The Blackwell Companion to Jesus features a comprehensive collection of essays that explore the diverse ways in which Jesus has been imagined or portrayed from the beginnings of Christianity to the present day. * Considers portrayals of Jesus in the New Testament and beyond, Jesus in non-Christian religions, philosophical and historic perspectives, modern manifestations, and representations in Christian art, novels, and film * Comprehensive scope of coverage distinguishes this work from similar offerings * Examines both Christian and non-Christian perspectives on Jesus, including those from ethnic and sexual groups, as well as from other faiths * Offers rich and rewarding insights which will shape our understanding of this influential figure and his enduring legacy

The Shroud of Turin is the most important and studied relic in the world. The many scientific studies on the relic until today have failed to provide conclusive answers about the identity of the enveloped man and the dynamics regarding the image impressed therein. This book not only addresses these issues in a scientific and objective manner but also leads the reader through new search paths. In the second edition, besides including some of the most recent findings on the Shroud, the authors follow the many tips and comments received from readers. The Shroud's dating by means of alternative methods has not been free from controversies, some of which have even implied the non-authenticity of the Shroud's samples tested. So the authors duly expand Chapter 7 to include the proof of the origin of the samples used in the recent scientific research and also address the provenance and the path of the original sample. Furthermore, a new section contains a personal interview with the authors that is the result of the interesting and praiseworthy work of a Bavarian high school student. Although there are many books on the subject, none contains such a formidable quantity of scientific news and reports. Unique in its genre, this book is a powerful tool for those who want to study the Turin Shroud deeply.

• What if Thousands of years before Christianity Pagans had also worshipped a Son of God?
• What if this Pagan saviour was also born of a virgin on the 25th of December before three Shepherds, turned water into wine, died and resurrected at Easter, and offered his body and blood as a Holy Communion?
• What if these Pagan myths had been rewritten as the gospel of Jesus Christ?
• What if there were absolutely no evidence for the existence of an historical Jesus?
• What if the earliest Christians knew that the Jesus story was a myth?
• What if the truth has been kept from us by the greatest cover-up in history?

Drawing on the cutting edge of modern scholarship, this astonishing book will change everything you ever thought you ever thought you knew about Christianity.

'Book of the Year'
FIONA PITT-KEIGHLEY, 'Daily Telegraph'

This is the first attempt to investigate the background to the gift of the Holy Blood to Westminster by King Henry III in 1247. Recently the archives of Westminster Abbey have yielded important new material relating to this extraordinary event, including a letter from the patriarch of Jerusalem that describes the relic in detail. This study offers both a commentary on this newly-discovered letter, and an overview of the extraordinary history of the relics of Christ's blood, their origin, distribution, and place in popular devotion.

This Companion's starting point is the realization that Jesus of Nazareth cannot be studied purely as a subject of ancient history, or as "a man like any other man". History, literature, theology and the dynamic of a living, worldwide religious reality appropriately impinge on the study of Jesus. This book therefore incorporates the most up-to-date historical work on Jesus with the "larger issues" of critical method--the story of Christian faith and study, as well as Jesus in a global church and in the encounter with Judaism and Islam.

This popular book, first published in 1908, is the amazing story of Jesus, the man from Galilee, and how he attained the Christ consciousness open to all men. It includes a complete record of the 'lost' 18 years of life, a time about which the New Testament is strangely silent. During this period Jesus travelled widely in India, Tibet, Persia, Egypt and Greece, learning from the Masters, seers and wise men of the East and the West in temples and schools. Included in this amazing book is information on the Council of the Seven Sages of the World, Jesus with the Chinese Master Mencius (Meng Tzu) in Tibet, the ministry, trial, execution and resurrection of Jesus.

Was Jesus the founder of Christianity of a teacher of Judaism? When he argued the latter based on the New Testament, Abraham Geiger ignited an intense debate that began in 19th-century Germany but continues in the late-20th century. Geiger was a pioneer of Reform Judaism and a founder of Jewish studies and developed a Jewish version of Christian origins. He contended that Jesus was a member of the pharisees, a progressive and liberalizing group within 1st-century Judaism, and that he taught nothing new or original. This argumant enraged German Protestant theologians, some of whom produced a tragic counterargument based upon racial theory. In this study Susannah Heschel traces the genesis of Geiger's argument and examines the reaction to it within Christian theology. She concludes that Geiger initiated an intellectual revolt by the colonized against the colonizer, an attempt not to assimilate into Christianity by adopting Jesus as a Jew, but to overthrow Christian intellectual hegemony by claiming that Christianity - and all of Western civilization - was the product of Judaism.

