Camio

Hi,

We are used to discussing scholar works here, but I guess what is published for the layman is interesting to investigate as well.

Did anybody here read The Historical Jesus For Dummies (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Catherine M. Murphy? Is it worth recommending?

thx,

J.

Iskander

Are you asking whether the subject of the historicity of Jesus is one ideally suited for academic dummies or for non-academic dummies? .

ApostateAbe

I haven't read it, and I don't know if it is a good book, but it is certainly a good idea. Too many books on Jesus are either uselessly ideological or incomprehensibly academic. There needs to be more educational books on Jesus for the lay reader. You should read the book and give the rest of us a report.

Clivedurdle

One of the reviews:

Steven Carr

The author makes a good point.

If the Jews rejected Jesus, why did the Romans crucify him as a possible Messianic candidate?

Huon

Did the Jews reject Jesus before, or after the crucifiction ?

Supposing that Jesus was a Messianic candidate, it is "normal" that he was crucified by the Roman authority, when they caught him.

Supposing that Jesus was a Messianic candidate, and that he was crucified by the Roman authority, it could be understandable that the Jews rejected Jesus, as a failed Messiah.

Supposing that the Jews rejected Jesus, as a failed Messiah, the partisans of this Jesus were no longer a danger to the Roman empire, especially when an agent of the Sadducean lackeys, Saul, provoked a split inside the small remaining group, with the harmless idea that the revolution was not national, nor social, but personal.

Steven Carr

So why on earth did the Jews think of Jesus as a Messianic candidate, before his death?

avi

Is there some source apart from the New Testament, documenting Jesus' supposed crucifixion?

In my opinion, the Romans were interested in commerce, and extraction of mineral wealth and agricultural products, not religious nonsense. I think crucifixion was reserved for criminals and enemies of the Roman state.

I doubt the theory that Jesus or anyone else, was crucified for preaching imminent apocalypse.

Iskander

Some Jews rejected Jesus, but not all.

Jesus is the redeemer of mankind and what some Jews may or may not have done in the distant past is best forgotten as no longer relevant to the reality of today.

Doug Shaver

I agree with "not all." But most of them did, according to all the stories.

But then, so did most non-Jews in that part of the world for the first few hundred years of Christianity's existence.