A theology of how Christianity and Judaism can be separate but linked by their roots in Scripture; presents a thorough study of Jesus as teacher seen from a Jewish perspective.

In his latest book, Sean Freyne draws on his detailed knowledge of Galilean society in the Roman period, based on both literary and archaeological sources, to give a fresh and provocative reading of the Jesus-story within its Galilean setting. Jesus, a Jewish Galilean focuses on the religious as well as the social and political environment and examines the ways in which the Jewish religious experience had expressed itself in Galilee. It examines the ways in which the Jewish tradition in both the Pentateuch and the Prophets had constructed notions of an ideal Galilee. These provided the raw material for Jesus' own response to the issues of the day, from which he fashioned his own distinctive views of Israel's restoration and his own role in that project. Although Freyne is in touch with all recent scholarship about the historical Jesus, he brings his own distinctive take on the issues both with regard to Galilean society and Jesus' grounding in his own religious tradition. His Jesus is both Jewish and yet distinctive in his concerns and the ways in which he responds to the ecological, social and religious issues of his own time and place. Freyne seeks to retrieve the theological importance of Jesus' own message, something that has been lost sight of in the trend to present him primarily as a social reformer, while acknowledging the dangers of modernising Jesus.

This volume of essays is an example of something new and exciting that is going on in North America, especially between Jews and Christians. For the first time in almost two thousand years, Jews and Christians can sit down as equals around a table and reflect on their profound sameness and deep differences. In a real way, this book represents another step Christians and Jews have taken together on the new road to deeper understanding.The issues surrounding the Jewish Christian dialogue are legion?the State of Israel, the Holocaust (Shoah), and the Jewishness of Jesus, to mention only a few. Dialogue does not mean proselytizing or conversion; instead, each faith tradition recognizes and respects its own identity. Any notion that Christianity has replaced or superseded the Jewish people in God's plan of salvation is both inadmissible and repulsive to the dialogue.One, if not the central, issue facing serious dialogue between Christians and Jews is Jesus of Nazareth. How can both of these faith communities speak about the itinerant Galilean whose origins and early followers were Jewish and whose subsequent followers broke away from Judaism? This volume attempts to address this question.

Here, in narrative form, is an account of the activity of Jesus of Nazareth, scrupulously constructed so that it does not undercut the insights of New Testament scholarship. What makes it different from other such attempts is that Jesus never actually appears. What we find everywhere is his shadow, his effect. Such an approach avoids the usual pitfalls of the genre and lends this story attributed to a fictitious narrator an attraction, freshness, and power all its own. Tension and interest are maintained to the end, even for those sated with books about Jesus. Careful documentation in the footnotes shows how much of the narrative is based on ancient sources.-- Publisher.

Jesus Christ is arguably the most famous man who ever lived. His image adorns countless churches, icons, and paintings. He is the subject of millions of statues, sculptures, devotional objects and works of art. Everyone can conjure an image of Jesus: usually as a handsome, white man with flowing locks and pristine linen robes. But what did Jesus really look like? Is our popular image of Jesus overly westernized and untrue to historical reality? This question continues to fascinate. Leading Christian Origins scholar Joan E. Taylor surveys the historical evidence, and the prevalent image of Jesus in art and culture, to suggest an entirely different vision of this most famous of men. He may even have had short hair.

Paula Fredriksen, renowned historian and author of From Christ to Jesus, begins this inquiry into the historic Jesus with a fact that may be the only undisputed thing we know about him: his crucifixion. Rome reserved this means of execution particularly for political insurrectionists; and the Roman charge posted at the head of the cross indicted Jesus for claiming to be King of the Jews. To reconstruct the Jesus who provoked this punishment, Fredriksen takes us into the religious worlds, Jewish and pagan, of Mediterranean antiquity, through the labyrinth of Galilean and Judean politics, and on into the ancient narratives of Paul's letters, the gospels, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Josephus' histories. The result is a profound contribution both to our understanding of the social and religious contexts within which Jesus of Nazareth moved, and to our appreciation of the mission and message that ended in the proclamation of Jesus as Messiah.

He was born in the spring or early summer of the year 4 or 6 BCE, probably in "the little town of Bethlehem" in the Galilee, near Nazareth. He became a laborer, maybe a stonemason. His mother, Mary, could not get him married because of his suspect paternity, but he had a girlfriend, Mary of Magdala. He had several brothers, one of them a twin brother, Judas "the Twin" (Thomas), and two sisters. He was charged by the Romans with sedition. At a preliminary hearing, when queried by the High Priest whether or not he, the laborer in rags, was "the anointed son of the Blessed One," as all kings were, he answered, "Am I?" He was crucified like two thousand other Jews during the Roman occupation of Palestine. He died between 30 and 32 CE. His followers revered him as a prophet, but he was a marginal Jew who went about doing good. Little more than one hundred years later, Tertullian, the African apologist, would write, "I am saved if I be not ashamed of him."