A very unusual apologetic angle by two psychiatrists

The question of the historicity of Jesus' resurrection has been repeatedly probed, investigated and debated. And the results have varied widely. Perhaps some now regard this issue as the burned-over district of New Testament scholarship. Could there be any new and promising approach to this problem? Yes, answers Michael Licona. And he convincingly points us to a significant deficiency in approaching this question: our historiographical orientation and practice. So he opens this study with an extensive consideration of historiography and the particular problem of investigating claims of miracles. This alone is a valuable contribution. But then Licona carefully applies his principles and methods to the question of Jesus' resurrection. In addition to determining and working from the most reliable sources and bedrock historical evidence, Licona critically weighs other prominent hypotheses. His own argument is a challenging and closely argued case for the historicity of the resurrection of Jesus, the Christ. Any future approaches to dealing with this 'prize puzzle' of New Testament study will need to be routed through The Resurrection of Jesus.

An Unlikely Union tells the dramatic story of how two of America's largest ethnic groups learned to love and laugh with each other after decades of animosity. They came from the poorest parts of Ireland and Italy and met as rivals on the sidewalks of New York. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the Irish and Italians clashed in the Catholic Church, on the waterfront, at construction sites, and in the streets. Then they made peace through romance, marrying each other on a large scale in the years after World War II. The vibrant cast of characters features saints such as Mother Frances X. Cabrini, who stood up to the Irish American archbishop of New York when he tried to send her back to Italy, and sinners like Al Capone, who left his Irish wife home the night he shot it out with Brooklyn's Irish mob. The book also highlights the torrid love affair between radical labor organizers Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Carlo Tresca; the alliance between Italian American gangster Paul Kelly and Tammany's "Big Tim" Sullivan; heroic detective Joseph Petrosino's struggle to be accepted in the Irish-run NYPD; and the competition between Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby to become the country's top male vocalist. In this engaging history of the Irish and Italians, veteran New York City journalist and professor Paul Moses offers a classic American story of competition, cooperation, and resilience. At a time of renewed fear of immigrants, An Unlikely Union reminds us that Americans are able to absorb tremendous social change and conflict-and come out the better for it.

This study reconstructs the life of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor responsible for the execution of Jesus. The first section provides the historical and archaeological background. The following chapters look at six first-century authors: Philo, Josephus and the four gospel writers. Each chapter asks how Pilate is being used as a literary character in each work, why each author describes Pilate in a different way, and what this tells us about the relationship between each author and the Roman state.

This 1997 book presents in readable, non-technical language the findings of scholarship on one important aspect of 'who Jesus was' - the many reports in the New Testament and other early Christian writings that Jesus performed healings. The book paints a picture of the sick and sickness in Jesus' world and the means available to deal with sickness. It shows how Jesus as healer fits - and doesn't fit - into that world. We see him as one of the many healers of his day, but set apart as a 'wounded healer' who in his own death achieves the ultimate 'healing', victory over death. In addressing the question 'did Jesus really heal?' the author provides readers with resources from biblical scholarship, medicine, sociology and anthropology to help arrive at their own answers to the question. The suggestions for further reading as well as the questions for discussion make this book ideal both for personal reading and for group study.

This book provides an exciting reinterpretation of the sayings and actions of Jesus. Setting him firmly in the context of first-century Judaism, it asks how important the city of Jerusalem and the theological traditions centred on it were to Jesus. At this time, Zion had become 'the symbol of the life, beliefs and hopes of all Jews'. Those Jews who expected the coming of a messianic Davidic king assumed that it would be from Zion that he would reign. Dr Tan examines how Jesus viewed the significance of Jerusalem in relation to his own vocation, and asks why he went there in what proved to be the last weeks of his life. Skillfully integrating what Jesus is recorded to have said with what he is recorded to have done, the author argues that, as a prophet, Jesus was attracted inevitably to the city of Zion. His message concerned the establishment of God's sovereignty on earth, and this in itself impelled him to go to the city to bring it under the divine rule. Jesus' actions in Jerusalem can also be interpreted as part of a common theme of the restoration of God's people for the fulfillment of their promised destiny. An understanding of the importance to Jesus of the Zion traditions, therefore, not only helps us to understand the unifying aim behind his ministry, but can also provide us with the key to the riddle of who Jesus thought he was.

