Recapturing the historical Jesus for the church of today
596617
Finished reading "ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church" by Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch. This book is different from other books that I have read by these authors. It is a call for the church to recover a biblical view of Jesus that is stripped of the entrapments of western thought. In a way, the authors engage in their own "Quest for the Historical Jesus." In doing so they blend practical with theological and a bit of indepth biblical scholarship. I, personally, found the inclusion of several annotated biographies of what the authors call "little Jesus" inspiring and helpful in keeping the thought of the book tied together. There is also a decent bibliography included, which is a little unsual for this type of monograph. Recommended
697668
Saving Jesus from the Church is a wake up call to the 21st century church.  Rather than lamenting declining membership and waning cultural influence of the mainline faith communities, Meyers travels back to the beginning of Jesus' life and embodied teaching to find a new way forward that is faithful to the earliest ways of those who sought to follow Jesus.  The book begins with an introduction in which the author dreams of multiple characterizations of what Christianity is or could become that would lead him to feel he was not Christian and ends with a concluding chapter in which he restates his dream positively by sharing several descriptions of what Christianity is or could become that would assure him that he wants to continue on with his life of faith as a follower of Jesus.  Situated between these contrasting visions are ten chapters focused on explaining why things as they currently are must be deconstructed so that one can reconstruct a 21st century faith that is far more consistent with that of the earliest decades of the first century CE.  Scholarly yet pastoral, these chapters capture a new way of seeing one's faith that is more ancient than even the later New Testament books.  The chapters are titled:

Jesus the Teacher, Not the Savior
Faith as Being, Not Belief
The Cross as Futility, Not Forgiveness
Easter as Presence, Not Proof
Original Blessing, Not Original Sin
Christianity as Compassion, Not Condemnation
Discipleship as Obedience, Not Observance
Justice as Covenant, Not Control
Prosperity as Dangerous, Not Divine
Religion as Relationship, Not Righteousness
4925984
Read this book and get a new understanding of Jesus.  Also get a challenging look into the church.  The last word or chapter is most challenging for all of us.
3090880
This book, in which two ascended masters appear to Gary R. Renard and claim to have lived as disciples at the time of the historical Jesus, is not only interesting and plausible, but also has a ring of historical truth to it. For example, these masters are very clear and knowledgable about their Jewish heritage and in fact, there was no such thing as Christianity at the time of the historical Jesus. The religion that most people equate with Jesus was mostly made up over the next several hundred years. But Jesus was original, and Renard's teachers make a strong case that he was not teaching traditional Judaism either. The transition that is made from a discussion of the history of major spiritualities (which is done, by the way, with excellent humor) into a detailed explanation of the modern spiritual guide, A Course in Miracles, turns into as good a metaphysical presentation as I've ever seen. Yet it also gets down to the practical level and tells you how to use the Course's style of advanced forgiveness for the rest of your life. Brilliant - but fun!
470543
Want to clarify the real Christ to the world? Read this. Want to teach the next generation about the real, historical Jesus? Read this. Dr. Boocks does a masterful job presenting the historical Jesus of Nazareth and making the case that He's no myth and certainly more than a mere man. I feel more convinced than ever before that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. This is also a tremendous evangelistic resource for those in your life who are questioning the identity of Jesus Christ. Excellent work, Dr. Broocks.
4087345
Great read with a fresh new approach to evaluating the gospels.
3780481
A detailed view of what is actually known about the 'historical' Jesus, with a few inferences from Jewish custom of his times. Removing the influences of the insights gained from the synoptic gospels, much less John, gives a somewhat different view of Jesus,  This is in a way a further elucidation of the material found in "How Jesus Became God"
4158565
Excellent view and presentation of modern times and Christianity.
1322847
fabulous commentary. It gives both an historical perspective/explanation and a current relevant view. I used it for a recent sermon and felt that I really understood and was able to give meaning to that day's gospel reading. It helped me feel confident.
3632039
The Church needs to know the Fullness of each believer's redemption through our salvation which includes a new life in Christ, divine healing, prosperity, and wealth. Bruce Wells does an excellent job of teaching believers Whose they are and what was guarantee<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Pulpit-in-my-Kitchen/dp/1438905300/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Pulpit in my Kitchen</a>d to them individually upon The Cross of Calvary 2,000 years ago. He dares the reader to forsake tradition and legalism for a new found freedom in Christ by examining God's Word and challenging us to believe God for the ENTIRE package of grace in the "now". This book is both practical AND scriptural. It is must reading for those who chose to do it Christ's way, not man's.
1041397
The Forgotten Jesus by Pastor Robby Gallaty, is like taking a trip back in time, walking side by side with the disciples and learning first hand from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It is as if looking through a secret window into the heart of Jesus which allows one to discover a deeper knowledge and understanding of our Messiah. Our love for someone grows stronger the more we know of them, therefore, this deeper knowledge of our Rabbi Jesus will strengthen your love for Him.

