Jesus: A Life
A.N. Wilson
3.77
361 ratings33 reviews
What are the facts about the life of Jesus,
as opposed to the myths, or unprovable tenets of faith surrounding the miracles, death, and resurrection?
How and when did Christianity become a separate religion from the Judaism into which Jesus was born?
To what extent was his power over contemporaries political rather than religious? A. N. Wilson's answers to these questions will fascinate readers of every shade of faith or skepticism.
GenresHistoryReligionBiographyChristianityNonfictionTheologyChristianSpiritualityAncient History ...show all
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1992
Displaying 1 - 10 of 33 reviews
Terry Bonner
27 reviews · 10 followers
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July 17, 2012
GenresHistoryReligionBiographyChristianityNonfictionTheologyChristianSpiritualityAncient History ...show all
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1992
Displaying 1 - 10 of 33 reviews
Terry Bonner
27 reviews · 10 followers
Follow
July 17, 2012
I will admit that I'm a reader. Like any reader, I have been enthralled, sometimes even enraptured, by the words I've encountered in scores of good books. There have been very few, however, which changed my life.
A.N. Wilson's profound biography, JESUS: A LIFE , is a book which changed my life.
Wilson spent his youth studying to be an Anglican priest. Somewhere along the line he lost his faith, only to later rediscover it. In the process of that journey, he swallowed, digested and spewed forth some of the most elegant observations on what modern humans can really know about the historical figure of Jesus.
His scholarship is second-hand and derivative, but it is proffered to the reader in an unvarnished, disinterested and completely straightforward manner. Wilson's aim is not to proselytize, apologize or sermonize. His sole purpose is to reconstruct what few facts have survived about a man who, although briefly notorious in a very small province of a very large empire, mattered little to history even in his lifetime.
The Jesus of the Gospels is almost certainly fictional. The Gospels were never intended as histories and they actually conform very closely to many other contemporaneous books in similar genres. Scholars are agreed, however, that many words attributed to Jesus are authentic. Wilson goes to great lengths in reconstructing the setting of the Galilean hinterlands which spawned Jesus, the culture which nurtured him, and the political climate of the Roman Occupation which elevated him from just another rabbi to the leader of the resistance. It is quite a story.
Wilson was never a militant atheist. Neither is he now a dogmatic Christian. He approaches the person of Jesus respectfully, without prejudice or preconception, and presents his findings with courage. Where he speculates about the interaction of religious and political forces in first century Palestine, he is scrupulous about marking it as speculative or unsubstantiated.
I fell in love with this book. It is accessible, lively and totally engaging. What's more, I found the demythologizing of the historical Jesus to be liberating. I actually found the human Jesus, a man of his age who would have felt a strong sense of camaraderie with Dr. King or Gandhi, to be figure I could respect and even admire.
Wilson wrote an equally engaging companion book called, "Paul, The Mind of the Apostle", which attempts to explain how the far more documented historical figure of Paul artfully manipulated the dead Jesus into the iconic Christ. It is also worth reading and is equally edifying. I won't bore you with the details of how a very small group of partisans in Jerusalem, led by the brother of the martyred Jesus, were left behind by a very canny, zealous and sometimes unscrupulous genius of a marketer. Suffice it to say, you will want to read "The Mind of the Apostle".
Whether you are a believer or not, "Jesus: A Life" is one book which you will never forget. I see no purpose in denying the factual existence of the historical Jesus, because he did leave a paper trail in the Roman world. And, of course, he almost certainly was not the same character recorded two and three generations later in the Gospels. But he did say some very interesting things -- teachings which ring absolutely authentic when subjected to the most rigorous systems of redaction criticism. Surprisingly, those teachings are almost exclusively about social justice, equality, the obligations of the powerful and the dignity of the powerless.
As I've said more than once tonight, I loved this book. And, to my utter amazement, I LOVED the Jesus who emerged within its pages. This Jesus is not crowned with diadems or ascending triumphantly into paradise. He is, in those haunting words of RFK's eulogy, "a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."
I first read this book some twenty years ago and it still haunts me. In becoming acquainted with Jesus the man, I became comfortable with my own humanity. I stopped looking for God too high up and too far away. No doubt few of you will share my experience, but I do believe that most of you will benefit from sharing Wilson's pilgrimage to rediscover an actual human being who never wanted to be God, but merely to see God's justice prevail. Jesus did not die for your right to lord power over others. If he had any single purpose in risking martyrdom at the hands of the Romans, it was to empower his fellow Judeans against their occupiers. And it wasn't simply for the sake of a free Judea. It was for the cause of a just Israel.
I can live with that. It is marvelously, deliciously, transcendently human.
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Sajith Kumar
576 reviews · 89 followers
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September 18, 2021
The figure of Jesus Christ equally permeates the hallowed space of religious scholarship and the profane sphere of history like no other personage or divinity has ever done. A large chunk of the populace believe that he was the Son of God, died on the cross to atone the sins of humanity and that anyone who believed in him can have everlasting life in the kingdom of God which is yet to come. Obviously, what the believers make out of Christ is clearly at odds with the sayings and deeds of the historical Jesus, who ‘existed within an acceptable religious framework and was not setting out to found a new religion, still less to found a philosophical school’. His teachings were different from other teachers of religion in that he spoke in parables. Also, ‘he didn’t wish to deliver the people with a finished pattern which they could follow. The pattern was something which they must make for themselves’. This book is the result of a very relevant attempt to reconcile the historical Jesus with the divine Christ in light of the improvement in Biblical scholarship after 1950 as a result of new archeological and literary finds. A N Wilson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has held a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is a great biographer and is also a celebrated and prize-winning novelist. However, he is not a Biblical scholar and his biographies of Jesus (this book) and Paul had been instrumental in flaring controversies up.
