O livro começa com "O Evangelho de Jesus", um estudo
cuidadoso em que John Dominic Crossan determina quais seriam as palavras e os atos
autênticos de Jesus. O Jesus que surge nesta descrição é um inteligente e
corajoso camponês judeu do Mediterrâneo, um revolucionário radical que
possuía uma visão extasiante, calcada no igualitarismo econômico, político e
religioso, além de um programa social para implantá-la. A leitura deste livro
torna-se mais proveitosa quando seguida pela de outro importante livro
de Crossan, publicado originalmente em 1998: O nascimento do
cristianismo: O que aconteceu nos anos que se seguiram à execução de
Jesus, Traduzido do inglês por Barbara Theoto
Lambert. São Paulo: Paulinas, 2004, 701 p.
De Crossan deve ser
lido também Jesus. Uma Biografia
Revolucionária. Traduzido do inglês por Júlio Castañon
Guimarães.
Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1995, 220 p.
Para Richard A. Horsley, Jesus, considerado no seu contexto, foi um profeta que liderou um grupo que
lutava por uma mudança econômica e social de Israel, opondo-se à política do Império Romano e de seus associados na Palestina. Neste sentido, ele continuou uma tradição
de libertação que se espelha nas figuras de Moisés e Elias.
Nas primeiras e últimas páginas deste livro o autor traça inquietante paralelo entre a situação do imperialismo romano da época e a atual política norte-americana para o Oriente Médio.
Para que espécie de problema a pregação de Jesus sobre a iminente chegada do Reino de Deus era uma solução? A palavra "reino" descreve uma instituição sócio-política:
o que "reino de Deus" ou "reino dos céus" significava para a audiência de Jesus na Palestina do século I? Perguntas como essas representam o desafio que
este conhecido autor quer responder neste
livro, usando, como ferramenta, os conceitos das ciências sociais.
MEIER, J. P. Um
Judeu Marginal: Repensando o Jesus Histórico I-III. Traduzido do inglês
por Laura Rumchinsky. Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1993-2004. Vol. I: 483 p.; vol II,
livro I: 311 p.; vol. II, livro II: 348 p.; vol. II, livro III: 711 p.; vol.
III, livro I: 304 p.; vol. III, livro II: 440 p.
Esta obra representa a primeira tentativa de tratamento
rigorosamente científico, em ampla escala, do "Jesus histórico", por
parte de um católico americano estudioso da Bíblia. Por "Jesus
histórico" John P. Meier, professor de Novo Testamento na Catholic University
of America, em Washington, D.C., entende o Jesus que podemos resgatar
ou reconstruir, mesmo fragmentariamente, usando os instrumentos da moderna
pesquisa histórica. Eis algumas das questões que Meier enfrenta: Jesus foi
concebido sem pecado? Teve irmãos e irmãs? Era casado ou solteiro? Era
iletrado? Sabia hebraico e grego, tanto quanto aramaico? O resultado desta ampla
pesquisa é um relato sóbrio e bem fundamentado da vida de Jesus. Sem nos
esquecermos de que esta é também uma contribuição importante para o diálogo
ecumênico.
THEISSEN, G.; MERZ, A. O Jesus Histórico.
Traduzido do
alemão por Milton Camargo Mota e Paulo Nogueira. São Paulo: Loyola, 2002, 656
p.
Um livro com 16 capítulos e que procura dar um panorama
da pesquisa atual sobre o Jesus Histórico. O livro foi escrito para ser
um manual sobre o assunto. Neste sentido, o estudioso e/ou professor da
área pode se beneficiar da ampla perspectiva que a obra de Gerd Theissen
e Annette Merz oferece, cobrindo
vários ângulos da discussão em curso.
Marcus Borg attempts to understand how popular images of Jesus
connect Christians to their savior and isolate them from him. Borg writes about
his own evolving ideas of who Jesus was, considers the scholarly and popular
religious evolution of Jesus' public image, and investigates with special care
the effects of Historical Jesus research on contemporary images of Jesus. His
arguments reveal a Jesus who speaks not of a promised hereafter but who instead
develops a powerful, radical critique of his own culture. Borg recovers a Jesus
whose message was not about himself ("I am the way and the light") and
the end of the world but about the renewal of the world through faith in our
common humanity. One can also read Marcus Borg & N. T. Wright, The
Meaning of Jesus. Two Visions, Harper, 2000, 304 pp., where in
alternating chapters, the (mostly) liberal Borg and the (mostly) conservative
Wright consider the major questions of the historical-Jesus debate that has
dominated biblical studies in the 1990s.
