E.P. Sanders, a very professional and judicious scholar, provides here the best, short volume on a historical appraisal of Jesus. The book was published in 1993, though the research holds up remarkably well.

He doesn't start out with any prejudices; rather, he uses his formidable historical knowledge, skill, and writing to follow the evidence. He may very well be the best person to do this in the English-speaking world today.

He never strains to make the dots connect or come up with something novel. Novelty for the sake of novelty--making Jesus a bohemian hippie, Mediterranean cynic, or a skeptic--is not his intention. He has to deal with 200 years of searching for the history of Jesus, and people's intimacy with the primary sources; even, their desire to know his inmost thoughts. The job is certainly a very difficult one.

He states his cards with full clarity on page 5--"The aim of this book is to lay out, as clearly as possible, what we can know [about Jesus], using the standard methods of historical research, and to distinguish from inferences, labeling them clearly as such"--and goes from there. He does, however, admit as an historian he subjects "the gospels" to "rough handling" for a believer. To wit, "The historian selects, but on different principles [unlike "the politician, novelist or moralist"]: what can be proved, what disproved, what lies in between?" (8)

He also acknowledges that "Matthew and Luke...would not have appreciated having Jesus' teaching separated from their own theological conviction that God sent him to save the world." Most people want to be seen agreeing with Jesus, which is understandable. It is "the professional obligation" of the historian, however, "to subject sources to rigorous cross-examination," Sanders writes on page 8.

He is certainly not hesitant to do so.

The result is judicious, albeit one often at odds with traditional Christian belief.

For example, the discussion of Pontius Pilate in the Gospels is devastatingly shown to be obscurantism. Matthew and John present a Pilate goaded by a feckless, blood-thirsty Jewish mob into crucifying Jesus. Even Pilate's wife, aided by a dream, counsels tenderness. What nonsense!

Using the written evidence of non-Gospel resources--in this case Philo and Josephus, who understandably is the main source for much of his history--to clearly make the case that Pilate was the Hannibal Lector of the Roman world, we discover something new. This Pontius Pilate psychopath wasn't in the practice of hemming and hawing over torture and execution, which he probably did with less thought than I do in purchasing dental floss. In fact he was recalled for excessive brutality by a very brutal regime--Pilate's "reluctance and weakness of will are best explained as Christian propaganda." (274)

Another example of Sanders's well reasoned, balanced historical appraisal occurs on page 260 in connection with Jesus' overturning of the money lenderers and pigeon sellers: "Moreover, I think it highly probable that Jesus himself intended the action to predict the destruction of the Temple, rather than to symbolize its need of purification. It is impossible, however, to prove that the statement about a 'den of robbers' was not actually said by Jesus or that what he said was 'I will destroy the Temple.' I must confess that I doubt the authenticity of the 'den of robbers' statement. It looks to me like an easy phrase for the evangelists to lift from Jeremiah to make Jesus appear politically innocuous to Greek-speaking Gentile readers."

Very like.

I've recently become acutely uncomfortable with the New Testament's blood libel of the Jews that's read at Catholic churches at Eastertime. Here Sanders is witty in his understatement: "The traditional Christian view that other Jews hated [Jesus] because he was good, and because he favoured love, which they opposed, will not do." Indeed.

I learned from this book that scripture says that the punishment for defrauding someone is full restitution plus twenty percent. I recently used this when my nine-year-old son stole four dollars from my five-year-old daughter.

This judicious scholar has given us the best introduction to Jesus from a historical perspective. I wish I had started with it--I've been interested lately in learning about the greatest figure in world history--though I agree with reviewer John Ryan, my Amazon teacher, that Jesus' political stance vis-a-vis the Roman Empire, which controlled the eastern Mediterranean, is largely overlooked even when it seemed to warrant a fuller discussion.

This book, a real tour-de-force by a consummate historian, does require a quiet setting and lots of time. Since I have neither in ample quantities, it took me over two weeks to finish reading. It's the most significant history I've read after Paul Johnson's Modern Times, Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August, and J.M. Roberts's History of the World.

Read it, folks, with an open mind!

E.P. Sanders, a very professional and judicious scholar, provides here the best, short volume on a historical appraisal of Jesus. The book was published in 1993, though the research holds up remarkably well.

He doesn't start out with any prejudices; rather, he uses his formidable historical knowledge, skill, and writing to follow the evidence. He may very well be the best person to do this in the English-speaking world today.

He never strains to make the dots connect or come up with something novel. Novelty for the sake of novelty--making Jesus a bohemian hippie, Mediterranean cynic, or a skeptic--is not his intention. He has to deal with 200 years of searching for the history of Jesus, and people's intimacy with the primary sources; even, their desire to know his inmost thoughts. The job is certainly a very difficult one.