Wilson claims that the Apostle Paul had invented the Christianity with which we are familiar today. He transformed the Jewish rituals practiced by Jesus into a form acceptable to the gentiles in Asia Minor, Greece and Rome, where the nascent Christianity took root. The book presents the example of the Eucharist which is not at all a Jewish custom. Similarly, most of the fantastic tales associated with Jesus remind more of the mystery cults of the Mediterranean. There are two stages the gospels took, in assuming its present form. First is the oral tradition about Jesus being eventually written down, and then reshaped by the evangelists for their own particular audiences. An approximate date on which they took the present shape is also guessed at. Mark’s gospel was the first among them, which saw the light of the day in 60 CE, in Rome. Matthew came out in Antioch 85 CE, Luke in Corinth 80 CE and John in 100 CE. The historicity of gospels is a pressing point and addressed as such in the book, but no definite answer is given. We can never find the truth by modern historical techniques. Wilson treats them more as stories in which historical characters are woven in. Luke mentions a Roman census when Quirinius was the governor of Syria and Herod the king of Judaea. However, history tells us that Herod reigned between 37 - 4 BCE and Quirinius was not the Syrian governor in this period. Moreover, the census was held in anticipation of imposing a hated poll tax on the Jews and nobody was expected to travel to their ancestors’ places, who had lived centuries before. The book presents a lot many examples like these.
However, the author admits that the New Testament could well be closer in time to Jesus than was once supposed. The analogy is arresting. It is said to be like entering a room after a person has just left, with the impression of a head clearly visible against the cushion, a glass half-empty by the chair, or a cigarette still smouldering in the ash-tray. There are historians who convincingly argue that Jesus was never a living presence in history, but only as religious speculation. This can’t be true. What other evidence do they propose to get convinced, of a person who lived twenty centuries ago? We conceive of the historicity of Buddha or Alexander only through literary references dating very close to their supposed life spans. With this argument at our backs, we’d have to conclude that Jesus was a historical person.
As can be expected, the gospels contain some exaggerated accounts of Jesus’ deeds. Wilson mentions a few incongruities between the narratives of the four gospels which could only come about if the writers were genuinely confused about some of the finer aspects of a real, historical event. Also, it is likely that Jesus was not a carpenter at all, but rather a scholar. Besides, the author warns that the gospels are not balanced biographies, but are really Passion narratives. The other parts in it are just a prelude to the accounts of the last week of Jesus’ life. Subjectivity is the only criterion of gospel truth. This book also examines why Jesus soon became a thorn in the flesh of Jewish religious orthodoxy, which believed in strict observance of rituals for condoning their sins. Jesus granted God’s forgiveness to sinners who simply believed in and followed God in spirit and truth. This ran contrary to the theories of the Pharisees or Essenes who thought that only the pure deserved it.
The effort taken by the gospel writers in ameliorating the guilt of the Romans in condemning Christ requires special mention. This is an area which must be examined in more detail. They place all blame at the doors of the Jews who even demands that his blood be on them and their progeny. The governor Pilate is portrayed as forced to order Jesus’ crucifixion by the mob’s pressure. This incident paved the way for the growth of anti-Semitism in Christian lands, but it was only a bid to propagate the new religion of Christianity among Roman citizens. Convenient to their effort, the parallel church in Jerusalem headed by Jesus’ brother James was crushed in the outbreak of violence against Roman authority and the subsequent purge and destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.
As claimed, the book is indeed a dispassionate account of Jesus of Nazareth rather than Christ of Bethlehem. He presents some original concepts which are very bold. He proposes that Apostle Paul was the servant of the High Priest who was in the team that arrested Jesus at Gethsemane and who had his ear injured in the skirmish. This goes well with the fact that Paul was one of the persecutors of Christians in the beginning and only came round to adoring Jesus after a revelation on the road to Damascus. The book is very well researched and contains a good bibliography with an impressive index. However, the narrative is a bit terse which requires constant vigil from the readers.
The book is highly recommended.
christianity religion
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Lisa Marie Gabriel
25 books · 76 followers
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September 16, 2018
Your reaction to this remarkable book is going to depend on many things; if you have an interest in the real person behind the stories, whether or not you are a Christian, your world view and the place of God or religion within it and so much more. For my own part I am what you might call a hedge Christian. You have heard of hedge witches? Witches who practice outside a coven? Well, my version of Christianity is like that. As a child I was in awe of the mystery and profound sense of holiness I found within the church and my upbringing was steeped in Anglo-Catholicism.
I got out of the church habit as a busy teenager – I was too busy with school, sports and hobbies and it was too hard to go back to something I never felt quite good enough for. The evangelical Christians I met outside the home were all so good and I was not. Some of their views seemed odd and exclusionary and I couldn’t cope with that. However I never lost a belief in God or in Jesus and my entire life has been an argument between my faith and what others say my faith needs me to be.
