Defining Jesus: The Earthly, the Biblical, the Historical, and the Real Jesus, and How Not to Confuse Them

Richard N. Soulen

09/2015 · Wipf and Stock Publishers

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Defining Jesus is about the semantic content of the name Jesus. To what does the name refer, especially when modifying adjectives are attached, such as "the historical Jesus," "the Jesus of history," "the earthly Jesus," "the biblical Jesus," "the real Jesus"? Problems arise when commercial writers and scholars, without the necessary caveat, equate their hypothetical portrait of "the historical Jesus" with "the real Jesus"--none other than the Jesus of the first century "as he actually was." To disabuse scholarship of this hubris, the author carefully delineates the diverse settings in which the name Jesus appears in the ongoing dialogue about Jesus of Nazareth. Its approach is apologetic: it defends the traditional language of Christian faith, arguing with Martin Kahler in the nineteenth century that the only Jesus Christians have ever known, or can know, is the Christ of faith.

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Richard N. Soulen is Professor of New Testament (Ret.) at The School of Theology, Virginia Union University (Richmond). He is author of Sacred Scripture: A Short History of Interpretation (2009) and coauthor (with R. Kendall Soulen) of Handbook of Biblical Criticism (4th ed., 2011). He has taught at United proTheological College in Bangalore, India (1998) and Union Presbyterian Seminary (Richmond; 1968, 1981), and pastored United Methodist churches in Virginia and Kansas.