Besides being misinterpreted, messages can become misconstrued from the passing of information through the ages and from culture loss. Jesus was a Jewish man living in a Jewish culture, and by presenting a crash course in ancient Jewish culture, Pastor Robby gives historical context which enables Jesus' actions and messages to be understood just as our Rabbi intended them to be.

Some people tend to avoid spending much time, if any at all, in the Old Testament. Pastor Robby reminds us that the old testament was not old to Jesus; it was His story, His Bible and it tells His story. In The Forgotten Jesus, connections between the old and new Testaments are taught, nuggets of wisdom are unburied, and truths are unpacked in such a clear way that just about anyone could understand them.

For anyone desiring to clearly understand Jesus' thoughts and intentions behind His actions and messages, I highly recommend this book! God bless Pastor Robby for devoting his time to help others view our Savior in a new light!
1302473
I give this book five stars for its historical significance of bring one of the first books to seriously challenge the findings of the Jesus Seminar and other critics of the historic understanding of Jesus.
This is the first book that really opened my eyes to the fact that the dogmas of the Jesus Seminary are those of only a minority of schoalrs, and not representative of the field of Biblical studies as a whole.
I don't think Johnson can be accused of having a conservative bias. A former monk and priest, he is a "Catholic" Modernist, in no way sympathetic to orthodox Christian teaching. This is clear in his tendency to, in my opinion, over-spiritualize the Resurrection of Jesus, not giving due importance to the corporal quality of the event.
A delightful presentation of scholarship and piety, this book is an absolute must-read for those wanting a response to radical criticisms of the traditional Gospels, and a good concise introduction to books on the same theme.
1020097
Richard Bauckham is, along with the likes of N.T Wright, Ben Witherington and Craig Evans, a Bible scholar with the ability to bring the history of first-century Judea and Galilee into a form that we can comprehend today. This is no mean feat; the culture in which Jesus lived was so different from our own that skeptics are able to point to apparent anomalies as though they could be evaluated in the same way as, say, a modern news story. With a combination of incredible attention to detail and a portrayal of the personalities of the witnesses to Jesus, as opposed to their words without context, Bauckham expertly weaves together the strands of the gospel story and how it was understood in early Christianity. Much modern criticism, alleging very late dates for the writing of the gospels, is convincingly refuted by Bauckham, largely by explaining the context of the writing and how it can be quite accurately dated much earlier than is typically assumed. "The Gospels were written within living memory of the events they recount. Mark's Gospel was written within the lifetime of many of the eyewitnesses, while the other three canonical Gospels were written in the period when living eyewitnesses were becoming scarce, exactly when their testimony would perish with them if it were not put into writing. This is a highly significant fact, entailed not by unusually early datings of the Gospels but by the generally accepted ones."

