4.6 out of 5 stars 23 ratings
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4.6 out of 5 stars
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Stevie Jake
5.0 out of 5 stars Great Primer on the Gospels and PaulReviewed in the United States on June 25, 2012
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Unfortunately, this is the first book I have read by New Testament scholar James Dunn. However, after reading this quick and informative book I have no doubt I will be visiting Dunn's scholarship in the future. So what exactly is this book about? Well the title sums it up rather well; it's about Jesus, Paul and the canonical Gospels. I believe what Dunn does in this book (quickly but not superficially) is he takes the reader from the life of Jesus to the writings of Paul and illuminates the continuity between said events. Dunn shows wonderfully how Jesus' life connects to the early Christian oral traditions/communities; how the communities led to the written Gospels; how Paul became affiliated with the Christian communities; and how Paul's letters continued the tradition of Christianity. In the book Dunn sheds scholarly light on the following questions (and many more):
-Are the Gospels reliable?
-What are some characteristics of Jesus we can be relatively certain about?
-Were the Gospel's sources written, oral, or both?
-How orally dependent were the earliest Christian communities and how does this factor into the genre and nature of the Gospels?
-What can be said of the Gospel of John? Is there any historicity contained in it?
-Is there any continuity between what Jesus preached and what Paul proclaimed?
-Are Jesus' proclamations at odds with Paul's?
-How did Paul identify himself?
-Was Paul an apostate?
-To what was Paul converted?
Dunn does an absolute wonderful job of bringing his scholarship to the level of the layperson in this book. This is probably the best introductory book on Jesus, Paul and the canonical Gospels because (as I mentioned above) Dunn does a fine job of following the line of continuity from Jesus to Paul. It gives readers vivid insight into how the Gospels and Paul's letters were formed from the impression left by Jesus. I highly recommend this to anyone looking for a quick (but scholarly) treatment of New Testament studies.
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S. E. Moore
5.0 out of 5 stars Breaking The BarriersReviewed in the United States on February 5, 2013
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James Dunn is a breath of fresh air from the stale mantras being spewed out by modern liberal New Testament scholarship. It seems as if modern Jesus-questers win points in the academic community and in the popular media for trying to debunk the Christian faith. In their zeal to outdo eachother they ignore the truth and create their own facts to support their agenda. In order to debunk the Christian faith, Jesus has to be isolated from the New Testament and particularly from the Apostle Paul. They dare not attack Jesus but they have to redefine him into the new politically correct messiah who everyone can agree on. Paul, on the other hand, becomes the whipping boy for everything that they feel is wrong with the Christian faith. It's not enough that Paul was whipped and beaten in his lifetime, now he is being whipped up on by pseudo-scholars who want to make a name for themselves. It takes a real scholar like James D. G. Dunn to set the record straight and knock down the bogus walls that modern liberal scholarship has erected between Jesus, the New Testament, and the Apostle Paul.
Much of the material in regard to the historical Jesus can be found in Dunn's superb book, Jesus Remembered. The major theme of Jesus' ministry was the Kingdom of God which was soon to come yet was being manifested in Jesus miracles and exorcisms which demonstrated that his generation was living in the end times. Jesus saw his role as a prophetic calling to prepare Israel for this cataclysmic event by gathering the twelve tribes and reaching out to the marginal members of his society known as "the lost sheep of Israel". Dunn explains how Paul's missionary activities among the gentiles was a logical continuation and extension of this prophetic calling.
Dunn explains how the earliest traditions of Jesus were preserved and passed down orally due to the fact that most of his disciples were illiterate. Dunn challenges the theory of a so-called Q document. The Q verses were not necesarily a single document but common oral and written sources which both Matthew and Luke had independent access to.
Dunn sheds new light on the Gospel of John which is practically ignored as completely unhistorical by modern Jesus-questers. Dunn admits that the Gospel of John is written from a post resurrection perspective of the Spirit or Paraclete, yet it preserves unique historical information which cannot be found in the synoptic gospels. While Jesus' ministry starts after the imprisonment of John the Baptist and is mostly confined to Galilee, John's Gospel retains the memory of Jesus emerging from the circle of John the Baptist and commencing his ministry in Judea which was concurrent with and complemented John the Baptist's ministry. It reveals how Jesus had a following in and around Jerusalem who played prominent roles at the very end of Jesus' life and for the start of the earliest followers in Jerusalem.
Dunn explains how the Gospel of John has striking parallels in Jewish apocalyptic writings and shares ideas found in Merkabah mysticism. However, instead of ascending to Heaven, Jesus came down from Heaven to reveal the mysteries of God. To Johannine Jewish Christians, Jesus was the personification and incarnation of God's Wisdom. To the sages of Israel, God's Wisdom was inscripturated into the Torah.
Dunn refutes the idea that there was any considerable gulf between the gospel of Jesus and the gospel which Paul preached. Paul neither departed from nor corrupted the gospel of Jesus.
Paul believed in the imminent arrival of God's Kingdom and believed that it was already being manifested by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Like Jesus, Paul believed that his generation was the generation of the end-times.
Paul's outreach to the gentiles was not only a prophetic calling, but was a crucial step to bring about the Kingdom by Israel fulfilling its role as a light to the gentiles. It was a logical continuation of Jesus proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom to the marginal members of Israel. Like the lost sheep of Israel, gentiles were considered sinners living outside of God's grace.
