Provides a detailed picture of Galilean life in the period prior to and spanning the genesis of Christianity. Freyne offers a comprehensive treatment of geographical and historical, social and cultural, and religious aspects of Galilean life.

With the help of pictures and historical maps, the reader can follow the inner development of Jesus and his disciples and their role in society. Against the backdrop of the landscape of Galilee emerges the figure of Jesus the compassionate man.,

Introduction by James H. Charlesworth This new edition of David Flusser's classic study of the historical Jesus, revised and updated by his student and colleague R. Steven Notley, will be welcomed everywhere by students and scholars of early Christianity and Judaism. Reflecting Flusser's mastery of ancient literary sources and modern archaeological discoveries, The Sage from Galilee offers a fresh, informed biographical portrait of Jesus in the context of Jewish faith and life in his day. Including a chronological table (330 BC – AD 70), and twenty-eight illustrations, The Sage from Galilee is the culmination of nearly six decades of study by one of the world's foremost Jewish authorities on the New Testament and early Christianity. Both Jewish and Christian readers will find challenge and new understanding in these pages.

Tucker S. Ferda examines the theory of the Galilean crisis: the notion that the historical Jesus himself had grappled with the failure of his mission to Israel. While this theory has been neglected since the 19th century, due to research moving to consider the response of the early church to the rejection of the gospel, Ferda now provides fresh insight on Jesus' own potential crisis of faith. Ferda begins by reconstructing the origin of the crisis theory, expanding upon histories of New Testament research and considering the contributions made before Hermann Samuel Reimarus. He shows how the crisis theory was shaped by earlier and so-called “pre-critical” gospel interpretation and examines how, despite the claims of modern scholarship, the logic of the crisis theory is still a part of current debate. Finally, Ferda argues that while the crisis theory is a failed hypothesis, its suggestions on early success and growing opposition in the ministry, as well as its claim that Jesus met and responded to disappointing cases of rejection, should be revisited. This book resurrects key historical aspects of the crisis theory for contemporary scholarship.

Please note that this title is only available to customers in the USA, Canada, and Mexico. NO salesrights for Rest of World. Galilee has long been a subject of fascination and scholarly inquiry because of its association with the formative periods of both Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity. Sean Freyne undertakes the difficult but essential task of bringing together literary and archaeological evidence to reconstruct the geographic, social, and religious world of Galilee in Hellenistic and Roman times. Both literary and archaeological evidence are essential for the study of early Judaism and the quest for the historical Jesus. Freyne fruitfully examines both areas of inquiry and makes substantial contributions to ongoing scholarly debates.

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.

In Scripting Jesus, Michael White, famed scholar of early Christian history, reveals how the gospel stories of Jesus were never meant to be straightforward historical accounts, but rather were scripted and honed as performance pieces for four different audiences with four different theological agendas. As he did as a featured presenter in two award-winning PBS Frontline documentaries (“From Jesus to Christ” and “Apocalypse!”), White engagingly explains the significance of some lesser-known aspects of The New Testament; in this case, the development of the stories of Jesus—including how the gospel writers differed from one another on facts, points of view, and goals. Readers of Elaine Pagels, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan, and Bart Ehrman will find much to ponder in Scripting Jesus.