I read the notorious Unlock Reality after all the fuss on Care 2 and thought “Yes, I think I get it.” This book is like Unlock Reality for grownups. Sometimes the language is unfamiliar to me; I had to look up Midrash for instance. Print is small, sentences are long and the research is painstaking but the book nevertheless is beautifully written following extensive scholarship on the author’s part. It says on the cover that “A.N.Wilson writes like an angel” and I am not entirely sure what that means. I do know that researching and writing this biography of the historical Jesus challenged his Christian faith to the point where he could no longer call himself a Christian and I am not at all surprised. If by Christianity, you mean the religion created, in the main, by St Paul and his adherents or the institution of the Church then reading this will reveal how little this had to do with Jesus the Man rather than the legend.
I could go on and on in this vein but I don’t want to spoil the adventure for other readers or incur the wrathful trolling of the Christianity police. Suffice it to say that there will be some surprises in this book as to events, actions and motives, the accepted chronology of the gospels, the likelihood of the Romans or the Jews being responsible for what happened to Jesus, the dreadful persecution of the Jews that has followed on from the Synoptic/Paulian party line, the authenticity of those synoptic gospels, the actions of Martin Luther towards the Letter of James, conflict in the early Church and much more.
It has certainly helped my understanding and my individual belief. I do not disbelieve. I do feel less depressed about my “hedge Christian” existence and more reconciled with conflicting aspects of my own personality. I am reading my Bible with new eyes, I want to read the Apocrypha now and I hope new scrolls surface one day with fresh evidence for how it really was for those first century Jewish followers of Jesus.
One telling passage in the final chapter of Wilson’s book really hit home:
“The truth is that Jesus remains too disturbing a figure ever to be left to himself. Christianity in all its multifarious manifestations, Orthodox and heterodox, has been a repeated attempt to make sense of him, to cut him down to size. The extent to which no saying or story of Jesus can, in fact, be taken to its logical conclusion without being contradicted by some other saying or fact is perhaps less a symptom of how imperfectly the Gospels record him than how oblique and how terrifying a figure he actually was in history. Terrifying, because he really does undermine everything.”
Read it, it probably won’t destroy your faith and it may well affirm it.
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Carl Williams
495 reviews · 4 followers
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November 16, 2017
This book is an interesting composite—part biography, part interpretation of Scripture, part conjecture, and part common sense assumption. Wilson looks at Jesus’ life through first century archaeological and historical understanding though he makes on attempt to create a system out of the contradictory statements that come from the four Gospels; Jesus is presented as a Galilean _hasid_ who did not seem to have setting up a church in mind at all.
“It is out of Galilee, healers and shamans, of revolutionaries and freedom-fighters, of religiously independent northern, of rich frames and prosperous fishermen, that Jesus was to come.” (p 100)
A fairly delightfully disruptive read—questioning and open-minded, respectfully skeptical and speculative. Recommended.
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Pete daPixie
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April 11, 2009
A.N. Wilson is a clever writer, but he isn't a biblical scholar, and his picture of the historical Jesus is not quite up to the mark, mathew, luke and john.
I get the impression that the author is a lapsed church attendee of the Jesus of faith, who needs to get closer to his target by viewing his historical first century Judaic setting.
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Maggie
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March 2, 2011
Fascinating, easy to reasd info (not like a textbook). Only thing to keep in mind is that the author presents an atheist view in which any magic or miracles must be explained away. Regardless, provides a wonderful and thought provoking perspective into the times.
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Stacy Croushorn
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March 24, 2016
Really is a good book. Doesn't dispute the divinity of Christ, but tried to figure out what might he had actually said and done without the theological embellishment.
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Laurie
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March 30, 2020
An amazing amount of research went into this book.
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Nicolas Shump
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June 2, 2012
Wilson is a good and well-respected biographer who has written other biographies of writers who have religious themes in their writings, namely C.S. Lewis and Leo Tolstoy. Jesus: A Life is a balanced look at the life of Jesus, especially for someone who is no longer a believing Christian. However, his main argument that Jesus is basically too Jewish to have been the Messiah is not particular original.
Wilson relies quite heavily on the work of the Jewish scholar, Geza Vermes.
Still Wilson is admirably sensitive to Christianity and Christians. Unlike John Dominic Crossan, he actually gives the benefit of the doubt to believers and allows for some veracity of the Christian mythos.
There are some specific issues that I think Wilson does not fully consider or develop.
If the Jewish followers of Jesus were "blasphemous", why is it hard to believe that they may have been harassed by the Jewish religious leaders?
Wilson asserts that the belief of the earliest Christians were different from later credal formulations, but he doesn't really back this up. Documents like the Didache show a remarkable similarity to documents like the Nicene Creed.
Wilson discounts the "agony in the garden" by appealing to Jesus' divinity? So why can't Wilson wrap his head around a fully human Jesus? I'm sure there is some ancient heresy that this falls under.
Even though Wilson has a background in Classics, he claims that any phrase or portion of the New Testament that cannot be translated back into Aramaic is probably not authentic? This is an odd standard and one that he needed to defend better.
He makes a rather thin claim about Jesus' belief in astrology because of Qumran, but doesn't definitively tie Jesus to the Qumran community or to astrology.
Wilson claims, as many do, that Jesus is not the founder of the Christian Church, but he also doesn't explain away the Petrine commission, the role of early disciples in first century controversies, and other similar scriptural passages.
He also seems to prefer John's Gospel to the Synoptics, but doesn't give any reason why this is so. I know this isn't a scholarly work necessarily, but I think that is a cop-out.
Wilson unnecessarily ties the institution of the Eucharist to the Church itself. Why? What about Jesus' ministry to the Gentiles, mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels that preceded John too. I also dont' but that Jesus didn't institute the Eucharist because he knew that he was going to be arrested.
