William E. Arnal 
Symbolic Jesus [PDF ebook] 
Historical Scholarship, Judaism and the Construction of Contemporary Identity

It is widely accepted that Jesus was a Jew. However, both Christian and New Testament scholarship have a strong anti-Jewish history. ‘The Symbolic Jesus’ presents the controversies surrounding the Jewishness of Jesus. It examines the insistence among historical Jesus scholars that Jesus was a Jew and the ways this frames the figure of Jesus in ancient Christian literature. The book examines the anti-Jewish legacy of the past and more recent approaches to biblical scholarship. Contemporary identity issues – scholarly, political, religious and cultural – are shown to lie at the heart of the debate.