It is not just the synoptic gospels from which the author draws his factual evidence: "when we remember that the historians considered the very best for history to be the historian's own direct experience of the events of which he wrote, then the Fourth Gospel's claim that the Beloved Disciple was not only the primary witness to its history but also its author fits easily into this historic frame of reference." I have read accounts of many skeptics, including the erudite and credible Bible scholar Bart Ehrman, but they provide no insight that I have encountered, which is not neutralized by Bauckham's thorough analysis. But I would caution the reader unwilling to engage in serious study to avoid this book and stick to lighter but still authoritative and enjoyable reads by the likes of Gary Habermas and Craig Blomberg.
867745
The author of this book presents a better way of interpreting many old traditional ideas about Jesus.  I was so glad to hear these ideas.  You will be, too.
1828903
In *Studying the Historical Jesus* Darrell Bock has written a primer for his students at Dallas Theological Seminary, one that is also useful to interested readers in general.  In a sense, the book provides a defense on two fronts of the historical study of Jesus: against the unfounded belief that it throws doubt on the truths of Scripture, and against excessive skepticism about the historicity of the Gospel accounts, such as many critics have engaged in since the Enlightenment.

As he notes, "[W]e must differentiate between what we know from history and the text and the way we reconstruct history. ... rather than applying our doubt to the text, there is nothing wrong in examining carefully our own understanding in studying the text." (159)  Thus, the book is in two parts:

(1) A brief presentation of the sources of our knowledge and of "what we know from history and the text."  The premise is our need to understand the social and cultural environment in which Jesus lived and in which the Gospels were written, and the historical background of the Jews prior to and including the time of Jesus that led to fervent messianic expectations.  In the Introduction, under Greek Biblical Sources, Bock includes a survey of the content, themes and introductory issues pertaining to the four Gospels; in the conclusion to the whole book he expresses "confidence that the Gospels are a solid source of information."

(2) An equally brief examination of the different critical methods, their strengths and weaknesses, that scholars use in reconstructing the history behind the Gospels and how the Gospels came to be in their present form.  After an introductory section, there is a chapter on the three quests for the historical Jesus, in which Bock notes that the third quest does not supersede the second but runs alongside it - the third quest "works more seriously with Jewish backgrounds" (147). A chapter on historical criticism sets the stage for the following chapters on source, form, redaction, and tradition criticisms. The final chapter on narrative criticism and the Gospel genre is different in that the topics are subsumed under literary criticism and considerations, not historical criticism.

The concise discussions drive the curious reader to reach out for more, aided by bibliographic footnotes; nonetheless, it is surprising how much information this introductory work imparts.  Bock is an experienced writer; he adds interest to his prose by avoiding generalities (most of time), linking names and dates to hypotheses and methods, and relating seemingly ho-hum social, economic and geographic details to what we read in the Gospels.  So, for example, not only do the hills of Galilee reach 2000 to 4000 feet above sea level while the Sea of Galilee is 685 feet below sea level, but also: "This dramatic drop-off explains the weather in some events in Jesus' ministry as he was on the Sea of Galilee.  Winds can rush down with a tunnel effect... resulting in huge, dangerous storms" (113).  Who after this would not want to read again the passage about Jesus and the disciples as they crossed the lake to "the other side" (Mark 4:35-41 & parallels)?

In the Preface, Dr. Bock says only time will tell whether he had succeeded in what he set out to accomplish in writing the book. Here is one affirmative vote.
1438974
It was a compelling read, especially because it put Jesus of Nazareth into the proper context of his times. The view Christians nowadays may have is product of years later, and a result of gentile influence over the story  of the historical Jesus. This is not about the Christ, but the Jew from Nazareth who died by act of sedition against the Roman Empire.
2544473
Jesus has something to say to His church! This book includes chapters and daily devotions that challenge us to listen to Jesus words to his church. Sometimes it's hard to translate Revelation 2 and 3 in to our current culture, this book and the authors bring this portion of Scripture to life. The format is easy to follow and lends itself to easy but insightful reading. There are helpful outlines and appendixes that provide a full picture of Revelation 2 and 3. Most of all, I was challenged to reconsider how I live out my faith on the daily. This book is also a great resource for small groups, classes, and other gatherings of people interested in studying the letters to the seven churches in Revelation.