He states his cards with full clarity on page 5--"The aim of this book is to lay out, as clearly as possible, what we can know [about Jesus], using the standard methods of historical research, and to distinguish from inferences, labeling them clearly as such"--and goes from there. He does, however, admit as an historian he subjects "the gospels" to "rough handling" for a believer. To wit, "The historian selects, but on different principles [unlike "the politician, novelist or moralist"]: what can be proved, what disproved, what lies in between?" (8)

He also acknowledges that "Matthew and Luke...would not have appreciated having Jesus' teaching separated from their own theological conviction that God sent him to save the world." Most people want to be seen agreeing with Jesus, which is understandable. It is "the professional obligation" of the historian, however, "to subject sources to rigorous cross-examination," Sanders writes on page 8.

He is certainly not hesitant to do so.

The result is judicious, albeit one often at odds with traditional Christian belief.

For example, the discussion of Pontius Pilate in the Gospels is devastatingly shown to be obscurantism. Matthew and John present a Pilate goaded by a feckless, blood-thirsty Jewish mob into crucifying Jesus. Even Pilate's wife, aided by a dream, counsels tenderness. What nonsense!

Using the written evidence of non-Gospel resources--in this case Philo and Josephus, who understandably is the main source for much of his history--to clearly make the case that Pilate was the Hannibal Lector of the Roman world, we discover something new. This Pontius Pilate psychopath wasn't in the practice of hemming and hawing over torture and execution, which he probably did with less thought than I do in purchasing dental floss. In fact he was recalled for excessive brutality by a very brutal regime--Pilate's "reluctance and weakness of will are best explained as Christian propaganda." (274)

Another example of Sanders's well reasoned, balanced historical appraisal occurs on page 260 in connection with Jesus' overturning of the money lenderers and pigeon sellers: "Moreover, I think it highly probable that Jesus himself intended the action to predict the destruction of the Temple, rather than to symbolize its need of purification. It is impossible, however, to prove that the statement about a 'den of robbers' was not actually said by Jesus or that what he said was 'I will destroy the Temple.' I must confess that I doubt the authenticity of the 'den of robbers' statement. It looks to me like an easy phrase for the evangelists to lift from Jeremiah to make Jesus appear politically innocuous to Greek-speaking Gentile readers."

Very like.

I've recently become acutely uncomfortable with the New Testament's blood libel of the Jews that's read at Catholic churches at Eastertime. Here Sanders is witty in his understatement: "The traditional Christian view that other Jews hated [Jesus] because he was good, and because he favoured love, which they opposed, will not do." Indeed.

I learned from this book that scripture says that the punishment for defrauding someone is full restitution plus twenty percent. I recently used this when my nine-year-old son stole four dollars from my five-year-old daughter.

This judicious scholar has given us the best introduction to Jesus from a historical perspective. I wish I had started with it--I've been interested lately in learning about the greatest figure in world history--though I agree with reviewer John Ryan, my Amazon teacher, that Jesus' political stance vis-a-vis the Roman Empire, which controlled the eastern Mediterranean, is largely overlooked even when it seemed to warrant a fuller discussion.

This book, a real tour-de-force by a consummate historian, does require a quiet setting and lots of time. Since I have neither in ample quantities, it took me over two weeks to finish reading. It's the most significant history I've read after Paul Johnson's Modern Times, Barbara Tuchman's Guns of August, and J.M. Roberts's History of the World.

Read it, folks, with an open mind!

E.P. Sanders, a very professional and judicious scholar, provides here the best, short volume on a historical appraisal of Jesus. The book was published in 1993, though the research holds up remarkably well.

He doesn't start out with any prejudices; rather, he uses his formidable historical knowledge, skill, and writing to follow the evidence. He may very well be the best person to do this in the English-speaking world today.

He never strains to make the dots connect or come up with someone novel. Novelty for the sake of novelty--making Jesus a bohemian hippie, Mediterranean cynic, or a skeptic--is not his intention.

He states his cards with full clarity on page 5--"The aim of this book is to lay out, as clearly as possible, what we can know [about Jesus], using the standard methods of historical research, and to distinguish from inferences, labeling them clearly as such"--and goes from there.

The result is judicious, albeit one often at odds with traditional Christian belief--those who take their cue solely from the Gospels. As we learn here, this is often done on dubious grounds. There's much to dispute in them.

For example, the discussion of Pontius Pilate in the Gospels is devastatingly shown to be obscurantism. Matthew and John present a Pilate goaded by a feckless, blood-thirsty Jewish mob into crucifying Jesus. Even Pilate's wife, aided by a dream, counsels tenderness. What nonsense!