Bruce Chilton is aware of the gulf that lies between an
academic understanding of who Jesus is and the popular — but sometimes
historically improbable — conception of what he stood for. In this book,
Chilton speaks directly of Jesus. Modern theorists on Jesus are appealed
to only insofar as they clarify Jesus’ own vision of the
Kingdom of God. After exploring the scholarly state of the question,
Chilton maps out key background material of Jesus’ understanding of the
Kingdom, drawing on the Psalms and Jesus’ appropriation of this
tradition. Then, looking at the Gospels themselves, Chilton hammers out
Jesus’ theology of the kingdom by examining both Jesus’ teaching and
his actions, which also declare God’s kingdom. Finally, Chilton examines
the question of the preaching of Jesus’ Kingdom message in primitive
Christianity.
Virtually all the current debates about the historical Jesus have
their roots in questions that have been pursued by biblical historians over the
past two centuries. This anthology brings together seminal essays by those
scholars who have been most influential in the rise and development of Jesus
studies, enabling the reader to compare their differing points of view. With
introductory notes on each writer and helpful summaries of the works from which
to extracts are taken, this unique book is a compendium of the thinking on which
modern study in the field is based. It puts recent research in perspective and
is essential reading for all serious students of the Gospels and the historical
Jesus.
James D. G. Dunn claims that the quest has been largely unsuccessful because it started from the wrong place, began with the wrong assumptions, and viewed the evidence from the wrong perspective. Dunn's study offers three criticisms of questers' methods. First, Dunn contends that scholars have failed to see how the disciples' pre-Easter faith shaped the Gospel traditions. Second, he claims that a focus on literary transmission has led scholars to ignore the fact that the Gospel traditions arose in an oral culture, which shaped the way the stories of Jesus were told and passed on. Third, Dunn challenges scholars' preoccupation with finding what is distinctive about Jesus and rejecting portions of the tradition portraying Jesus as characteristically Jewish. Dunn concludes by rethinking accepted views of Synoptic relationships in light of the oral nature of the Jesus tradition.
Read the review by Petr Pokorny,
Charles University, Protestant Theological Faculty, Prague, Czech Republic.
James Dunn is regarded worldwide as one of today’s foremost biblical scholars. Having written groundbreaking studies of the New Testament and a standard work on Paul’s theology, Dunn here turns his pen to the rise of Christianity itself.
Jesus Remembered is the first installment in what will be a monumental three-volume history of the first 120 years of the faith. Focusing on Jesus, this first volume has several distinct features. It garners the lessons to be learned from the “quest for the historical Jesus” and meets the hermeneutical challenges to a historical and theological assessment of the Jesus tradition. It provides a fresh perspective both on the impact made by Jesus and on the traditions about Jesus as oral tradition — hence the title “Jesus Remembered.” And it offers a fresh analysis of the details of that tradition, emphasizing its characteristic (rather than dissimilar) features. Noteworthy too are Dunn’s treatments of the source question (particularly Q and the noncanonical Gospels) and of Jesus the Jew in his Galilean context.
Read the review by Robert
Mciver, Avondale College, Friedensau, Germany,
and by John
Painter, Charles Sturt University, Canberra, Australia.
The past two or three decades have witnessed significant activity in research on the Jesus of the Gospels and history. In fact, there has been such a plethora of publication on such a wide variety of facets of this issue that it is difficult to keep pace with the rate of publication. In this volume, Dunn and McKnight have collected and provided introductions to a wide cross-section of essays on the topic, ranging from classic essays by the likes of Bultmann, Cadbury, and Schweitzer to the most recent investigations of Horsley, Levine, and Wright. This volume will be a very useful book for courses and seminars on Jesus or the historical Jesus, because it draws together in one place a wide variety of perspectives and approaches to the issues. Authors represented include: P. S. Alexander, D. C. Allison, P. W. Barnett, M. J. Borg, R. Bultmann, H. J. Cadbury, P. M. Casey, G. B. Caird, B. Chilton, C. E. B. Cranfield, J. D. G. Dunn, R. A. Horsley, J. Jeremias, M. Kähler, W. G. Kümmel, E. E. Lemcio, A.-J. Levine, G. Luedemann, J. P. Meier, B. F. Meyer, R. Morgan, J. A. T. Robinson, E. P. Sanders, A. Schweitzer, K. R. Snodgrass, G. N. Stanton, P. Stuhlmacher, G. Theissen, N. T. Wright.
