Is This Not The Carpenter?: The Question of the Historicity of the Figure of Jesus (Copenhagen International Seminar) 1st Edition

by Thomas L. Thompson (Editor), Thomas S. Verenna (Editor)

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ISBN-13: 978-1844657292

ISBN-10: 1844657299

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The historicity of Jesus is now widely accepted and hardly questioned by most scholars. But this assumption disarms biblical texts of much of their power by privileging an historical interpretation which effectively sweeps aside much theological speculation and allusion. Furthermore, the assumption of historicity gathers further assumptions to it, shaping the interpretation of texts, both denying and adding subtext. Scholars are now faced with an endless array of works on the historical Jesus and few question what has been lost through this wide-spread assumption of historicity. Is This Not the Carpenter? presents a very valuable corrective: a literary rereading of the New Testament.

Editorial Reviews

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"An open discussion giving a fresh examination of historicity issues surrounding Jesus without necessarily relying upon the assumption of a historical Jesus." - Kevin Brown, Diglotting

"Will this volume have an impact on the debate or scholarship in general? It should! ... If you are interested in the historical Jesus debate, this book will be of significant interest." - Aaron Adair, Fleeing Nergal, Seeking Stars

"For those who are interested in challenging the consensus of current historical Jesus studies, it will be interesting to read." -- Ernest van Eck, University of Pretoria, South Africa

About the Author

Thomas L. Thompson is Professor emeritus, University of Copenhagen.

Thomas S. Verenna is an independent researcher and student at Rutgers University.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Routledge; 1st edition (August 21, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 290 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1844657299
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1844657292
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,828,928 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4,934 in Ancient History (Books)
- #5,398 in New Testament Criticism & Interpretation
- #6,175 in Christology (Books)

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Paul Cook

Excellent Collection of Scholarly Essays Regarding the Existence or Non-Existence of the Historical Jesus

Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2017

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Essays regarding the historicity (actual existence) of Jesus Christ. Most essays suggest Jesus was an historical invention by the Mark community (sometime perhaps as late as 90 C.E.) to bolster the by-then spreading influence of Paul's writings. Two seem to support the existence of an actual historical figure who became the model for Jesus. Of course such books as this are controversial, but if read in the spirit of academic exploration, all of these essays become of interest because there are those of us who want to know as much as can be known about how the Church evolved and where their ideas came from. It seems evident from this and other books in a similar vein (see David Fitzgerald's books) that it's quite likely that Jesus Christ (the human being) was a fiction or something of an urban legend and that the Christ of Paul was an already ascendant celestial being who never came to earth but was "crucified" by beings of a higher realm in order to sit at the right hand of God. (It's all in Paul; I'm just paraphrasing here). This is an important work by serious scholars of early Christianity and I found it quite remarkable and informative.

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Jim G

A Thomas L Thompson viewpoint

Reviewed in the United States on November 5, 2020

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Aaron Adair

The Way the Discussion Must Move Forward

Reviewed in the United States on September 16, 2013

This volume by Thompson and Verenna should help actually put the discussion of not simply the study of the historical Jesus but the very question of the historicity of Jesus into the scholarly form that it needs. Much of the materials the Internet provides to this question is simply not worth the time of day, and it is even worse with misinformation that has to be unlearned. Not so here with its authors acting professionally and scholastically.

Some of the chapters provide background to the scholarship, such as 19th century debates and how the ways things were argued had much to thank from its cultural background. The last chapter provides a research paradigm to discuss the evolution of Christianity whether or not Jesus existed or did any of the things he was alleged to have done. In between we find some of the discussions about the nature of the evidence concerning the figure of Jesus: the letters of Paul and their relation to a historical figure, the non-Christian witnesses to Jesus, and literary nature of the Gospels. While not all of the arguments will be convincing, the chapters showcase some of the best arguments one is likely to see from either side.

Of course, because of the complexity of the evidence, any one of the discussions in a given chapter could be its own book. But that is why this volume needs to be the start of the discussion. Not only on points of evidence but also of method. The approach to the letters of Paul, for example, can produce very different results concerning a historical Jesus figure. Weighing which approach is the better (rather than just getting the desired result) is going to be a major dialogue, but it does well to start it here.

I provide a fuller review here: [...]

Since this volume is now in paperback it is affordable to a large audience. Some chapters may require more background in biblical studies to understand and appreciate, but it seems to me that it is accessible to those that are interested in a subject that almost certainly will remain of interest to scholars and laypeople alike: who was Jesus, if he was at all?