Like Jesus, Paul was more concerned with the spirit of the law which he referred to as being led by the Spirit. This same emphasis of following the spirit and not the letter of the law is found in the Sermon on the Mount. It can be found in the prophetic announcement that the law would one day be written in the heart. Paul did not teach a lawless gospel devoid of morality. Paul was opposed to those "works of the law" which segregated Jews from gentiles. To Paul, these barriers had to be surmounted in order to fulfil God's plan of salvation. To Paul, only the sacrifice of Jesus and his resurrection allowed this to happen. This extension of God's grace to the gentiles made it possible for them to recognize and worship the God of Israel.
To Paul, the spirit which empowered Jesus was the same spirit which would empower his followers. However, it had to be tested to conform to what Jesus lived and taught. Paul obviously knew more about Jesus' actions and words than his letters reveal.
Dunn effectively refutes the tired old mantra that Paul created his own Christology which was out of sync with James and the disciples. It was Saul of Tarsus' zeal for the law as he perceived it which motivated him to persecute the followers of Jesus prior to his conversion. Few modern scholars other than Larry Hurtado broach the subject of what Saul found so offensive about the message of Jesus which he was radically converted to. Dunn suggests that the Hellenist faction identified with the views of Stephen were perceived as a threat to Israel's identity as a holy and separate nation.
Dunn makes the brilliant observation that "without Paul, the messianic sect of the Nazarenes may have remained a renewal sect within Judaism destined to fade fade away or be reabsorbed into Rabbinic Judiasm some generations later." Dunn goes on to say that Paul can be characterized as one of the truest disciples of Jesus - not simply the exalted Lord Jesus Christ, but also of Jesus of Nazareth.
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TBF
5.0 out of 5 stars Proverbs 15:7Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2014
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This was informative for me in both personal Bible reading and as a part of lifelong study. It helps me know a few, initial aspects of how the "Jesus tradition", it's development into what we have as the Gospel's (text), and how these four accounts shaped the life and ministry of the Apostle Paul.
Learning from our elders of the faith is a part to living out our faith. Learning about the world and words of Scripture, be that OT or NT, and gaining insight from centuries removed is invaluable. We can do so by reading books such as this one from James Dunn whose scholarship is exemplary.
Jesus is LORD! (Rom 10:9)
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thepoetnmotion
5.0 out of 5 stars Worth the money and the read.Reviewed in the United States on August 17, 2014
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I've made it through most of this book. Dunn does a good job of answering some questions I've always had regarding the Gospels. He brings the oral tradition of Jesus in to the discussion. The book is worth the money and the read. And you don't have to be a biblical scholar to follow Dunn's reasoning.
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Craig A. Robertson
5.0 out of 5 stars Entree to James D. G. Dunn's contribution to our understanding of the Gospel Tradition, Jesus and PaulReviewed in the United States on January 23, 2014
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These essays, edited from several series of his public lectures in various venues, offer an accessible entree to the multi-faceted body of work of this major British New Testament scholar. Readable, honest and carefully reasoned throughout. You will find yourself tempted to dig further into the issues he addresses.
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Irving
4.0 out of 5 stars Good Companion to Dunn's book The New Perspective on PaulReviewed in the United States on March 10, 2014
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I believe James D. G. Dunn has written more works on St Paul and his Theology than any other Author I know of. It was not as hard to read as some of his works, but if you like Dunn as an author and theologian, Jesus, Paul and the Gospels is a good addition to one's Dunn collection and is an excellent reference source.
I. L. Brittle Jr.
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P Dyer
4.0 out of 5 stars ... slightly more conservative view than mine but what I delighted in was the easy readable style of his writingReviewed in the United States on December 16, 2014
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Dunn comes fro a slightly more conservative view than mine but what I delighted in was the easy readable style of his writing. For anyone interested in exploring the impact Paul had on the emerging Christian movement this is a worthwhile read.
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Chris
5.0 out of 5 stars "Jesus, Paul, and the Gospels", James D. G. Dunn. Short review by Dr Chris Girvan.Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 30, 2013
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This is a really excellent book written by an expert theologian who is able to express himself in language that is easily understood not only by professors and lecturers in divinity but also by any member of the laity in any Christian Church who wants to be well informed about what lies behind what came to be recorded in what we call the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles and the Letters that make up the New Testament. Professor Dunn decided to write this book in order to share the contents of a series of lectures that he gave at an International Seminar on Saint Paul organised by the Society Sao Paulo at its centre on Ariccia on Lake Alban and other events arranged as a result of Pope Benedict XVI's decision to celebrate the year 2008-9 as the bimillennial year of Paul.
In his preface to his book, Professor Dunn expresses his hope that his book will enable those who read it will more fully appreciate Jesus, Paul and the Gospels, their relation to one another and of their continuing importance for Christian self-understanding and for the growth of mutual understanding and respect between Jew and Christian.
One reviewer of the book, Professor Michael J Gorman of St. Mary's Seminary and University in Baltimore, Maryland expressed himself thus: "Anyone seeking an introduction to Jesus, Paul and the Gospels, and their interconnections will find no better book than this.''
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Roy J Squires
5.0 out of 5 stars History of Christianity in the making - in brillian brevityReviewed in the United Kingdom on November 19, 2016
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A brilliant summary of his 3 volume work on the making of Christianity
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Juan Cahis Llugany
5.0 out of 5 stars Muy buenoReviewed in Spain on March 14, 2019
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Extraordinario, como todo lo de James D. G. Dunn
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