Paula Fredriksen begins this inquiry into the historic Jesus with a fact that may be the only undisputed thing we know about him: his crucifixion. Rome reserved this means of execution particularly for political insurrectionists; and the Roman charge posted at the head of the cross indicted Jesus for claiming to be King of the Jews. To reconstruct the Jesus who provoked this punishment, Fredriksen takes us into the religious worlds, Jewish and pagan, of Mediterranean antiquity, through the labyrinth of Galilean and Judean politics, and on into the ancient narratives of Paul's letters, the gospels, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Josephus' histories. The result is a profound contribution both to our understanding of the social and religious contexts within which Jesus of Nazareth moved, and to our appreciation of the mission and message that ended in the proclamation of Jesus as Messiah. Paula Fredriksen is Professor of Scripture at Boston University.
David B. Gowler's book introduces, as succinctly as possible, the current scholarly thinking about Jesus of Nazareth. This book summarizes, analyzes, and critiques current influential portraits of Jesus. It answers questions such as: What type of Jew was Jesus? How much of a role, if any, did apocalyptic/eschatological elements play in the teaching of Jesus? How can we best integrate Jesus’ words and deeds to reconstruct a more complete portrait? It concludes that any portrait of the historical Jesus must come to terms with Jesus as both an apocalyptic prophet and a prophet of social and economic justice for an oppressed people. It seeks to go beyond today’s “domesticated Jesus” and to rediscover the Jesus of Nazareth who was a prophet of an oppressed people, who lived his life as a poor peasant artisan suffering under Roman and Herodian oppression in first-century Galilee, and who proclaimed and inaugurated the kingdom of God.
Review by Mary J. Marshall, RBL, published 9/1/2007. Leia mais sobre este livro
aqui.
Utilizing the perspectives of sociology and anthropology, Halvor Moxnes presents a provocative study of the Historical Jesus that pays close attention to the role of space and place. Following Jesus’ life and his decision to leave the central institution of ancient Galilee—the household—and seek companionship among the family of his choosing—his disciples, Moxnes brings to the forefront new questions about Jesus’ identity. From there, he turns to Jesus' creation of a new place, the Kingdom of God, over against the established political kingdom in Galilee. Presenting the Historical Jesus as a radical visionary who redefined the most basic institutions of society, Moxnes’
Putting Jesus in His Place promises to draw us deeper into the life and thought-world of the awe-evoking man. Halvor Moxnes is Professor of New Testament, University of Oslo.
This excellent book is a report on the
quest for the historical Jesus as it stands today. A comprehensive,
accurate, up-to-date, clear, and succinct survey. It is very well written, and its
analysis is incisive and illuminating. Mark Alan Powell offers insightful overviews of some
of the most important participants in contemporary Jesus quests: Robert Funk,
John Dominic Crossan, Marcus Borg, E. P. Sanders, John Meier, N. T. Wright, and
others.
Wright's
goal in this volume is to present in a simplified form the findings that
are occupying him in his monumental six-volume series entitled Christian
Origins and the Question of God, and in particular in the second
volume, already published, Jesus
and the Victory of God, where he presents Jesus firmly within the
political and social setting of the first-century as a Jewish apocalyptic
prophet. 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.
histórico" John P. Meier, professor de Novo Testamento na Catholic University
of America, em Washington, D.C., entende o Jesus que podemos resgatar
ou reconstruir, mesmo fragmentariamente, usando os instrumentos da moderna
pesquisa histórica. Eis algumas das questões que Meier enfrenta: Jesus foi
concebido sem pecado? Teve irmãos e irmãs? Era casado ou solteiro? Era
iletrado? Sabia hebraico e grego, tanto quanto aramaico? O resultado desta ampla
pesquisa é um relato sóbrio e bem fundamentado da vida de Jesus. Sem nos
esquecermos de que esta é também uma contribuição importante para o diálogo
ecumênico.
investigates with special care
the effects of Historical Jesus research on contemporary images of Jesus. His
arguments reveal a Jesus who speaks not of a promised hereafter but who instead
develops a powerful, radical critique of his own culture. Borg recovers a Jesus
whose message was not about himself ("I am the way and the light") and
the end of the world but about the renewal of the world through faith in our
common humanity. One can also read Marcus Borg & N. T. Wright, 
Kingdom of God. After exploring the scholarly state of the question,
Chilton maps out key background material of Jesus’ understanding of the
Kingdom, drawing on the Psalms and Jesus’ appropriation of this
tradition. Then, looking at the Gospels themselves, Chilton hammers out
Jesus’ theology of the kingdom by examining both Jesus’ teaching and
his actions, which also declare God’s kingdom. Finally, Chilton examines
the question of the preaching of Jesus’ Kingdom message in primitive
Christianity.