11 people found this helpful

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Scaevola

An Important Milestone in this Debate

Reviewed in the United States on July 19, 2012

The question of whether or not any historical figure lies behind the early Christian literary
portrayals of Jesus of Nazareth has occupied a strange place in the history of New Testament scholarship.
On the one hand, those who argued that Jesus is a fictional creation of the evangelists were long
ostracized from both the academy and the church (two entities with multiple overlapping constituencies).
On the other hand, the question at the root of mythicist project is the same that underlies much of
mainstream New Testament scholarship, namely how much early Christian theological concerns have
influenced the content of the canonical Gospels.

This collection represents the best discussion of this issue now available. Both established and up
and coming scholars from around the world address the mythicist question from a variety of different
perspectives and methodologies. Most importantly, the individual contributions are not uniform in their
conclusions concerning the historicity of Jesus. Some scholars argue for the existence of Jesus of
Nazareth (e.g., Grabbe, Müller), others against (e.g., Noll, Price), and still others opt not to decide (e.g.,
Thompson, Verenna). Two important features to this collection are the group of essays focusing on the
role of the Pauline corpus in the debate over the historicity of Jesus and the critical interaction in several
of the essays with Richard Bauckham's recent large monograph arguing for an eyewitness tradition
behind the canonical Gospels.

Space prohibits a detailed discussion of each essay, and thus a few remarks on some of the more
particularly interesting and provocative contributions will have to suffice. Roland Boer's retrieval of the
role of history, religion and the state in Germany in the historical Jesus debate in 19th Century Germany
("The German Pestilence: Re-assessing Feuerbach, Strauss and Bauer") makes clear the long shadows
cast by the fierce intellectual conflicts surrounding the Tübingen School. It should be read in tandem with
Michael Legaspi's excellent study of the rise of historical critical scholarship in the Old Testament at
Göttingen in the late 18th Century (The Death of Scripture and the Rise of Biblical Studies [Oxford/New
York: Oxford University Press, 2010) for the proper historical causes of the present shape of critical
biblical studies. Thomas Verenna's analysis of whether Paul need have known anything about a historical
Jesus in order to construct his theology is an outstanding discussion of Pauline texts, relevant Greco-
Roman parallels, and careful historical methodology. Joshua Sabih, a Qur'anic scholar, offers a
fascinating discussion of the material about Jesus in the Qur'an, and makes a well-argued for this material
to be independent of anything in the Christian tradition. Sabih's essay should spur biblical exegetes to do
more in looking at Qur'anic texts alongside the Bible, part of the larger comparative project called for by
Jonathan Z. Smith some four years ago ("Religion and Bible," JBL 128 [2009] 5-27). The final essay in
the volume, that of Kurt Noll ("Investigating Earliest Christianity without Jesus") is a fascinating exercise
in imagining how Christianity could have succeeded without there being a Jesus. Noll draws upon
Darwinian evolutionary thought, as filtered through Richard Dawkins' notion of memes to construct an
alternative history of the rise of Christianity, and regardless of where one stands on the issue of Jesus'
historicity, Noll's reconstruction will have to be reckoned with.

This well-edited and attractive volume marks an important milestone in the debate concerning
mythicism in New Testament scholarship, and it is to be hoped that others like it will follow.

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Mithra

Jesus the carpenter, but was he?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 22, 2013

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There seems to have been an explosion of interest in the myth hypothesis of Christian origins of late, of which this is the latest work I have read on the subject. The first thing to be said about this academically oriented collection of papers is that to appreciate many of them some knowledge of the subject matter is essential, without this the impact of the contributors', for the most part academics with the relevant qualifications, arguments cannot be fully appreciated, or, dare I suggest?, understood.

This is a book for people with a serious interest in the arguments for the myth hypothesis, The contributors provide the all important scholarly references which point readers in the direction of additional source material, or further clarify points the writers are making, or the reasons why. I found it of value that these reference appear at the bottom of the pages rather than be grouped at the read or the papers or the book. A general index would have been of value, although there is an index of references and one of authors.

Essentially, a book intended, I suspect, for hostile academics and one to be read thoughtfully in order to appreciate the impact of its arguments.

3 people found this helpful

Peter Marchant

Thompson and Verrena are good as is the chapter by Robert Price

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 23, 2015

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Some of the contributions are mediocre and don't really belong. The introduction and articles by the editors, Thompson and Verrena are good as is the chapter by Robert Price. Best of all is the final chapter 'Investigating early Christianity without Jesus' by K L Noll, and I am glad I bought the book on the strength of this alone.

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