From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Christ
by Paula Fredriksen
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Book Summary Information
Author: Paula FredriksenEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2000-07-11
ISBN: 0300084579
Number of pages: 294
Publisher: Yale University Press
Book Reviews of From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Christ
Book Review: A well written flawed thesis
Summary: 3 Stars
This book is a superb well written one with a brilliant exposition at times of the Hellenistic influence in early Christianity, specifically in Pauline doctrine as well in John's Gospel. However judging in terms of its main aims the book betrays some kind of religious factionalism disguised as academic presentation for the lay man.
It is possible to identify three central theses at work:
a) There is nothing original regarding Jesus Christ message: everything is either explicit or implicit in the Jewish tradition.
b) Christendom of the first and second century is the one that felt threaten by Judaism not the other way round. Assuming this we can get a better understanding of the evolving Christ's image from Mark to John's Gospels.
c) The historical Jesus' context cannot be understood through the inner tensions at the core of the Jewish Second Temple Era doctrine but rather through the tensions between the Jewish world and the Non-Jewish one in the first century Palestine.
Those theses also require a sort of radicalization of the well known Albert Schweitzer's seminal idea that the best way in approaching to the historical Jesus is seeing him as a first century apocalyptic Jew. The original thesis makes sense but Fredriksen reductionism on this regard leave us before such an one-dimensional ministry that it results impossible to comprehend how it stands the diversity of images and meanings that Fredriksen accounts for and that she explains as a result of an evolving context rather than by the interaction of the latter with the inherent complexity of the starting point that is the historical Jesus itself, his message and his death.
I'm not a believer but it is clear to me that the author by no means is willing to pose the question of why no other eschatological first century Jewish leader was subject of such a rich interpretation, not to say remembrance.
In some extent Fredriksen's argumentation raises more problems than those she tried to solve. In being so dismissive about Jesus' singularity the only way left to understand how his inner circle recovered to gain momentum after such a blow as his execution was points out towards the resurrection issue: an unintended position indeed for a skeptical-hypercritical academic.
At the end Fredriksen misunderstood in the sake of zealotry which is the mission of an historian. On regard the original relationship between Christianity and Judaism it does not consist in making revisionism on which of them truly was the offended part but in identifying the key tensions of a cultural matrix of symbols, narratives and meanings, which within a specific context of violence and a desperate need of consolation found a voice to set in motion a new religion.
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