Doesn't it make sense that if you were going to institute a New Kingdom and usher in the "reign of God" that this would be a good time to do so? How fitting a memorial this would be.
Wilson claims that there is no account of Jesus' crime, but fails to mention that both Josephus and Tacitus make reference to Jesus' death as a criminal as do the Gospels.
Finally, Wilson claims that Jesus was no a theologian, but there are various examples (the parables, Sermon on the Mount, debates with the religious authorities, where Jesus seems to be a quite able practitioner of theology and a sound religious teacher.
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Eric Logan
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March 31, 2010
A.N. Wilson's attempt at a historical biography of the life of Jesus is well written and interesting. The roots of some esoteric belief systems like gnosticism are well explained here. Recommended reading for students of scripture who are well versed in the history of various canons. Not recommend for those seeking affirmation of mainstream belief. Contains lots of controversial subject matter on the life and formation of the Christian church and its schisms.
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Wilson spent his youth studying to be an Anglican priest. Somewhere along the line he lost his faith, only to later rediscover it. In the process of that journey, he swallowed, digested and spewed forth some of the most elegant observations on what modern humans can really know about the historical figure of Jesus.
His scholarship is second-hand and derivative, but it is proffered to the reader in an unvarnished, disinterested and completely straightforward manner. Wilson's aim is not to proselytize, apologize or sermonize. His sole purpose is to reconstruct what few facts have survived about a man who, although briefly notorious in a very small province of a very large empire, mattered little to history even in his lifetime.
The Jesus of the Gospels is almost certainly fictional. The Gospels were never intended as histories and they actually conform very closely to many other contemporaneous books in similar genres. Scholars are agreed, however, that many words attributed to Jesus are authentic. Wilson goes to great lengths in reconstructing the setting of the Galilean hinterlands which spawned Jesus, the culture which nurtured him, and the political climate of the Roman Occupation which elevated him from just another rabbi to the leader of the resistance. It is quite a story.
Wilson was never a militant atheist. Neither is he now a dogmatic Christian. He approaches the person of Jesus respectfully, without prejudice or preconception, and presents his findings with courage. Where he speculates about the interaction of religious and political forces in first century Palestine, he is scrupulous about marking it as speculative or unsubstantiated.
I fell in love with this book. It is accessible, lively and totally engaging. What's more, I found the demythologizing of the historical Jesus to be liberating. I actually found the human Jesus, a man of his age who would have felt a strong sense of camaraderie with Dr. King or Gandhi, to be figure I could respect and even admire.
Wilson wrote an equally engaging companion book called, "Paul, The Mind of the Apostle", which attempts to explain how the far more documented historical figure of Paul artfully manipulated the dead Jesus into the iconic Christ. It is also worth reading and is equally edifying. I won't bore you with the details of how a very small group of partisans in Jerusalem, led by the brother of the martyred Jesus, were left behind by a very canny, zealous and sometimes unscrupulous genius of a marketer. Suffice it to say, you will want to read "The Mind of the Apostle".
Whether you are a believer or not, "Jesus: A Life" is one book which you will never forget. I see no purpose in denying the factual existence of the historical Jesus, because he did leave a paper trail in the Roman world. And, of course, he almost certainly was not the same character recorded two and three generations later in the Gospels. But he did say some very interesting things -- teachings which ring absolutely authentic when subjected to the most rigorous systems of redaction criticism. Surprisingly, those teachings are almost exclusively about social justice, equality, the obligations of the powerful and the dignity of the powerless.
As I've said more than once tonight, I loved this book. And, to my utter amazement, I LOVED the Jesus who emerged within its pages. This Jesus is not crowned with diadems or ascending triumphantly into paradise. He is, in those haunting words of RFK's eulogy, "a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."
I first read this book some twenty years ago and it still haunts me. In becoming acquainted with Jesus the man, I became comfortable with my own humanity. I stopped looking for God too high up and too far away. No doubt few of you will share my experience, but I do believe that most of you will benefit from sharing Wilson's pilgrimage to rediscover an actual human being who never wanted to be God, but merely to see God's justice prevail. Jesus did not die for your right to lord power over others. If he had any single purpose in risking martyrdom at the hands of the Romans, it was to empower his fellow Judeans against their occupiers. And it wasn't simply for the sake of a free Judea. It was for the cause of a just Israel.
I can live with that. It is marvelously, deliciously, transcendently human.
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Comment
Sajith Kumar
576 reviews · 89 followers
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September 18, 2021
The figure of Jesus Christ equally permeates the hallowed space of religious scholarship and the profane sphere of history like no other personage or divinity has ever done. A large chunk of the populace believe that he was the Son of God, died on the cross to atone the sins of humanity and that anyone who believed in him can have everlasting life in the kingdom of God which is yet to come. Obviously, what the believers make out of Christ is clearly at odds with the sayings and deeds of the historical Jesus, who ‘existed within an acceptable religious framework and was not setting out to found a new religion, still less to found a philosophical school’. His teachings were different from other teachers of religion in that he spoke in parables. Also, ‘he didn’t wish to deliver the people with a finished pattern which they could follow. The pattern was something which they must make for themselves’. This book is the result of a very relevant attempt to reconcile the historical Jesus with the divine Christ in light of the improvement in Biblical scholarship after 1950 as a result of new archeological and literary finds. A N Wilson is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and has held a prominent position in the world of literature and journalism. He is a great biographer and is also a celebrated and prize-winning novelist. However, he is not a Biblical scholar and his biographies of Jesus (this book) and Paul had been instrumental in flaring controversies up.
