This collection of essays explores the impact of Jesus within and beyond Christianity, including his many afterlives in literature and the arts, social justice and world religions during the past two thousand years and especially in the present global context.
This first volume focuses on selected historical afterlives of Jesus, including the Pantokrator of Byzantium and the Aryan Jesus of Nazi Germany. This collection is not an exercise in Christian apologetics, nor is it an interfaith project–except in the sense that many of the contributors are from a Christian context of some kind, while others are from other contexts. The contributors include scholars in relevant fields, as well as religious practitioners reflecting on Jesus in their own cultural and religious settings. While the essays are original work that is grounded in critical scholarship, reflective practice, or both, they are expressed in nontechnical language so the information is accessible to intelligent nonspecialists.
About the author
Gregory Jenks is an Anglican priest and biblical scholar. He is Academic Dean at St Francis Theological College, Brisbane and Senior Lecturer in the School of Theology, Charles Sturt University. A long-time Fellow of the Jesus Seminar, and a former Associate Director of the Westar Institute, Dr Jenks is also director of the Jesus Database project and a co-director of the Bethsaida Archaeology Project in Israel. His recent books include The Once and Future Bible: An Introduction to the Bible for Religious Progressives (2011), and Wisdom and Imagination: Religious Progressives and the Search for Meaning (co-edited with Rex Hunt, 2014)