The debate over the extent of Jewish influence upon early Christianity rages on. At the heart of this argument lies the question of Jesus: how does the fate of a first-century Galilean Jew inspire and determine the nature, shape, and practices of a distinct religious movement? Vital to this first question is another equally challenging one: can the four Gospels be used to reconstruct the historical Jesus? In Jesus and Judaism, Martin Hengel and Anna Maria Schwemer seek to untangle the complex relationships among Jesus, Judaism, and the Gospels in the earliest Christian movement.
Jesus and Judaism, the first in a four-volume series, focuses on the person of Jesus in the context of Judaism. Beginning with his Galilean origin, the volume analyzes Jesus’ relationship with John the Baptist and the Jewish context of Jesus’ life and work. Hengel and Schwemer argue that there never was a nonmessianic Jesus. Rather, his messianic claim finds expression in his relationship to the Baptist, his preaching in authority, his deeds of power, and his crucifixion as king of the Jews, and in the emergence of the earliest Christology. As Hengel and Schwemer reveal, Jesus was not only a devout Jew, nor merely a miracle worker, but the essential part of the earliest form of Christianity.
Hengel and Schwemer insist that Jesus belongs within the history of early Christianity, rather than as its presupposition. Christianity did not begin after Jesus’ death; Christianity began as soon as a Jew from Galilee started to preach the word of God.
Cuprins
Preliminary Observations
1. The Overall Temporal and Thematic Framework for a History of Early Christianity
2. Judaism and Early Christianity
Part One : Judaism
3. Judaism under Roman Rule in the First Century BCE and CE
4. The Jewish Religious Parties in Palestine
Part Two : Preliminary Questions about the Person and History of Jesus
5. On the Quest for Jesus of Nazareth
6. The Sources
7. The Historical Quest
Part Three : Jesus the Galilean and John the Baptist
8. Jesus the Galilean
9. John the Baptist
10. Jesus and His Forerunner
Part Four : Jesus’ Activity and Proclamation
11. On the Geographical-Historical Framework of the Activity of Jesus
12. The Poetic Form of the Proclamation of Jesus
13. Jesus’ Proclamation of the Kingdom of God
14. The Will of God
15. The Fatherly Love of God
Part Five : Jesus’ Authority and Messianic Claim
16. The Prophetic-Messianic Miracle Worker
17. Prophet or Messiah?
Part Six : The Passion of Jesus
18. The Last Confrontation in Jerusalem
19. The Preparation of the Passion of Jesus
20. Gethsemane, Arrest, and Interrogation of Jesus
21. The Crucified Messiah
Part Seven : The Testimony to the Resurrection of Jesus
22. The Testimony to the Resurrection of Jesus
Retrospect and Prospect
Despre autor
Martin Hengel (1926–2009) was Professor of New Testament and Early Judaism at the Protestant Theology Faculty at the University of Tübingen.
Anna Maria Schwemer is Professor of New Testament at the Protestant Theology Faculty at the University of Tübingen.
Wayne Coppins is Professor of Religion at the University of Georgia.