Poetry, Rosenthal argues, focuses the imagination of a culture as no other written form can. In each chapter of her book, she considers the world's poets as Shelley's 'unacknowledged legislators' - creators who dreamed or destroyed visions of Jesus which shaped the spiritual climate of their times and nations. The book, though wide-ranging in its coverage and impeccably researched, is written extremely accessibly, as though for the general reader, hence it should appeal to the literature and poetry market more broadly as well as scholars of both poetry and Christianity.

In Saint Saul, Donald Harman Akenson offers a lively and provocative account of what we can learn about Jesus by reading the letters of Paul. As the only direct evidence of Jesus we have that were composed before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE forever altered the outlook of the Christian and Jewish faiths, Akenson claims that these letters are the most reliable source of information. He dismisses the traditional method of searching for facts about Jesus by looking for parallels among the four gospels because they were handed down to us as a unit by a later generation. Akenson painstakingly recreates the world of Christ, a time rich with ideas, prophets, factions, priests, savants, and god-drunk fanatics. As an eminent historian, Akenson approaches his subject with a fresh eye and a scholarly rigor that is all too rare in this hotly disputed field.

Beginning with the Gospels, interpretations of the life of Jesus have flourished for nearly two millennia, yet a clear and coherent picture of Jesus as a man has remained elusive. In Rabbi Jesus, the noted biblical scholar Bruce Chilton places Jesus within the context of his times to present a fresh, historically accurate, and revolutionary examination of the man who founded Christianity.

Drawing on recent archaeological findings and new translations and interpretations of ancient texts, Chilton discusses in enlightening detail the philosophical and psychological foundations of Jesus’ ideas and beliefs. His in-depth investigation also provides evidence that contradicts long-held beliefs about Jesus and the movement he led. Chilton shows, for example, that the High Priest Caiaphas, as well as Pontius Pilate, played a central role in Jesus’ execution. It is, however, Chilton’s description of Jesus’ role as a rabbi, or "master," of Jewish oral traditions, as a teacher of the Cabala, and as a practitioner of a Galilean form of Judaism that emphasized direct communication with God that casts an entirely new light on the origins of Christianity.

Seamlessly merging history and biography, this penetrating, highly readable book uncovers truths lost to the passage of time and reveals a new Jesus for the new millennium.

"The Blackwell Companion to Jesus" features a comprehensive collection of essays that explore the diverse ways in which Jesus has been imagined or portrayed from the beginnings of Christianity to the present day.

Considers portrayals of Jesus in the New Testament and beyond, Jesus in non-Christian religions, philosophical and historic perspectives, modern manifestations, and representations in Christian art, novels, and filmComprehensive scope of coverage distinguishes this work from similar offeringsExamines both Christian and non-Christian perspectives on Jesus, including those from ethnic and sexual groups, as well as from other faithsOffers rich and rewarding insights which will shape our understanding of this influential figure and his enduring legacy

Examines what the Gospels can tell us about the sexuality of Jesus, rather than simply what they say about sex and sexual ethics

Christianity depends on the belief that the Jesus of history is identical with the Christ of faith, and that God in the person of Jesus intervened finally and decisively in human history. But is the historical Jesus the same as the Christian Saviour? And how did an obscure provincial religion based on the paradox of a crucified saviour conquer the Roman Empire and outlive it? INTRODUCING JESUS - A GRAPHIC GUIDE confronts the enigmas. It sets Jesus in the perspective of his time - within Judaism and its expectations of a Messiah, in the atmosphere of Greek philosophy and the Roman deification of emperors. It traces the development of Christianity from St. Paul and the Romanization of the Church, to modern liberation theology. This book is a lucid and exciting investigation that will appeal to all readers, whether Christian or not.

In our everyday lives, friends are the people whom we spend the most time with, go through struggles with, and who know us best. Each of Jesus' friends-Peter, John, Matthew, Judas, Mary Magdalene, and Lazarus-travelled with Jesus and were part of His daily ministry, and each has a compelling story to tell. There were some who would question or doubt Him...and one would even betray Him. Kingsbury brings these fascinating personalities to life in ways that will not only help bring you closer to the truths found in Scripture, but also to Christ. By combining valuable, instructive Bible study with compelling, insightful character sketches of Jesus' companions, Kingsbury provides you with a deeper understanding of the scriptural teachings featuring these fascinating people. Emotionally powerful, thought-provoking, and soulful, The Friends of Jesus will help you to appreciate the Bible and understand how it applies to your relationships with the most important people in your life.