Using the written evidence of non-Gospel resources--in this case Philo and Josephus--to clearly make the case that Pilate was the Hannibal Lector of the Roman world to show that the psychopath wasn't in the practice of hemming and hawing over torture and execution, which he probably did with less thought than I do in purchasing dental floss. Recalled for excessive brutality by a very brutal regime, Pilate's "reluctance and weakness of will are best explained as Christian propaganda." (274)

Another example of Sanders's well reasoned, balanced historical appraisal occurs on page 260 in connection with Jesus' overturning of the money lenderers and pigeon sellers: "Moreover, I think it highly probable that Jesus himself intended the action to predict the destruction of the Temple, rather than to symbolize its need of purification. It is impossible, however, to prove that the statement about a 'den of robbers' was not actually said by Jesus or that what he said was 'I will destroy the Temple.' I must confess that I doubt the authenticity of the 'den of robbers' statement. It looks to me like an easy phrase for the evangelists to lift from Jeremiah to make Jesus appear politically innocuous to Greek-speaking Gentile readers."

Very like.

I learned from this book that scripture says that the punishment for defrauding someone is full restitution plus twenty percent. I recently used this when my nine-year-old son stole four dollars from my five-year-old daughter.

This judicious scholar has given us the best introduction to Jesus from a historical perspective. I wish I had started with it--I've been interested lately in learning about the greatest figure in world history--though I agree with reviewer John Ryan, my Amazon teacher, that Jesus' political stance vis-a-vis the Roman Empire, which had largely taken control of the Jewish people's land, is largely overlooked even when it seemed to warrant a fuller discussion.

The book does require a quiet setting and lots of time. Since I have neither in ample quantities, it took me over two weeks to finish reading it.

I am using this text as a source for my Education for Ministry (EFM) class. I have not read the entire book. What I have read is very interesting.

In my opinion it is THE best book on Jesus of Nazareth. There is no bias toward or untoward christain faith.
It is strictly academic and also popular book about historical figure of Jesus.
If your faith, dear reader, would weaken after reading this book, it would mean that knowlege of your religion was not thorough.
This is superb book in every respect. It will make you think about nothing else for a while - just Jesus and first century Palestine. So beware!

E.P. Sanders is the giant in contemporary American Jesus scholarship. Unlike the anti-intellectual sensationalist bigot John Shelby Spong, you will not find anything "NEW!" or "CONTROVERSIAL!". Sander's, while certainly a liberal, is first and foremost a historian. And he methodically goes over the criteria in examining the Gospels and reconstructing the historical figure of Jesus of Nazareth. He focuses particularly on the Canonical Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and Q). He finds these to be the most reliable in investigating who Jesus was and where he stood in the stream of Palestinian Judaism.

Unlike the other popular liberal scholar, (and member of the controversial Jesus Seminar) John Dominic Crossan, he does not think Thomas has any particular value in investigating Jesus. I would say Sanders has more in common with Marcus Borg than Crossan, although I think the latter two tend to adapt First-Century Jesus to the fleeting philosophies of today and try to make Jesus "appealing" to the modern mind (Borg especially falls into this). Sanders (like the centrist Catholic scholar John P. Meier) presents Jesus fully, warts and all.

This book was a joy to read. It is especially geared towards those who are interested in Jesus, but not so much Christianity and those Christians who are looking to further illumine the figure they worship by learning about this Jewish Peasant in the historical circumstances in which he dwelled. It is much more accessible than his scholarly treatment "Jesus and Judaism". The technical introduction that is in the aforementioned text is absent, in this book Sanders is focused on the non-scholar reader.

Sander's is probably my favorite scholar (although Meier and Wright follow closely behind) and I particularly enjoy the way he addresses the controversies with the Jewish leaders and his crucifixion (and the responsibility for it). The chapter on the Resurrection is also fantastic, whether you believe in it or not. Sanders does not come down on a position because it is outside the historians realm of inquiry, but nevertheless I liked what he had to say about it.

Out of all popular books about the historical Jesus that plague the market, Sanders is a breath of fresh air. Of course it does not get nearly the amount of press as James Cameron's "Jesus Family Tomb" (or Gnostic revival; Holy Blood, Holy Grail, etc) but when did meticulous scholarship become fun and exciting to the sensationalist media and the masses?

If anyone is looking for a great introduction to contemporary New Testament scholarship, look no further for such a balanced treat! It is perfect as an introduction.

I would totally agree with the earlier comment that "The author thinks there has to be a rational explanation for everything, and if there isn't, then it must be disregarded as untrue - it did not happen".

There is a key problem in this book of the over rigidity in applying his frame of reference.

As a historian, he is obsessed with the chronological order of events. Consequently he draws completely invalid conclusions based on absence of, or gaps in, chronological order.

Associated with this he does not allow the Gospel authors to select their material according to their themes and also to post rationalise their selection of material. This includes integrating their material into Old Testament sources. As a researcher in social science, this is not an omission by the Gospel writers but a quite normal approach. All research is by necessity highly selective and related to the purpose or themes at hand. Plus we integrate our `primary' sources into our `secondary' sources to add or elaborate meaning. Therefore one can draw no real conclusions based on this approach.

