Jesus: One Hundred Years Before Christ - Softcover

Alvar Ellegard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1585672521 ISBN 13: 9781585672523

Publisher: Overlook Books, 2002

Synopsis

Arguing that Jesus had lived and died much earlier than reported in the Gospels, the author offers a compelling argument for re-examining the "historical Jesus" and placing him at an earlier era in Palestinian history. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author

Until recently Alvar Ellegard was Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Goteburg. In addition to books and articles concerning language and linguistics, Ellegard has written extensively in the international scholarly press on historical and anthropological themes, as well as on the history of ideas.

From Library Journal

These two books offer an enormous contrast. While Fredriksen provides a balanced, carefully reasoned, scholarly study of the historical Jesus, Ellegard's conclusions can only be described as preposterous. Ellegard (formerly dean, Univ. of G?teburg, Sweden) is clearly familiar with some mainline biblical scholarship, but he always opts for the minority view and stretches it beyond reason. For example, he believes that the Gospels were written in the second century C.E. and traces the origin of Christianity to "a group of pious Jews called the Essenes" (the Dead Sea Scrolls group). Then, based on this highly questionable and twisted "evidence," he leaps to several unjustified conclusions: that Jesus lived long before he was supposed to have and that his disciples had only "ecstatic visions" of him and never knew him in the flesh. The Gospel writers, he suggests, then mistook their visions for real events and created fictitious accounts of Jesus' life. Fredriksen (scripture, Boston Univ.), on the other hand, explores the conundrum of a well-established historical fact--namely, that Jesus was executed by the Roman prefect Pilate as a political insurrectionist while his followers were not. She concludes that it was the volatile mix of excited pilgrims in Jerusalem for Passover and their acclaim of Jesus at a time when Pilate was especially interested in keeping the peace that led to his death. Her balanced, well-written work could serve as a kind of introduction to the content and methodology scholars use in the study of the historical Jesus and is highly recommended for any library. Ellegard's work would only be useful as an example of the false conclusions that result when questionable opinion is stretched beyond reasonable limits.
-David Bourquin, California State Univ., San Bernardino
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Overlook Books
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 1585672521
• ISBN 13: 9781585672523
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 322