Wilson claims that the Apostle Paul had invented the Christianity with which we are familiar today. He transformed the Jewish rituals practiced by Jesus into a form acceptable to the gentiles in Asia Minor, Greece and Rome, where the nascent Christianity took root. The book presents the example of the Eucharist which is not at all a Jewish custom. Similarly, most of the fantastic tales associated with Jesus remind more of the mystery cults of the Mediterranean. There are two stages the gospels took, in assuming its present form. First is the oral tradition about Jesus being eventually written down, and then reshaped by the evangelists for their own particular audiences. An approximate date on which they took the present shape is also guessed at. Mark’s gospel was the first among them, which saw the light of the day in 60 CE, in Rome. Matthew came out in Antioch 85 CE, Luke in Corinth 80 CE and John in 100 CE. The historicity of gospels is a pressing point and addressed as such in the book, but no definite answer is given. We can never find the truth by modern historical techniques. Wilson treats them more as stories in which historical characters are woven in. Luke mentions a Roman census when Quirinius was the governor of Syria and Herod the king of Judaea. However, history tells us that Herod reigned between 37 - 4 BCE and Quirinius was not the Syrian governor in this period. Moreover, the census was held in anticipation of imposing a hated poll tax on the Jews and nobody was expected to travel to their ancestors’ places, who had lived centuries before. The book presents a lot many examples like these.
However, the author admits that the New Testament could well be closer in time to Jesus than was once supposed. The analogy is arresting. It is said to be like entering a room after a person has just left, with the impression of a head clearly visible against the cushion, a glass half-empty by the chair, or a cigarette still smouldering in the ash-tray. There are historians who convincingly argue that Jesus was never a living presence in history, but only as religious speculation. This can’t be true. What other evidence do they propose to get convinced, of a person who lived twenty centuries ago? We conceive of the historicity of Buddha or Alexander only through literary references dating very close to their supposed life spans. With this argument at our backs, we’d have to conclude that Jesus was a historical person.
As can be expected, the gospels contain some exaggerated accounts of Jesus’ deeds. Wilson mentions a few incongruities between the narratives of the four gospels which could only come about if the writers were genuinely confused about some of the finer aspects of a real, historical event. Also, it is likely that Jesus was not a carpenter at all, but rather a scholar. Besides, the author warns that the gospels are not balanced biographies, but are really Passion narratives. The other parts in it are just a prelude to the accounts of the last week of Jesus’ life. Subjectivity is the only criterion of gospel truth. This book also examines why Jesus soon became a thorn in the flesh of Jewish religious orthodoxy, which believed in strict observance of rituals for condoning their sins. Jesus granted God’s forgiveness to sinners who simply believed in and followed God in spirit and truth. This ran contrary to the theories of the Pharisees or Essenes who thought that only the pure deserved it.
The effort taken by the gospel writers in ameliorating the guilt of the Romans in condemning Christ requires special mention. This is an area which must be examined in more detail. They place all blame at the doors of the Jews who even demands that his blood be on them and their progeny. The governor Pilate is portrayed as forced to order Jesus’ crucifixion by the mob’s pressure. This incident paved the way for the growth of anti-Semitism in Christian lands, but it was only a bid to propagate the new religion of Christianity among Roman citizens. Convenient to their effort, the parallel church in Jerusalem headed by Jesus’ brother James was crushed in the outbreak of violence against Roman authority and the subsequent purge and destruction of the Temple in 70 CE.
As claimed, the book is indeed a dispassionate account of Jesus of Nazareth rather than Christ of Bethlehem. He presents some original concepts which are very bold. He proposes that Apostle Paul was the servant of the High Priest who was in the team that arrested Jesus at Gethsemane and who had his ear injured in the skirmish. This goes well with the fact that Paul was one of the persecutors of Christians in the beginning and only came round to adoring Jesus after a revelation on the road to Damascus. The book is very well researched and contains a good bibliography with an impressive index. However, the narrative is a bit terse which requires constant vigil from the readers.
The book is highly recommended.
christianity religion
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Lisa Marie Gabriel
25 books · 76 followers
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September 16, 2018
Your reaction to this remarkable book is going to depend on many things; if you have an interest in the real person behind the stories, whether or not you are a Christian, your world view and the place of God or religion within it and so much more. For my own part I am what you might call a hedge Christian. You have heard of hedge witches? Witches who practice outside a coven? Well, my version of Christianity is like that. As a child I was in awe of the mystery and profound sense of holiness I found within the church and my upbringing was steeped in Anglo-Catholicism.
I got out of the church habit as a busy teenager – I was too busy with school, sports and hobbies and it was too hard to go back to something I never felt quite good enough for. The evangelical Christians I met outside the home were all so good and I was not. Some of their views seemed odd and exclusionary and I couldn’t cope with that. However I never lost a belief in God or in Jesus and my entire life has been an argument between my faith and what others say my faith needs me to be.
