The Historical Jesus Five View

Christianity Today Book Award winner

The scholarly quest for the historical Jesus has a distinguished pedigree in modern Western religious and historical scholarship, with names such as Strauss, Schweitzer and Bultmann highlighting the story. Since the early 1990s, when the Jesus quest was reawakened for a third run, numerous significant books have emerged. And the public's attention has been regularly arrested by media coverage, with the JesusSeminar or the James ossuary headlining the marquee.

This Spectrum Multiview volume provides a venue for readers to sit in on a virtual seminar on the historical Jesus. Beginning with a scene-setting historical introduction by the editors, prominent figures in the Jesus quest set forth their views and respond to their fellow scholars.

On the one end Robert M. Price lucidly maintains that the probability of Jesus' existence has reached the "vanishing point," and on the other Darrell Bock ably argues that while critical method yields only a "gist" of Jesus, it takes us in the direction of the Gospel portraits. In between there are numerous avenues to explore, questions to be asked and "assured results" to be weighed. And John Dominic Crossan, Luke Timothy Johnson and James D. G. Dunn probe these issues with formidable knowledge and honed insight, filling out a further range of options.

The Historical Jesus: Five Views offers a unique entry into the Jesus quest. For both the classroom and personal study, this is a book that fascinates, probes and engages.

Spectrum Multiview Books offer a range of viewpoints on contested topics within Christianity, giving contributors the opportunity to present theirposition and also respond to others in this dynamic publishing format.

Robert M. Price is professor of biblical criticism at the Center for Inquiry Institute as well as the editor of The Journal of Higher Criticism.

John Dominic Crossan is professor emeritus in the department of teligious studies at DePaul University in Chicago. He has lectured to lay and scholarly audiences across the United States as well as in Ireland and England, Scandinavia and Finland, Australia and New Zealand, Brazil, Japan, and South Africa. He has been interviewed on 200 radio stations, including four times on NPR?s Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

Luke Timothy Johnson is the Robert W. Woodruff Professor of New Testament and Christian Origins at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia. His well known New Testament studies include The Writings of the New Testament (1986), The Real Jesus: The Misguided Quest for the Historical Jesus and the Truth of the Traditional Gospels (1996) and Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity: A Missing Dimension of New Testament Studies (1998). He often lectures at universities and seminaries worldwide. He is a noted critic of the Jesus Seminar, often taking stances against Burton Mack, Robert Funk and John Dominic Crossan in discussions of the "historical Jesus."

James D. G. Dunn is Emeritus Professor of Divinity, Durham University.

Darrell L. Bock (PhD, Aberdeen) is executive director of cultural engagement and senior research professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. His numerous books include commentaries on Luke and Acts and studies of the historical Jesus.