He is also I am afraid highly ethnocentric. His cultural frame of reference is modern North America. He really does make many serious errors when interpreting culture from outside this limited frame of reference. Frequently he assumes that this or that could not have happened, when in fact it was normal, even in western society, upto a few years ago. He similarly has little understanding of number or names outside the modern American context.

(If I take his arguments and apply them to myself, as I come from a different cultural background and don't conform to his stereotypes, I can conclusively prove I don't exist. Therefore do I conclude, following the direction of the good professor, that I am just an interpolation?)

The book is interesting but as a work of social science it does not really stand up. I certainly would not recommend it as an academic text.

The Historical Figure of Jesus is an excellent but conservative depiction of Jesus' ministry within his historical setting. Sanders' construction of first century Judea is both believable and well researched; it breathes a historical reality into the synoptic gospels that would benefit anyone studying the New Testament. Sanders strikes a masterful balance by seeking historical truth without unduly attacking the theological "truth" in which the authors of the gospels were more interested.



On the other hand, Sanders' textual methods seem inadequate to me. He dismisses all of the non-canonical gospels and most of John, choosing only the synoptics as sufficiently reliable sources. Throwing out non-cannonical gospels is problematic because many of them, especially Thomas, have many old and authentic Jesus sayings still crystallized inside of later embellishments. All gospel materials are like this, and even the canonical synoptic gospels include late-dated layers of editing, many of which are almost certainly not authentic Jesus sayings. Sanders makes no effort to discern what might be authentic or inauthentic in the synoptics, but chooses to take the whole as equally valid. In particular, he never mentions Q (a very early sayings source that both Matthew and Luke incorporated into their gospels), and takes Q material from Matthew and Luke on equal ground with p-Matthew and p-Luke material.



Sanders says: "It is my own view that we cannot recover Jesus' view merely by picking and choosing among the sayings... I do not think that a historical reconstruction should depend on the notion that we can definitely establish what Jesus did not say" (176). This view seems sensible at first, but in preserving all the material of the synoptics and throwing out all other gospels, he is already picking and choosing among sayings; he is just doing it in a deeply arbitrary fashion. I would hypothesize that Sanders had a religious motive for preserving the canonical texts so thoroughly.



Despite Sanders' odd textual methods, I still liked his book a lot. I would recommend his book strongly for giving a rational and historical context to Bible study, but perhaps not for an academic setting.

The Historical Figure of Jesus is an excellent but conservative depiction of Jesus' ministry within his historical setting. Sanders' construction of first century Judea is both believable and well researched; it breathes a historical reality into the synoptic gospels that would benefit anyone studying the New Testament. Sanders strikes a masterful balance by seeking historical truth without unduly attacking the theological "truth" in which the authors of the gospels were more interested.

On the other hand, Sanders' textual methods seem inadequate to me. He dismisses all of the non-canonical gospels and most of John, choosing only the synoptics as sufficiently reliable sources. Throwing out non-cannonical gospels is problematic because many of them, especially Thomas, have many old and authentic Jesus sayings still crystallized inside of later embellishments. All gospel materials are like this, and even the canonical synoptic gospels include late-dated layers of editing, many of which are almost certainly not authentic Jesus sayings. Sanders makes no effort to discern what might be authentic or inauthentic in the synoptics, but chooses to take the whole as equally valid. In particular, he never mentions Q (a very early sayings source that both Matthew and Luke incorporated into their gospels), and takes Q material from Matthew and Luke on equal ground with p-Matthew and p-Luke material.

Sanders says: "It is my own view that we cannot recover Jesus' view merely by picking and choosing among the sayings... I do not think that a historical reconstruction should depend on the notion that we can definitely establish what Jesus did not say" (176). This view seems sensible at first, but in preserving all the material of the synoptics and throwing out all other gospels, he is already picking and choosing among sayings; he is just doing it in a deeply arbitrary fashion. I would hypothesize that Sanders had a religious motive for preserving the canonical texts so thoroughly.

Despite Sanders' odd textual methods, I still liked his book a lot. I would recommend his book strongly for giving a rational and historical context to Bible study, but perhaps not for an academic setting.

How difficult is to give an appreciation about religion without hurting feelings. Anyway, I really found that this book is a very interesting and scholarship analysis of the synoptic gospels based on the context of history and religion of the time. The book does not deny or confirm anything, although provides ideas and explanations of some of the most interesting parts of Jesus life such as his miracles, trial and resurrection. Of course, these explanations are just probabilities based on the life, politics and religion of the time. I agree with the author that althought, and sadly, there is no much information about Jesus but the bible, we do know Jesus whereabouts and message.

Based on its contents, the title of this book should have been "The Historical Figure of Jesus According to the Synoptic Gospels".