I read the notorious Unlock Reality after all the fuss on Care 2 and thought “Yes, I think I get it.” This book is like Unlock Reality for grownups. Sometimes the language is unfamiliar to me; I had to look up Midrash for instance. Print is small, sentences are long and the research is painstaking but the book nevertheless is beautifully written following extensive scholarship on the author’s part. It says on the cover that “A.N.Wilson writes like an angel” and I am not entirely sure what that means. I do know that researching and writing this biography of the historical Jesus challenged his Christian faith to the point where he could no longer call himself a Christian and I am not at all surprised. If by Christianity, you mean the religion created, in the main, by St Paul and his adherents or the institution of the Church then reading this will reveal how little this had to do with Jesus the Man rather than the legend.
I could go on and on in this vein but I don’t want to spoil the adventure for other readers or incur the wrathful trolling of the Christianity police. Suffice it to say that there will be some surprises in this book as to events, actions and motives, the accepted chronology of the gospels, the likelihood of the Romans or the Jews being responsible for what happened to Jesus, the dreadful persecution of the Jews that has followed on from the Synoptic/Paulian party line, the authenticity of those synoptic gospels, the actions of Martin Luther towards the Letter of James, conflict in the early Church and much more.
It has certainly helped my understanding and my individual belief. I do not disbelieve. I do feel less depressed about my “hedge Christian” existence and more reconciled with conflicting aspects of my own personality. I am reading my Bible with new eyes, I want to read the Apocrypha now and I hope new scrolls surface one day with fresh evidence for how it really was for those first century Jewish followers of Jesus.
One telling passage in the final chapter of Wilson’s book really hit home:
“The truth is that Jesus remains too disturbing a figure ever to be left to himself. Christianity in all its multifarious manifestations, Orthodox and heterodox, has been a repeated attempt to make sense of him, to cut him down to size. The extent to which no saying or story of Jesus can, in fact, be taken to its logical conclusion without being contradicted by some other saying or fact is perhaps less a symptom of how imperfectly the Gospels record him than how oblique and how terrifying a figure he actually was in history. Terrifying, because he really does undermine everything.”
Read it, it probably won’t destroy your faith and it may well affirm it.
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Carl Williams
495 reviews · 4 followers
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November 16, 2017
This book is an interesting composite—part biography, part interpretation of Scripture, part conjecture, and part common sense assumption. Wilson looks at Jesus’ life through first century archaeological and historical understanding though he makes on attempt to create a system out of the contradictory statements that come from the four Gospels; Jesus is presented as a Galilean _hasid_ who did not seem to have setting up a church in mind at all.
“It is out of Galilee, healers and shamans, of revolutionaries and freedom-fighters, of religiously independent northern, of rich frames and prosperous fishermen, that Jesus was to come.” (p 100)
A fairly delightfully disruptive read—questioning and open-minded, respectfully skeptical and speculative. Recommended.
history spirituality-and-religion
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Pete daPixie
1,505 reviews · 3 followers
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April 11, 2009
A.N. Wilson is a clever writer, but he isn't a biblical scholar, and his picture of the historical Jesus is not quite up to the mark, mathew, luke and john.
I get the impression that the author is a lapsed church attendee of the Jesus of faith, who needs to get closer to his target by viewing his historical first century Judaic setting.
historical-jesus
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Maggie
387 reviews · 17 followers
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March 2, 2011
Fascinating, easy to reasd info (not like a textbook). Only thing to keep in mind is that the author presents an atheist view in which any magic or miracles must be explained away. Regardless, provides a wonderful and thought provoking perspective into the times.
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Stacy Croushorn
537 reviews
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March 24, 2016
Really is a good book. Doesn't dispute the divinity of Christ, but tried to figure out what might he had actually said and done without the theological embellishment.
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Laurie
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March 30, 2020
An amazing amount of research went into this book.
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Nicolas Shump
154 reviews · 6 followers
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June 2, 2012
Wilson is a good and well-respected biographer who has written other biographies of writers who have religious themes in their writings, namely C.S. Lewis and Leo Tolstoy. Jesus: A Life is a balanced look at the life of Jesus, especially for someone who is no longer a believing Christian. However, his main argument that Jesus is basically too Jewish to have been the Messiah is not particular original.
Wilson relies quite heavily on the work of the Jewish scholar, Geza Vermes.
Still Wilson is admirably sensitive to Christianity and Christians. Unlike John Dominic Crossan, he actually gives the benefit of the doubt to believers and allows for some veracity of the Christian mythos.
There are some specific issues that I think Wilson does not fully consider or develop.
If the Jewish followers of Jesus were "blasphemous", why is it hard to believe that they may have been harassed by the Jewish religious leaders?
Wilson asserts that the belief of the earliest Christians were different from later credal formulations, but he doesn't really back this up. Documents like the Didache show a remarkable similarity to documents like the Nicene Creed.
Wilson discounts the "agony in the garden" by appealing to Jesus' divinity? So why can't Wilson wrap his head around a fully human Jesus? I'm sure there is some ancient heresy that this falls under.
Even though Wilson has a background in Classics, he claims that any phrase or portion of the New Testament that cannot be translated back into Aramaic is probably not authentic? This is an odd standard and one that he needed to defend better.
He makes a rather thin claim about Jesus' belief in astrology because of Qumran, but doesn't definitively tie Jesus to the Qumran community or to astrology.
Wilson claims, as many do, that Jesus is not the founder of the Christian Church, but he also doesn't explain away the Petrine commission, the role of early disciples in first century controversies, and other similar scriptural passages.
He also seems to prefer John's Gospel to the Synoptics, but doesn't give any reason why this is so. I know this isn't a scholarly work necessarily, but I think that is a cop-out.
