow of the Galilean will be preached from the pulpits any time soon, but it does represent the first real success on the part of the historical Jesus movement to put forth an emotionally compelling Jesus story, one that might serve as the basis for a new-view Jesus somewhere down the line.

I have read works by about 6 or 7 different historical Jesus scholars (I'm now working on Dale Allison), and a handful of them seem willing to admit or at least imply some emotional response on their part to Jesus, based on their research. Most notable would be Geza Vermes and E.P. Sanders. Both make it clear that they are not having a theological or "spiritual" response; these are died-in-the-wool academians, after all.

The authors I read are mostly 'apocalypticists', scholars (including Theissen) who see Jesus as a failed idealist, another self-appointed prophet naively putting his complete trust in God to bring forth justice for the poor and downtrodden (not in heaven, but right there in Judea and Galilee), and wound up trodden upon and sealed in a grave himself. These scholars identify a human Jesus pursing an all-too-human delusion and necessarily failing.

But in that failure came an echo that is still heard 2000 years later, an echo of noble hope that we are something more than Tennyson 's "magnetic mockeries", machines programmed through Darwinian / "Dawkins-ian" chance to fight viciously and selfishly against our environment and amidst one another for maximum allocation of survival resources and reproductive opportunity.

Gerd Theissen has given us a Jesus without the Christ, but not a Jesus without fire and passion. For those open-minded enough for such an encounter, you may well come a step closer to truly understanding how and why the ancient, fantastic theological claims about Jesus were inspired. And why Jesus will continue to be remembered and discussed long into the future.

I thoroughly enjoyed Shadow of the Galilean. This book represented an engaging story that was able to provide a great deal of historical and cultural information without any of the dryness that plagues so many treatments of the historical Christ. One of my favorite features of the book was the author's ongoing dialogue with his imaginary friend and colleague "Dr. Kratzinger." While a fictional person, this feature provided an excellent way to stop and assess the information given in each chapter from a scholarly and critical perspective.

I also thoroughly enjoyed the way this book emphasized the complex historical canvas that Jesus was thrust upon. Whenever I hear the stories of Jesus, I often find myself slipping into thinking that the Jesus movement was a relatively isolated incident. This book reminded me that Jesus' ministry occurred in a time of great political and religious unrest. I had never before thought about what effect Jesus' teachings might have on a populace who already had been exposed to other "messiahs," as well as a variety of uprisings and insurrections against Roman authority.

Several things from the book especially jumped out at me. For instance, the idea that many of Jesus' teachings, such as leaving your family to follow him, would be considered repulsive to many. The fact that the character Andreas found many qualities about Jesus to be unattractive was very thought provoking. Another insight was that the Centurion whom Jesus declared had great faith may have been a homosexual, which would have disgusted many Jewish religious leaders. Andreas' classification of Jesus as a philosopher, poet, and prophet was also interesting, because it made me think about Jesus' character in a way that I had not done so before. I usually focus on the fact that Jesus was the son of God, and not any of his other roles that he played in his humanity.

However, despite these good qualities, the book had a few shortcomings. The writing style was not very well done, and at times overly relied on exposition. The characters other than Andreas were ultimately forgettable, and at times it was hard to connect with even the main character. While this book was not intended to tell a strong plot-driven story, it would have been nice to have a more compelling narrative. There were also inconsistencies in the use of language. For instance, Pilate tells Andreas that he would examine his actions "under a microscope." This phrase hardly seems fitting. Another instance was when Andreas views the stories of healings and demon exorcisms by Jesus as "superstitious and primitive." The author is clearly projecting his modern scientific understanding of miracles into Andreas' character. These types of occurrences were common at the time of Christ, so it is doubtful that Andreas would have viewed these miracles as either primitive or superstitious.

Overall, this was a great book to read. Despite the shortcomings I highlighted above, I learned a great deal from reading this book. I feel much more confident about my own understanding of the historical backdrop of Jesus, as well as a renewed sense of my ability to explain the person of Jesus to others. As a result of reading this book, I have a better appreciation for the humanity of Jesus, and a clearer sense that he was a man who lived, walked, and breathed in a world that was very real.

As several other reviewers have written, this book is a helpful tool for entering into the background of the gospels. Don't expect it to be a devotional Christian book because it isn't. The narrative is quite hollow, and reads like a checklist of groups that the author felt compelled to write about. But then the author is a theology and history professor, not a novelist. Still, alongside a few more 'serious' scholarly books such as Drane's 'Introduction to the New Testament' or Marshall's 'New Testament Theology' it can help to bring some of the scholarly stuff to life.

A wonderful book reflecting on what the 1st century world could have been like based on primary sources. This book should be read with a critical eye, understanding it as a model, not fact. Is this really what we are being shown in the New Testment?

this book in not my favorite gene. I usually do not get into history fiction and I am reading this for college class. The book is focus on Andreas who is looking to see if Jesus was a Security risk and then report to Pilate.The book starts well then fuzz off. the chapters that lead up to him spying for Pilate were good. Some of part of the book were interesting like the part were he meets the Zealots. Other parts were felt tedious. The book fails to build action that presented some chapters. This book is more of way to get a more in depth view of what the area and people were like in Jesus time.