The Wisdom of Jesus: Between the Sages of Israel and the Apostles of the Church
How would the image of Jesus appear if it were based only on sayings that scholars generally agreed originated with Jesus? And how would the wisdom of Jesus reflected in those few sayings compare to the wisdom of the sages of ancient Israel and the apostles of the early first-century church? To answer such questions historians face serious difficulties. Everything we know about Jesus comes from what later writers thought about him; none of the things they claimed he said came directly from him. "Everything in the early Christian gospels is either derived from historical memory, or is borrowed, or invented," Hedrick claims. Even those few sayings receiving near-universal agreement from historians as sayings of Jesus can only be affirmed as probable rather than certain. The aim of this study is to allow Jesus to speak for himself directly to readers, as nearly as possible in his own words without the theological explanations of his interpreters. The resulting image of Jesus that emerges is a complex picture of a first-century lower-class man who was not religious in a traditional sense. His discourse was the language of the secular world and addressed issues of common life.
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The Wisdom of Jesus: Between the Sages of Israel and the Apostles of the Church
How would the image of Jesus appear if it were based only on sayings that scholars generally agreed originated with Jesus? And how would the wisdom of Jesus reflected in those few sayings compare to the wisdom of the sages of ancient Israel and the apostles of the early first-century church? To answer such questions historians face serious difficulties. Everything we know about Jesus comes from what later writers thought about him; none of the things they claimed he said came directly from him. "Everything in the early Christian gospels is either derived from historical memory, or is borrowed, or invented," Hedrick claims. Even those few sayings receiving near-universal agreement from historians as sayings of Jesus can only be affirmed as probable rather than certain. The aim of this study is to allow Jesus to speak for himself directly to readers, as nearly as possible in his own words without the theological explanations of his interpreters. The resulting image of Jesus that emerges is a complex picture of a first-century lower-class man who was not religious in a traditional sense. His discourse was the language of the secular world and addressed issues of common life.
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The Wisdom of Jesus: Between the Sages of Israel and the Apostles of the Church

The Wisdom of Jesus: Between the Sages of Israel and the Apostles of the Church

by Charles W. Hedrick
The Wisdom of Jesus: Between the Sages of Israel and the Apostles of the Church

The Wisdom of Jesus: Between the Sages of Israel and the Apostles of the Church

by Charles W. Hedrick

eBook

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Overview

How would the image of Jesus appear if it were based only on sayings that scholars generally agreed originated with Jesus? And how would the wisdom of Jesus reflected in those few sayings compare to the wisdom of the sages of ancient Israel and the apostles of the early first-century church? To answer such questions historians face serious difficulties. Everything we know about Jesus comes from what later writers thought about him; none of the things they claimed he said came directly from him. "Everything in the early Christian gospels is either derived from historical memory, or is borrowed, or invented," Hedrick claims. Even those few sayings receiving near-universal agreement from historians as sayings of Jesus can only be affirmed as probable rather than certain. The aim of this study is to allow Jesus to speak for himself directly to readers, as nearly as possible in his own words without the theological explanations of his interpreters. The resulting image of Jesus that emerges is a complex picture of a first-century lower-class man who was not religious in a traditional sense. His discourse was the language of the secular world and addressed issues of common life.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781630877040
Publisher: Cascade Books
Publication date: 11/07/2014
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 246
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Charles W. Hedrick is Distinguished Emeritus Professor at Missouri State University in Springfield, Missouri. He is the author of numerous books and articles relating to the study of Christian origins. His most recent book is Unlocking the Secrets of the Gospel according to Thomas (Cascade Books, 2010).
Charles W. Hedrick is Distinguished Professor of Religion Emeritus at Missouri State University. He is also the author of Parables as Poetic Fiction and Many Things in Parables.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
1 The Problem of the Historical Study of Jesus
2 Jesus and the Language of the Gospel
3 Early Christian Wisdom
4 Surveying the Sages of Ancient Israel
5 The Sayings of Jesus: A Preface
6 Vestiges of a Discourse
7 Parables: Fictional Narratives about the Ordinary
8 A Case Study of a Parable: The Fired Manager
9 Jesus between the Wisdom Canons of Israel and the Church
Epilogue: Pondering the Unreliability of the Gospels
List of Abbreviations
Bibliography
Index of Ancient Sources
Index of Modern Authors
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