The real Jesus : the misguided quest for the historical Jesus and the truth of the traditional Gospels

The Real Jesus the first book to challenge the findings of the Jesus Seminar, the controversial group of two hundred scholars who claim Jesus only said 18 percent of what the Gospels attribute to him is at the center of the newest round in what has been called the Jesus Wars. Drawing on the best biblical and historical scholarship, respected New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson demonstrates that the real Jesus is the one experienced in the present through faith rather than the one found in speculative historical reconstructions. A new preface by the author presents his point of view on the most recent rounds of this lively debate. "Powerfully challenging the scholarship of the media-hungry Jesus Seminar, respected New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson argues that Christian faith is founded not upon a historical Jesus that scholarship can reconstruct, but on the resurrected Jesus proclaimed by the New Testament and Christian tradition. He states, "The real Jesus is not simply a figure of the past but very much and above all a figure of the present." Provocative and timely, The Real Jesus exposes the fundamentally misguided quest for the historical Jesus by the Jesus Seminaractually a small group of mostly marginal scholars - and by such scholars as John Dominic Crossan, Burton Mack, and Marcus Borg."--Jacket The Real Jesus the first book to challenge the findings of the Jesus Seminar, the controversial group of two hundred scholars who claim Jesus only said 18 percent of what the Gospels attribute to him"is at the center of the newest round in what has been called the Jesus Wars" (Peter Steinfels, New York Times ). Drawing on the best biblical and historical scholarship, respected New Testament scholar Luke Timothy Johnson demonstrates that the "real Jesus" is the one experienced in the present through faith rather than the one found in speculative historical reconstructions. A new preface by the author presents his point of view on the most recent rounds of this lively debate. Johnson challenges the controversial findings of the Jesus Seminar, which attributed only a small percentage of the total text said to be spoken by Jesus in the traditional Gospels to the real historical man. By using critical Biblical scholarship to study the group's findings in comparison to the Gospels, Johnson states that the meaning and spirit of the Gospel's words are as valid as citing spoken language

Luke Timothy Johnson is Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the New Testament and Christian Origins at the Candler School of Theology, Emory University. A Roman Catholic, Johnson was a Benedictine monk and priest before becoming a biblical scholar. He is the author of several scholarly books and has written for Commonwealth and Christian Century.

Preface to the Paperback Edition vii Preface xi 1. The Good News and the Nightly News 1 2. History Challenging Faith 29 3. Cultural Confusion and Collusion 57 4. The Limitations of History 81 5. What's Historical About Jesus? 105 6. The Real Jesus and the Gospels 141 Epilogue: Critical Scholarship and the Church 167 Index 178 Recent years have been very good for the Jesus business in America.