Wilson unnecessarily ties the institution of the Eucharist to the Church itself. Why? What about Jesus' ministry to the Gentiles, mentioned in the Synoptic Gospels that preceded John too. I also dont' but that Jesus didn't institute the Eucharist because he knew that he was going to be arrested.
Doesn't it make sense that if you were going to institute a New Kingdom and usher in the "reign of God" that this would be a good time to do so? How fitting a memorial this would be.
Wilson claims that there is no account of Jesus' crime, but fails to mention that both Josephus and Tacitus make reference to Jesus' death as a criminal as do the Gospels.
Finally, Wilson claims that Jesus was no a theologian, but there are various examples (the parables, Sermon on the Mount, debates with the religious authorities, where Jesus seems to be a quite able practitioner of theology and a sound religious teacher.
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Eric Logan
8 reviews
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March 31, 2010
A.N. Wilson's attempt at a historical biography of the life of Jesus is well written and interesting. The roots of some esoteric belief systems like gnosticism are well explained here. Recommended reading for students of scripture who are well versed in the history of various canons. Not recommend for those seeking affirmation of mainstream belief. Contains lots of controversial subject matter on the life and formation of the Christian church and its schisms.
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Garry
4.0 out of 5 stars Gods truth ?
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 September 2021
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Wilson doesn’t pull any punches and rarely disappoints
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A. J. Bradbury
1.0 out of 5 stars This B ook is Out of Date
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 September 2013
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Wilson was already a well-known and respected literary critic and biographer when he wrote this book.
But he wasn't a theologian, he wasn't an historian, and as of 1989 he was no longer a Christian.
A good basis for writing an objective book about Jesus theChrist, you might think. But it isn't. In fact Tom Wright, sometime Bishop of Durham with a lengthy string of books to his name (and a new "full length" study of the life and work of Paul about to be published) has a neat little book out called "Who was Jesus?" which includes reviews of three books with "alternative views on the Christ and Christianity by Barbara Thiering, John Spong and ... (drum roll ... A.N. Wilson's 1992 book "Jesus", the follow up to his 1991 tirade against relion in general "Against Religion". (He seemed to like succinct tites).
But guess what. After sentencing himself to 20 years outside the Christian community, and after the veritable Tsunami of publicity at the time of his "unconversion", Wilson found his way back (a pretty courageous step in view of the previous publicity, even if it was twenty years in the past (i.e. in 2009).
So when other reviewers make remarks like "Christians won't like this book" they might want to consider in what context "Christians won't like it".
Personally, as someone who takes the so-called "New" atheists seriously (albeit often with tongue in cheek) I find books like this, Richard Dawkins' later efforts, Christopher Hitchens' rant, Victor Stenger's pseudo scientific approach (specifically "God: The Failed Hypothesis" and "The Folly of Faith") very necessary to my research into the "New" atheist mindset and how to respond to their claims.
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Francis
5.0 out of 5 stars 'Jesus' : a readable one volume historical approach
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 March 2013
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A very fine ,thought provoking,biography of Jesus.Keeps one's interest and I read it at one sitting.Obviously this book builds on other Jesus scholarship ,notably Geza Vermes many Jesus books. 'Jesus' coveris as much ground as one could wish for, in a single volume. As with most scholars taking the historical approach,the author is far more sceptical than I am.But I welcome such questioning as making me answer those questions by digging deeper than I had before.Or at least coming to terms with the fact I cannoy answer them by logic and reason alone.I'm sure I'll be referring to this book many times in the future.
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Algie
5.0 out of 5 stars Pimlico publishers once again produced a book that looks of the cheapest quality.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 27 April 2018
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As with A.N.Wilson's book on Paul the writing and the content are first class. However, he is badly let down by the dire production values of Pimlico publishers. Once again the text is 'bleary and smudgy'. It seems to be the way with all too many British publishers to produce a book that looks cheap and nasty while charging as high a price as they can get away with.
3 people found this helpful
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michael flynn
5.0 out of 5 stars the myth of christianity
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 June 2013
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this is a highly intelligent book about a fascinating character or person.it is much needed in an age when religion is lacking thought.
every page makes you think about the foundation faith of europe which today is losinjg out to brainless secular entertainment. a.n. wilson is an intelligent thinker. and a superb writer.
the writer clearly doubts the divinity of christ. he exposes the myths in christianity. and the anti jewish in the gospels.
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Brendan J Sands
5.0 out of 5 stars Alternative view to gospels and thought provoking.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 November 2018
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AN Wilson’s erudition and writing style make this book a must for both the Christian and the Agnostic.
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Colin R. Ashton
3.0 out of 5 stars I bought this for research purposes, because my local ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 March 2015
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I bought this for research purposes, because my local library no longer stocks it. A typical AN Wilson product, but his thesis for the life of Jesus doesn't add up.
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Maggie M
4.0 out of 5 stars Four Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 July 2016
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Very informative with thorough research
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barryb
4.0 out of 5 stars THE THEOLOGICAL-CHRIST THROUGH TWO LENSES:
Reviewed in the United States on 14 February 2015
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THE THEOLOGICAL-CHRIST THROUGH TWO LENSES:
This work was published in 1992; 5 years prior to his "Paul" manuscript of 1997. This is basically a warm-up for the book coming in 1997.
Wilson tells us there is only one "Jesus", and that is the "theological-Jesus"; and that theology is best examined through two filters: the Apostle Paul, and John's fourth gospel. The idea is brilliant, and I was prepared to take it all in; but, after the reality sets in, you realize that "one" filter was presented, meaning "Paul"; but john's Gospel gets short-changed terribly. It becomes a "Paul" book - and I already read that one.
