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Book Cover for: Jesus of Nazareth, Paul Verhoeven

Jesus of Nazareth

Paul Verhoeven

Hardcover
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Building on the work of the great Biblical scholars of the twentieth century--Rudolf Bultman, Raymond Brown, Jane Schabert and Robert Funk, founder of the Jesus Seminars, among others--filmmaker Paul Verhoeven disrobes the mythical Jesus to reveal a man who is, after all, startlingly familiar to us, a man who has much in common with other great political leaders throughout history, human beings who believed that change was coming in their lifetimes.
Gone is the Jesus of the miracles, gone the son of God, gone the weaver of arcane parables whose meanings are obscure. In their place Verhoeven gives us his vision of Jesus as a complete man, someone who was changed by events, the leader of a political movement, and, perhaps most importantly, someone who, in his speeches and sayings, introduced a new ethics in which enlightened behavior and the embrace of human contradictions transcend the mechanics of value and worth that had defined the material world before Jesus.
Coming to a deeper understanding of the historical Jesus has been a lifelong passion for Verhoeven, who for the last quarter-century has been among the very few nonacademics participating in the Jesus Seminars. Verhoeven assumed that one day he would make a film of the life of Jesus. Then he realized that it must be a book. Steeped in Biblical scholarship but free of the institutional biases, whether academic or religious, that so often dictate the terms of discussion of the historical Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth is a book that builds a bridge reaching all the way back to Jesus's lifetime, all the way forward to the present, and from biblical scholars to lay readers whose interest might be personal or political.

Book Details

  • Publisher: Seven Stories Press
  • Publish Date: Apr 6th, 2010
  • Pages: 304
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 9.22in - 6.34in - 1.06in - 1.06lb
  • EAN: 9781583229057
  • Categories: • Religious• Christian Theology - Christology• History

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About the Author

Acclaimed as the director of such films as Basic Instinct and Starship Troopers, PAUL VERHOEVEN was born in 1938 in the Netherlands, where he took a dual degree in math and physics. After moving to Los Angeles in 1985 to pursue his film career, Verhoeven became the only non-theologian admitted into the Jesus Seminar, a group of seventy-seven eminent scholars in theology, philosophy, linguistics, and biblical history. Their activities are devoted to determining more precisely the words and actions of the historical Jesus. Verhoeven's Jesus of Nazareth, the result of his research, was published in 2010.

More books by Paul Verhoeven

Book Cover for: Listening to the Parables of Jesus: (Jesus Seminar Guides Vol 2), Bernard Brandon Scott
Book Cover for: Our Every Day Life: A One-Year Devotional, Paul Verhoeven
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What people are saying

Praise for this book

"Verhoeven turns out to be a member of the Jesus Seminar, a collection mostly of scholars devoted to reconstructing the historical Jesus, and much of what he has to say is shrewd and learned." --Adam Gopnik, New Yorker

"Jesus goes from being a follower of John the Baptist to inspired exorcist to peace-loving proclaimer of the Kingdom of God to a messianic rebel forced by the authorities and Romans into a radicalized corner to fight for his developing and somewhat desperate beliefs. Rather than forcing himself to throw out major portions of the story to make his sense of Jesus fit a given thesis, Verhoeven manages to pull together all the major threads and make narrative sense of it all." --Christopher Napolitano, Playboy

"Verhoeven has written an excellent book." --Paul Schrader, Film Comment

"Paul Verhoeven, director of RoboCop & Starship Troopers, wrote a book about Jesus ... I will read this." --HTML GIANT

"Verhoeven brings a searing honesty to the Jesus debate. His cinematic eye catches nuances that scholars have often overlooked. The payoff is a Jesus released from ecclesial and dogmatic winding sheets ... a human being who breathes our air, risks, dreams, imagines, and makes mistakes." --Arthur Dewey, Professor of Theology, Xavier University and fellow of the Jesus Seminar

"Verhoeven certainly knows whereof he speaks, having as a boy experienced the boot of Nazi occupation in his native Holland. His Jesus is, therefore, fresh and invigorating, and thoroughly more historical and convincing than earlier ones." --Robert Eisenman, author of James the Brother of Jesus and The New Testament Code

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