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Yeshua in Context >> Book Reviews

REVIEW: Anthony Le Donne's Historical Jesus

March 22nd, 2012 | Add a Comment

Historical Jesus: What can we know and how can we know it?, Anthony Le Donne, Eerdmans, 2011. This short and very readable volume is valuable but flawed. The reason I say that: great information on historical "knowing" and application to historical Jesus studies, but poor application to the Jesus story once Le Donne turns his attention to it. First, the part I think is good. When it comes to historical knowledge, how we know history, Le Donne explains in layman terms why modernism overreached. Modernism was too optimistic in some ways and too skeptical in others. It assumed we could find "the facts, just the facts" and view history objectively, in a one to one correspondence. All knowledge, even memory, is interpretation, says Le Donne, in what I deem to be a ... Read entire article >>

Filed under: Ascension of Yeshua , Book Reviews , Gospels as History , Hebrew Bible as Testimony

REVIEW: The Jewish Gospels by Daniel Boyarin

March 8th, 2012 | 1 Comment

Daniel Boyarin is Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture and rhetoric at the University of California, Berkeley. In the foreword by Jack Miles, he is called "one of two or three greatest rabbinic scholars in the world." I'm not qualified to assign numbers to who is or isn't the world's greatest Talmud scholar, but it is easy to say that Boyarin knows his Talmud better than any but maybe a few dozen people in the world. So, it might surprise you to know that Boyarin thinks Judaism and Christianity are compatible. His goal, stated on pages 6-7 is to help Christians and Jews to stop vilifying each other. He doesn't follow Jesus and isn't asking fellow Jews to do so. But he demolishes all ideas that Christian devotion to Jesus is contrary ... Read entire article >>

Filed under: Answering Objections , Background to Gospels , Book Reviews , Divinity of Yeshua , Identity of Yeshua , Judaism Today & Yeshua , Messiah , Paradox , Spectacular Commentary