Wilson tells us that Paul developed his theological position basically through the internalization of two separate incidents: the stoning of Stephen & the Parable of the Pharisee and the Publican. After these experiences Paul develops a radical theological position of redefined "DIKAIOSUNE"; which no longer must be filtered through Judaic practices first. SOTERIA remains Jewish; but "Inheritance" becomes universal. Pretty much the same thing in the later "Paul" book
But; whereas Paul gives us "redefined-DIKAIOSUNE", John is supposed to give us redefined-MEASURE". I'm all-in for that, but the analysis breaks-down and comes up short. John's document is not critiqued through the tensions of Judaic-persecution & gentile-imagination as promised. And it comes nowhere close to the tension Paul faced between Ebionite-christianity & Hellenistic-Christianity. Wilson just does not provide the ground-breaking analysis in John's case.
Instead, we get fairly common Jewish exposition of "measure" being informed by the new Torah of "the beatitudes". It's all kind of anti-climactic and leaves one wishing for another powerful "Paul" manuscript.
Therefore, I am sadly giving this manuscript an honest "4" stars; and feeling a little guilty in having to do so. Because I feel indebted after the superior-Paul manuscript.
I'll give you the analytical triads, just for your info:
PAUL: 1. Hostility; 2. Guilt & Collapse (Conversion); 3. "Boasting-in-the-Cross"
JOHN: 1. Tradition of Kosmos-world-view, "NEGATED"; 2. AFFIRMATION: as rebirth in Pure-Word; 3. Re-configuration of "Measure" & the "God-bearers-of-Light".
Good luck, enjoy.
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F. Mullen
3.0 out of 5 stars Not a Factory-new Book
Reviewed in the United States on 10 February 2021
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A very odd thing. Though this book came in what looked like a factory-applied plastic protective wrapper, and the binding was as stiff as what you'd expect from a new book, there were a number of what looked like faint coffee stains on the top of the book and on several interior pages. Even more telling, in the crease between two pages there were what appeared to be granola bits and even a stray eyelash.
I imagine the guy who runs the plastic wrap machine at the book production plant taking an interest in this book and pulling a copy off the assembly line for his morning coffee break. Despite the twin jolts from his cuppa and sugary snack, he can't quite keep the ol' peepers open, so he rubs them a bit, in the process losing exact control of both his cup and his oat bar. Break over, he returns the book to the line, where his mementos are duly wrapped and shipped.
All this, of course, has nothing to do with the quality of A.N. Wilson's work, which I am enjoying and highly recommend. This particular copy, though, is like borrowing a book from the library, where it has naturally earned the signs of previous use, but never having to return it.
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DeistMan
5.0 out of 5 stars Jesus of Faith or Jesus of History?
Reviewed in the United States on 3 September 2005
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Wilson has done a great job merely pointing out that as far as history is concerned we know nothing of Jesus. The Gospels as well as the other New Testament documents are obviously not historical in nature as none of the authors even claim to be historians and they do claim to BELIEVE that Jesus was god in the flesh! Nothing could be less historical or more mystical.
Wilson is also fair in telling the reader right up front that his ideas are just that. Because there is so little HISTORY regarding Jesus, no one, including Wilson can offer more than a guess.
Religionists that already BELIEVE in this or that, of course, care little about history or truth. This book is not for anyone that has already made up his or her mind that belief is all that is necessary. It is for those of us that have always wondered how much history tells us about Jesus. The answer is in. History tells us nothing! Your guess is as good as Luther's or Augustine's.
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Bob Lupo
5.0 out of 5 stars I loved this book
Reviewed in the United States on 6 October 2017
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I loved this book. A sad, tragic, riveting book about the most enigmatic prophet in Biblical History, a magician, a healer, and God to many. Mr. Wilson threads fascinating speculations about Jesus, who he was, his controversial life and death, being nailed to a cross by the Romans, and his disputed legacy--the Christian God via the Pauline Tradition or a revered prophet and 'Messiah' to thousand of First Century Jews.
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The Spinozanator
5.0 out of 5 stars No Wonder it was a Best Seller
Reviewed in the United States on 8 July 2006
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I have read many books about Jesus in the past few months, all of them trying to get a scholarly handle on the "historical" Jesus. Two things stand out about this one. First of all, it is written by an accomplished novelist and biographer. Secondly, although his investigations into critical textual scholarship cost him his faith, he is more of an apologist for the spirit of religion than the others - even though he doesn't buy into the theology.
Wilson describes an uncomfortable alliance between the ultra-orthodox and the religious modernist. The former is so afraid of Biblical textual criticism that he tends toward censorship of the subject. The latter fully buys into the mythological origins of the whole Bible, taking virtually none of it literally, but maintains that religion matters more and at a deeper level than academic speculations.
I'm not quite sure where Wilson fits into this scenario, because he meanders back and forth. Over and over, he demonstrates why the irreconcilable contradictions of the New Testament render the whole thing unreliable. Then he reverses himself: "Yet, almost in spite of the Christ of the theologians, Jesus has survived: a man doodling in the dust with his finger, while all around him, self-righteous men are shouting for the death of a sinner..."
What results is a devastating critique of the New Testament as real history, mixed with a touching appreciation of the man Wilson found behind the myth. No wonder this was a best seller.
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